Pakistan - September 2003

Sept. 25, 2003

Dear Family and Friends,

It's humbling to find that other English speakers cannot understand me. At first I make arrogant allowances that they are unaccustomed to proper English. That assumption works well until I find that they are thinking exactly the same of me! Just yesterday, a student was asking for directions on campus. I started to give them, noticed the look on his face and asked, apologetically, if he could understand my English. He said he could then asked "You are Iranian?" I laughed and told him I'm from the US. He laughed, embarrassed. I'm sure the "Axis of Evil" politics came to mind. It's nice to be confused for Middle Eastern; more commonly people have guessed me Israeli. Here, in India, I can realize how easily our humanity has no political boundaries.

At one point, when walking past a professor's apartment on campus - the profs mostly live on campus - a little girl, maybe 5 years old, came running out her short driveway seeing someone she knew walking along the street. She was wearing a pink dress with lots of lace (the kind that makes a girly girl, like I was, feel like a princess) and her face beamed with excitement. Suddenly her bright expression changed as she stopped and looked down at her feet, took a quick step backward, then emitted her bright smile back to the person again. Clearly her parents have shown her a very particular limit up to where she can play and where beyond is too far from home. Crossing that imaginary line was a grave error which she had to remedy before whatever was beyond that boundary swept her up.

Later that night her memory came to me as I journaled. I was a rule following child. I would have stopped and looked at my feet too. I wonder if I shouldn't stop and check my feet right now. What am I doing in a place that my pointing up is the opposite direction from your pointing up? And how will I know if I've ventured too far?

Not only was I (am I) a girly girl, I was also scared of everything. My parents didn't have to worry that I might go out into the street because I was clearly frightened that I might be hit by a car in the driveway. Snakes, balloons, showers, storms, bees, slivers and worms all kept me from anything remotely adventurous. Just ask my siblings.

At some point I began to wonder what I was missing and whether the fear of something bad was keeping me from experiencing something good. I guess once I started challenging it, I couldn't stop. When does the bad outweigh the good? And then, as a student of theology, the moral issue: How not to allow evil to have such control that it keeps us from embracing the good. And as a theist: a choice to be an active part of the Whole which I recognize to be good. As a Christian: to believe there is resurrection is to recognize that death is not the most powerful. Each of us (with an all-inclusive definition of "us") is valued by the Creator who has shown that life is greater than death. However, it is up to us to make a choice of Life.

It all sounds good until I remember that Daniel Pearl's (journalist kidnapped, tortured and killed in Pakistan last year) book is entitled At Home in the World.

I was in Peshawar, the border city on the Pakistan side of the Khyber Pass leading into Afghanistan, on the 11th of September this year.

The Rotary Club in Pacifica, outside of San Francisco, meets for breakfast on Tuesday mornings. The men and women who met in Pacifica on Tuesday, 11 Sept. 2001 were bonded in their common feelings of grief and helplessness. In an effort we all felt, to bring something good out of something so very bad, they began to look for ways to help victims of terrorism. Their aid interest went international, to needs of the displaced people of Afghanistan. There are over three million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan and Iran. Many of them have been living there since the late 70’s when the Soviets began the violence in their homeland. With over a quarter century of instability and refugee life, many Afghans have lost (or never had) a vision of a peaceful home. One practical need is trade learning. The Pacifica Club has set up a project to train women in basic trades like carpet weaving, sewing, embroidering and speaking English. The coordinator, Chris Verrill, a member of the Pacifica Club, has been living in Delhi for the past two months. He invited me, as a Rotary Scholar, to join him on his next trip to Peshawar.

Pakistanis drive Toyota Corollas just like us. Many also fly kites. On approaching a small city or village the horizon contains brown walls the color of the earth from which they were formed. The single story buildings are at peace with their well squared walls, as if the human's ability for precision is as artistically a part of nature as an ant hill. Perhaps due to lack of electricity, but I hope for the simple joy it, the sky is dotted with darting kites. Each dodges one wind current then catches the next, held to the earth by a string and the hand of a boy or man with his eye on the world of wind currents above him. Like his kite, he darts, not looking where his foot lands on earth but to where he hopes his kite will give the most resistance and sail as high as it can go.

