A soldier has fallen...

Today we had our first trainee drop out. Mike flies out of Lima tomorrow to go home to Texas. There’s a really weird feeling amongst the group, it’s really hard to explain. Let me give it a try…

When you have your bad days you feel lost and alone. Confused and questioning your decisions. Move to a foreign country, leave all your friends and family behind to do what? Live with a strange group of people you don’t understand let alone get along with. You tell yourself that you are here to make a difference in the world but really are you? How can one person think they can actually make a sustainable difference in the lives of these people? If it were that easy they would have done it themselves. What new skills could you bring that they don’t already have? And its not like you are ever going to be completely fluent in Spanish. There’s always going to be that communication barrier. On these bad days you’d like nothing but to talk to your best friend from home – oh but wait – you can’t because you don’t have a phone at your house. The frustration starts slowly with minor inconveniences then before you know it, it skyrockets exponentially to the point where all you want to do is throw something, yell and scream. What you really want to do though, is let go and cry.

Maybe it’s just me, but the good days are just the opposite. On the good days you can’t even imagine what it is like to have a bad day. When you know someone else that is struggling you want to be compassionate and supportive to them but at the same time you’re like what the heck could be wrong? You look out the window to see a cloudless blue sky shinning over the mountains, you just had a two hour conversation with your host family – in Spanish – and you understood just about all of it. You just got back from Lima where you enjoyed scarfing down a scrumpous pizza. And about making a difference – dude that is so easy. I’ve already help teach my family about the importance of hand washing a tooth brushing. In a matter of a couple weeks they’ve gone from knowing where the soap and water is to actually washing their hands before meals without being told to.

So what do you when someone tells you they want to go home? Sympathize and support their decision to leave? Or do you try to convince them otherwise? Maybe they are just having a bad day and feel like giving up. Or maybe this isn’t really for them. It’s hard to tell. I didn’t know Mike very well at all. We had barely even talked. From what I heard, this just wasn’t for him and he decided to go. Mike - best of luck in what ever it is you decide to do and never forget PERU 9….

In the words of Howie Day: “Even the best fall down sometimes…”