Guatemala 2013

For school, I had to do a sort of questionarre about my time in Guatemala this year, so I figured I'd share it here as well.

Reflections on Guatemala 2013

What surprised me the most in this trip?

Being my third time to Guatemala, I was unsure how much I would remember as I returned. I was quite young the first two times that my family traveled to Guatemala, so I was surprised at how many memories came back to me. There were numerous moments where, sitting in the house, I couldn’t remember a place, but as we traveled there, I suddenly remembered it completely, and a bunch of memories that took place there would come flooding back so vividly, I’d have to take a minute and catch my breath.

On the other hand, there were many things that I had forgotten about, or had been oblivious to as a kid. The most prominent was the gun presence. As a kid, I guess that I hadn’t been aware of just how many guards and police were around and how substantial of arms they were carrying.

Truth

The crazy thing about truth is that it always goes both ways.

I can easily agree that being born gifted is nothing to brag about, and that I did nothing to earn it. Taking that the other way, though, I have a harder time with. My aspergers or AD/HD is nothing to be ashamed of, and I didn't bring it on myself. For some reason, I can't get that through my thick skull.

I believe that someone that I debate with should be open minded enough to really hear what I'm saying, and stop thinking about their own argument long enough to hear mine. But wait a minute, that means that I should stop talking long enough to hear their points, and be willing to change my mind if those points are valid.

When it says in Ecclesiastes that everything is meaningless, we take that the way of “why bother with any of it,” but it also goes the other way. We needn't stress about it when we mess up or choose not to do something we know we should.
We know that God's grace is so huge that it can cover all of our sins, but sometime it's harder to accept that it covers the "bigger sins," especially those of others.

An exercise that I've been trying a bit is to analyze truth in this way. Taking a truth that I completely accept, and looking at it's other implications. The hard part is to then act in those harder truths.