Until now I associated kites with Highlights Magazines and Mary Poppins. Now I can add Pakistan to the list. Kites... Highlights... Mary Poppins... and Pakistan. It sounds like a joke to put these colorful things in the same sentence as Pakistan. But that fact alone reflects my earlier ignorance. As if a whole country's worth of grandparents, parents and children would be living without color. As if I could claim to understand a country based on the black and white media text from which I read my news.

The farther west and more rural one travels in Pakistan the more tribal the culture. By the time one arrives in Peshawar most of the women wear burkas (like wearing a tent with a net at eye level to look out through). Unattractive is one way to describe the burka. Just plain ugly is most accurate. Without reason, or conscious thought, I'd concluded that beneath the burka could only be an ugly old woman who would want to hide herself. Then, on Thursday, while in search of a post office, I was on a side street. Two women were huddled at a step where they were caring for a sick baby. Both had lifted the front of their burkas and rested them on their foreheads while they bent to the child. Still I could only see their backs. Try as I did, even when they pulled the burkas back down, they shielded their faces so I could not see them. But I did see one's hand. It was a young hand. I realized this was the baby's mother, and a young mother at that. The young woman hoisted her child - a girl - in her arms. The baby peered at me over her mother's shoulder as the two tents walked away. On the step they left a quarter piece of newspaper that the little girl had been lying on. It was the torn page of international news: "US Defense Spending Could Reach $480 Billion". As an Ambassadorial Scholar, I hope I can represent my country better than the black and white text news.

Depending on the variation and extent of Islam a family follows, some woman are not permitted to be seen by a man they are not related to. With few exceptions, all women kept their heads covered in public. Those women who don't wear burkas still dressed in a manner which deliberately concealed any feminine curves. The result was that I was out in public in clothing I would normally only wear to bed. Though this may have been bothersome to me, the reality was that by respecting the culture, I was given the opportunity to visit both men and woman.

At one of the refugee camps, in particular, we visited a home which, like all the other homes, had high walls of dried mud surrounding it. It was explained to us in Pashto (I think, though it may have been Urdu) by men with long white beards and pakols on their heads, that the walls were built to keep the flooding river from taking their mud block homes. We - three male Rotarians and I - met with the men, discussing supplies needed for the classes, the number of students expected, who would teach and where classes would be held. Then, as we went to look at the carpet frame, I, and only I, was invited to meet the women. Until this time we'd been meeting outside. Now a door was opened to the home. I stepped into the small dark room to find at least eight women and a couple girls inside. They welcomed me with excited smiles. They showed me that I should sit. There were no chairs, only an incredible carpet - the kind of carpet people pay hundreds or thousands (I checked e-bay) of dollars for in the USA. We all sat, no translator among us. We spent our time admiring their bangles and my head covering. They were all related, an elderly mother with her two daughters and their daughters.

I was sad to leave when it was time to go. Again I've been blessed to witness life from what seems like the other side of it. There is truth, at an absolute level, to be found here - even if pointing up from here is in the opposite direction than from Ohio.

There still feels like so much more to say. But this has been long enough.

We are such a small earth. We are such good people. Faith can move mountains ... then peace is not beyond us either.

I'll write again soon.

peace and love, molly

A Letter from India - Sept. 5, 2003

Sept. 5, 2003

Dear Family and Friends,

September is here. It's cooler than it was a week ago. I wake to find I haven't kicked the sheet off myself in my sleep. The ceiling fan in my hostel room (a room about the size of a king size bed) still spins at the frantic rate I'd set it the night before. A moving ceiling fan means the electric is still on, which means most likely we'll have water for showers this morning. We fill buckets of water in the evening in preparation for there not being water in the morning. Each week, it seems, a new breed of insect hatches in the hostel's open air halls and then finds themselves drowned in our buckets of water.

With lack of electricity a regular phenomenom, I was surprised at the interest in the day long power outage in the USA. I think there was more shock, interest and willingness to converse (at least in my pocket of Delhi) about the power outage in the States than the bombs that terrorized Mumbai. Over 900 miles separate Delhi from Mumbai (Bombay), so we were fairly unaffected.

I've enrolled at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Classes are going well. The professors are excellent, educated at Cambridge or Harvard, and have traveled a great deal. They care about their students, offering their home and cell numbers to the class. Interestingly, professors and their families live on campus.

More importantly, there is another kind of education that I could not learn at home. Nepali friends tell me about civil uprisings in their home country. Dinner with a Thai and chai (a beverage) with Iranians give me that opportunity to glimpse a bit of their perspective on the world (and, boy, do Iranians have a different perspective!). My neighbor plays the sitar in her small hotel room. I go to movies in Hindi and bowl with a Sikh.

