The Journey So Far

Streets of Antigua

As I end my time as the CEO of Plant With Purpose, after 33 years, I have been reflecting on how I ended up at this point.

It certainly wasn’t the plan. Coming out of college, I wasn’t dreaming of a career in nonprofit work. I don’t think it was something many of us considered back then. I was working to finish my master’s degree in international relations, with the hope of going into the US State Department but needed a way to complete the foreign language requirement. That led me to an immersion Spanish program in Antigua, Guatemala, where for a ridiculously low price, I lived with a local family and worked one-on-one with a tutor for five hours each day.

Those months felt idyllic. Walking to school down the cobblestone streets, with the morning sun illuminating the slopes of magnificent Volcán de Agua, gave each day a magical start. Then I got to spend the evenings socializing with my host family, while on the television, Sábado Gigante and Chesperito filled in the gaps in our conversation. Other evenings were spent sharing perspectives with other students from around the world.

Most of what was happening around us, though, was anything but idyllic. Poverty was rampant, and Guatemala was still in the latter stages of its brutal civil war. Evidence of injustice was everywhere. Forlorn children, looking like they had stepped out of the Les Misérables poster, were begging on most of the downtown streets. Rumors of massacre and atrocity were whispered, while stories of sabotage and bus holdups were more immediate.

In the midst of it, though, what stood out was the number of people I met who were living out their faith with a grit and determination, which was completely new to me. Somehow, every weekend, I found myself introduced to another person, or family, shining their light - the light of Christ - in the darkness. Looking back, it was almost as though I had Jesus as a tour guide - in fact, there were times when I felt that to be literally the case.

One weekend found me in the Guatemala City dump, the next, with development workers in the mountains of Huehuetenango. One particularly impactful weekend, I traveled alone to the Quiche highlands, to a region where the conflict had been particularly intense. I spent most of a day on small local buses and in the back of trucks, seeking out a Guatemalan pastor who had been described to me as “what Jesus would look like if he were walking around the mountains today.” The two days I spent with him embodied that to a T.

He and his wife welcomed me into their home. Over the next day, we visited broken families who had suffered unspeakable violence. Their stories were heartbreaking. But I also heard remarkable stories of courage, community and redemption. Through it all, this pastor’s joy and acute awareness of the presence of God were contagious. Furthermore, it was obvious his hope and joy came from someplace other than the grim circumstances that surrounded him.

At the end of the summer, I went home to finish school, but the courage I witnessed in Guatemala intrigued me. It was unlike anything I had experienced growing up in Southern California, where being a Christian demanded little of me.

However, if we really believed what we were preaching, this life of purpose made far more sense. I had met people who had a faith so vibrant and so firm that they were willing to lay down their lives for others. We too could be far more proactive in loving our neighbors - we could make it our vocation.

All my life, I had heard of Mother Teresa and been inspired by her work. I now realized there were thousands more like her, most of them working in obscurity - an invisible army of light. I wanted to join them. It seemed apparent that our purpose as Christians was to find places of darkness and to push back on them with the light of Jesus. It was the “what next?’ that had seemed to be missing from the faith I had grown up with. Paul says, “we were created to do good works,” (Eph 2:10) but that had always felt nebulous.

I still wasn’t sure what it would look like, but I knew that was how I wanted to spend my life. I began to look for kindred spirits. Where were people pushing back on the darkness? That ultimately led me to begin volunteering at Plant With Purpose and started me on the path I have been on ever since. Along the way, I have repeatedly had the privilege of working alongside courageous people, willing to spend themselves on behalf of the poor and oppressed, with selfless love and a supernatural hope.

In these challenging times, as American Christianity struggles and our leaders fail us, it is the examples of friends and colleagues from places like Guatemala, Haiti and Congo, which give me courage for what may be asked of us in the months ahead. In the midst of civil war, drought and famine, they never lost hope, never lost their sense of purpose and never stopped working for something better. It is their faith that I have wanted to emulate thus far in my journey, and I am still clinging to their example.