I also learn the limits: how one lives with such poverty all around. The university and this internet cafe are within walking distance on a not so hot day. Between is a village of poverty set on a small hilltop. Earlier today my auto-rickshaw driver drove past a man alone in the street having a seizure. We just passed. I wondered, in the hype US Christian phrase, what would Jesus do? He wouldn't have passed. A child in the market begs for food. I learned quickly that if I give one child an apple, a dozen more want the same. I cannot say they should be in school or find a job because those opportunities - those privileges - are not afforded them.

I know I'm blessed to have each of you supporting me. Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers you're sending my way. Also thanks for the e-mails you've been sending. You continue to be in my prayers.

Will write again soon!

love and peace, molly

Sunday with Mohammed - August 6, 2003

My parents kept this quote from an email I sent August 6, 2003. Mom had emailed asking if I made it to Mass on Sunday...

I did get to Mass yesterday at 6:30pm. I was walking, intending to get a rickshaw to take me, when an Iranian I had met stopped to talk. He truly dislikes the US foreign policy. His first line, upon learning I'm from the US, was "my country's worst enemy". Anyway, his name is Mohammed. He was on a motorcycle and offered me a ride off campus to pick up the rickshaw. When I told him I was on the way to Mass he was surprised. Then he offered to give me a ride all the way to the church.

As we approached, out of politeness, I asked if he would like to join me. He took me up on it! So Mohammed and I went to Mass yesterday. He saw the crucifix and asked about the letters above Jesus' head. He then made a remark about Jesus' mother witnessing the crucifixion. He said some of his friends in Iran were executed for their political views. He said when their bodies were returned to their mothers, the mothers were angry.

I was amazed at the true perspective from the Middle East and that people were still dying for their beliefs... and the role women play as victims of violence. It wakes up the reality of Christ's execution.

A Letter from India - July 30, 2003

July 30, 2003

Dear Friends and Family,

As the passenger on the motorcycle I had to close my eyes to the raindrops falling in them. After only a week of monsoon experience (and the end of the monsoon at that) I've come to identify the season not with rain but with intense humidity. The kind of humidity that enters the lungs with every breath persuading the breather that the next inhale may not need to be so deep.

The horn in Dehli is a traffic courtesy, used more than turn signals and certainly more than eye contact between drivers. Verma drove the motorcycle, I clung as the passenger, as we swerved among Delhi's notoriously chaotic traffic. Verma has heard my constant request to use the internet. I've had almost no time on-line since arriving in India. Each of you who have so wonderfully written me with thoughts, prayers and well wishes, thank you so much. I look forward to being able to reply one by one. Soon I hope to get internet access with the laptop I brought from the States. (Thanks, Devin).

Suzette Paterson, a former Rotary Scholar, hooked me up wonderfully well. From her home in San Francisco, she was able to connect me with her friend Rajeev. Rajeev met me at the airport at 11pm on the 22nd. He escorted me to the hotel (not before being stopped by police and accused of kidnapping me!) where I spent my first night. The next day (which happened to be my 27th birthday) Rajeev met me again and brought me to the JNU campus. I saw the gate with the sign above reading "Jawaharlal Nehru University" I felt like the world had just fallen into place. Here was that place I had found on the internet. Here was the other end of the garbled, incoherent, 2am phone calls.

Rajeev introduced me to his friend Verma who had the right connections to get me in an air conditioned room at a guest house on campus. Verma has also personally escorted me all over campus (speaking Hindi all the way) to track down my application and status. I learned that I was not accepted because they understood my 3.7 GPA from Xavier to be on a 9 point scale! One person told me she's never heard of a person getting below a 4.

Later Rajeev invited me to his home for dinner. There I met his mother and sister. We had a wonderful vegetarian Indian meal; and, to my surprise, they brought out a small cake with "Happy Birthday, Molly" written on it. When Rajeev's mother wished me "many happy returns" the reality that I was truly in India overwhelmed me. It's been overwhelming ever since.

As for India... the raindrops are smaller than anywhere I've experienced. But they fall from the sky in such immense quantity that the size of the individual is lost. I close my eyes to each as Verma and I weave through the streets of Delhi.

There are people who live as stone crushers. They sleep in beds or on the ground at the top of the holes they are paid to excavate. Children grow up there, marry there and have their own children at the mouth of the hole they dig. On a day when I was not closing my eyes to the small raindrops and looked from the road through the dirt, I could see to the metal bed in the construction zone with two children in it. I wondered about the lot in life I live. I think of my faith that these children are as valuable as any I have loved. How can it be that one human person can choose to travel to the other side of the world at her wish, and another will dig for her entire life?

I am well. Delhi is overwhelming.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers.

love and peace, molly

Message from Molly - March 18, 2000

Salvadorans say that you carry with you in your heart a part of everyone you've loved. I am blessed; my heart is heavy.

On March 28th, I will return home to Ohio after living in San Francisco Morazan, Chalatenango, El Salvador since August of 1998. The adoption of my God-daughter, who is now six months old, is not yet complete; but her adoptive parents will soon move here, to care for her themselves, until the paperwork is finished. The sewing class, the sponsored students, the English classes, the child care center and the other projects have either finished their term or have become self-sufficient (not needing my presence). Still, I know that the most important thing I have done, in my time here, has simply been living with the people. My listening has given them a chance to put into words what they have experienced and known. My presence has represented the listening world to them. I have told them of the support I have received from you, and they have become aware that they are not forgotten. I have learned from them in ways that they will never know or understand.

A family of nine recently moved to a two-room house they are renting near the center of town. The "popular" school in an outlying village was not educating the children well; so have decided to come to San Francisco. Neither of the parents can read; but, Marisol, the slender thirteen year old daughter beams with pride as she says she is now in fourth grade. Not only can she read, the mother boasts as she glances at her husband holding their youngest son, but she's learning to multiply. Marisol becomes shy with the attention and turns away, but the deep dimples in her turned cheek reflect the glee her modesty wants to hide.

The simple manner Salvadoran living takes could stretch on and on: the tortillas, the buses, the town bell, the beans, the dirt roads, the clothesline, the dark eyes, the mountain view, the night sky, the stories that continue to be realized. In the lifetime of someone as young as I, they have seen their land at its worst. They survived, babies, mothers, and grandparents. They are only starting to realize what they have lived through. Slowly, as the shock wears off, a sense of pride sets in. Not pride in the violence that has taken place, but in the survival and struggle they continue to live.

Sister Ann Manganero was an American physician and Sister of Loretto who lived here in Chalatenango through the war. Her bravery in accompanying Salvadorans in the time of terror gave them hope and strengthened their faith in a God who is good and saves. She returned to the United States when she was found to have cancer, from which she later died. She is carried in the hearts of many here. Her life bore witness to the value of all life, as recorded by Scott Wright in Promised Land, Death and Life in El Salvador.

"At her funeral Mass, a friend, John Kavanaugh, S.J., recalled a time, ten years before, when Ann was working in the newborn intensive care unit of Cardinal Glennon Hospital in St. Louis, caring for a prematurely born child named Tamika, no bigger in size than Ann's hand. One day Ann even got the child to smile its one and only smile. After the child died, John asked Ann, 'What did that child ever have?' "She had the power to draw forth love from me', Ann replied."

As I move on from El Salvador to the United States, I find myself faced with two challenges. The first has to do with leaving here with a sense of hope for a people who face an intense struggle to fill their basic needs. The other is moving on and finding meaning in life in the United States. Sr. Ann's simple response strengthens me: to value all of humanity, no matter how small, dependent or hopeless it may seem, and to risk loving it. In the risk of loving, faith is found; hope grows from misery. This is the challenge to every culture and economy.

I want to thank you who have risked investing yourselves in my work here. Your financial help, your spiritual support, your willingness to risk your heart and care about what I do here, has been real in affecting how I could have impact. You have been present to the people of Chalatenango. We are grateful to you.

Peace and Love,
Molly

A Message From Molly - October 6, 1999

Hello! It's been a few months since I've sent my last message. There is quite a bit to update you on.

I've been here a full year. It's said that in another year San Francisco will have multiple phone lines installed in town. That means that any family who can afford it can have a phone in their house. For now Renald continues to make his rounds by bicycle delivering messages. Renald is young, cheerful and flirtatious, stopping along the curb, after delivering a message, to hear the latest gossip. His messages take him to most corners in our small town; so he stays well informed, though not always accurate. He is rumored to have been seeing Silvia - though I don't put much merit in small town gossip. They were seen sitting together on the steps that lead to her cement block house. But then, Renald is at most corners; and, when she isn't at choir practice, Silvia is usually out on her front steps. It only makes sense that the two would talk and that small town eyes would see. Hernan, Silvia's brother, (I wrote of Silvia and Hernan last April) has taken a job in a city somewhere. Now Silvia keeps house, while her other brother tends to the farm. She has survived her father's death last April, and her mother's death before, coming out strong and independent. She joined the choir and, in this month of the rainy season, she carries her umbrella at just the perfect angle to make it a thing of beauty and not the necessity it is. Two days ago, when I visited her front steps, she was consoling a young man crying because his girlfriend had just broken up with him. With a voice that was realistic rather than romantic, and stable rather than harsh, she stated, "Sometimes, in this life, you can't have what you want." It's a calm acceptance to live what is, and not long for what is not.

Estella dropped by the rectory on Sunday before Mass. If you'll recall, I wrote of her last January when her mother was sick. She's fifteen and had to care for her mother and seven younger siblings rather than attend school. I hadn't seen Estella in well over a month; so we hugged and kissed on the cheek, as is Salvadoran custom. She looked good: her clothes were clean, hair down and shoulders back. I asked about her mother. "For the grace of God", Estella responded, "she is in the house but well again." This is wonderful news since the health promoters I traveled with did not predict her recovery. In January, "God willing", Estella will begin the ninth grade. The next January, with the help of sponsors in the US, she might go on to high school in another town.

During my anniversary week, the rains were heavy. That, compounded with El Salvador's severely deforested mountainsides, caused three landslides, blocking the dirt road leading out of (or into, depending on your perspective) San Francisco. When we heard the 5am bus coming into town, there was a quiet sense of relief that the road wasn't blocked from the previous nights rain. I celebrated my anniversary here on August 25th, a day that the road was not blocked. Nor was it blocked the following day. On that day a friend of mine was able to take a bus to the hospital in San Salvador (a luxury most country women do not receive) to deliver a healthy baby girl that evening. She returned to town two days later, claiming the child she held in her arms was not hers. Since she is heavy set, she could keep her pregnancy a complete secret. She is 23. She already has two children. She has no husband, no family, no job, no education, no house. She and the two children share one cot the church gave her. That night she came to Father Rafael and me to tell us the truth: the baby is hers and that she cannot possibly give her the life she deserves. She had heard me tell of the many couples in the United States waiting for years to adopt a baby. She knew that a childless couple, who receives these letters, had written me to say that their house and hearts are open if I should know of a child in need. My friend loves her daughter with an intensity of unconditional, selfless love that I have never seen. I have known the kind of love that wants to be present with, to know, to be proud of and to receive affection. I hope that I can learn the kind of love my friend has for her daughter: a love that lets go.

I contacted the couple in the United States and they are ecstatic. Meanwhile I spent three weeks as a full time foster mom. (loved it) The couple came, as soon as their passports could be in order, to meet the birth mother and their daughter, and to baptize her Maritta Daun. Salvadoran adoptions are difficult. During the war, children in conflicted areas were kidnapped and adopted to foreign couples who thought they were legal adoptions. Only recently has it become evident that the children were taken, often violently, from their rightful parents. (An interesting article on the subject appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 1999) In order to eliminate any corruption, El Salvador has made its adoption procedures much more complex. Our Salvadoran lawyer has told us the adoption will probably take six months.

We have found a wonderful family in San. Salvador for Maritta Daun to stay with. I will not move back to the United States until the adoption is worked out. I will make a trip to Ohio November 4th - 29th to raise awareness of El Salvador's needs as well as do fundraising for Salvadoran students to attend high school. For anyone in Ohio, or closeby, who has a group who would be interested in hearing about my experience here, I would be happy to share my impressions. Please feel free to call my parents, John and Rita, and they will try to set my schedule in order. Also, anyone and everyone, please feel free to call and chat on the days I'm home. I look forward to making the personal contact.

I hear that there are two theologies in El Salvador. There is one that says that God is in control, that suffering leads to a stronger faith, and that the focus should not be on this world but on that which is eternal. And there is the other that claims that as God's children we should want what is good and pleasant in this world, that suffering is not to be tolerated, and that we need to take control of our lives. One hears what seems to be a hint of the first theology in Silvia's statement. "Sometimes, in this life, you can't have what you want." And one gets a feel for the other in Estella's determination to go to school. But I find that true theology, the one that led Christ to accepting the cross, to be that of my friend. She had done it all by bringing this beautiful child into life. She has taken control of her daughter's future. Letting her go hurts more than all the suffering she has known in her life. And in the final analysis, because her child's future is more important than her own, she knows that sometimes in this life, you can't have what you want.

Please keep my friend and Marita Daun in your prayers. I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing from you in November. Thank you.

Peace and Love,

Molly

A Message From Molly - May 6, 1999

Happy Spring to everyone in the United States! Happy Fall to Mikele in Australia! And Happy Winter to those of us in Central America! What a wonderfully diverse world we all live in!

The dry season has ended. Gracias a Dios! El Salvador has two seasons, wet (winter) and dry (summer). We have not seen rain since early last November. But now, each evening, there is a collective feeling of anticipation of the incoming rain. In the late afternoons, after teaching my seventh grade English class, I usually wander up to el campo, (the field) where the top of a hill has been cleared off. The young men from town are usually playing a serious game of soccer. Last night younger girls had a side game of softball. I join others who sit on large rocks and watch the games. The smaller children get bored with watching and climb trees, picking the pods that the trees produce and throwing them to other children on the ground. The children on the ground use rocks to break the pods open and suck out the sweet juice that surrounds the seeds inside. I've tried the juice. It's really not worth the energy it takes to retrieve, but seed juice really isn't what motivates the children to action. It's got something to do with the unity of our all being there. The wind blowing the dust from the soccer game into our faces. The way we can laugh, for the relief of ... something. For many people here I'm sure that part of it is the sense of peace. Ten years ago there was no way children or young men could play in an open field like they do now. Today children who are too young to remember use sticks to draw hop-scotch in the dust. A little later we feel the few drops of rain and can smile because there is the feeling of something different, something better, in the air.

I teach a lot of English, mostly to children. It's not uncommon for me to walk down the street and have children sing out to me, "Good Morning, Teacher. Good Morning, Teacher. How are you?..." I'm surprised by how quickly my second grade class is learning the days of the week. And my third grade students like me to give a color in Spanish, and they all quickly try to give the color in English - each wanting to be the first to know it. My ninth grade class, a small class which I spend seven hours a week with, are amazing. They understand concepts so quickly that I'm struggling to keep up.

Education is the key for the future of El Salvador. It is through education that we learn to see beyond the next corn or coffee harvest and into long term economic stability. Education is what allows the individual to take ownership of his or her own future.

I'm glad I can have the opportunity to help encourage education to people here. I don't have great hopes of my students all learning English in the next six months (though, like I said, my ninth grade class is pretty spectacular). However, my teaching opens my student's minds to what could be learned. I hope to plant curiosity to motivate them to want to continue their education. However in a country like El Salvador, instilling curiosity is not enough. Here in San Francisco the school only goes as far as the ninth grade. If a student wants to go any farther he or she has to travel to another town. Other towns have public schools as far as the 12th grade. The problem is the traveling expenses. The children of a farm family don't have the extra money it costs to ride the bus to and from other towns. So, with Fr. Rafael's help, I am trying to address the needs these students have. The project we are setting up is a sponsorship where an individual, family, or group in the United States will cover the additional cost it takes for a Salvadoran student in the rural areas to go to high school. A relationship will be set up between the student and the people in the United States who are helping. The idea is to begin the relationship now with letters and pictures. The actual financial contribution will not begin until next January when the next school year begins. The additional cost to send one student to high school is about $30 a month. With that they get transportation and other needs such as food, notebooks and uniform. If anyone is interested in beginning a relationship like this, please contact my parents (John and Rita L.), who can then get in contact with Fr. Rafael and me. I am doing well. I love (and am challenged by) the delicate balance between being motivated to take action, and discovering the peace and beauty that comes from simply being present. I'm living with people who have little control over their lives. There is so much I have to learn still. You hear a lot about the systemic problems of under- developed countries. I don't want to pretend that I have a sense of all that, at least not from the perspective that I'm given of rural Salvadoran farmers. Education empowers, and hopefully those who are educated can work to address the systemic problems found in these countries.

I hope all is well in your part of the world. Enjoy the change of seasons. God Bless.

Peace and Love,

Molly