This is Home (Colby)

I’m having a difficult time putting into words my experiences over the last week.

There is a lot of weight packed into the statement that every week I spend at Niños de Mexico is better than the one that came before it. That statement carries with it six years of history and six years of memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life – memories with family and friends, memories with the staff and children, and memories with so many people that I met only briefly, but who still have made a profound impact on my life. All of these memories truly make this place feel like a second home, and leaving home is never easy.

It feels like home because I am comfortable when I visit.

As our van pulled into the main compound last Saturday evening, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I was right back where I needed to be. There was no anxiety over what the week might hold, no awkwardness in being outside of my culture, no regret that I might be missing out on something back in Spokane. I felt only peace, and my prayer was simply that during this week, no opportunity would be wasted. That prayer was answered over and over, through every interaction with the children and staff, and every hour we spent on our work project, every member of the team thrived.

Comfort is the last word that comes to mind when imagining spending hours a day working on a roof with no protection from the sun, but that is exactly what I felt every morning when I woke up to do just that. The whole team worked hard all week, scraping old sealer off a leaking roof and resealing it with several coats of the new, just to ensure that it would last as long as possible. There were times when many of us thought the work might not be done by the time we left, but we ended up accomplishing more than our original goal. The work was exhausting, and the tools we had available to use were often not ideal, but God gave me this sense of comfort through it all, simply because of where I was and what the work meant to the children that live there.

It feels like home because I know I am loved.

All summer long, short term mission groups like the one I was a part of cycle in and out, working on projects during the day and spending their evenings playing with and getting to know the children. For the kids, it would be easy to get bored of this cycle of people they would likely only see once. It would be easy – even understandable – for them to be uncomfortable around Americans coming into their country. Love is the reason that this is not the case.

Never in my life have I felt love like I have felt at this place. It radiates out of everything that happens there. I see it on the faces of staff when they talk about the work they do. I see it on the faces of the children when they talk about the opportunities they have been given because of this place. I see it on the faces of my teammates as they interact with everyone there, many for the first time. And I see it on the faces of the children that I sponsor, as their faces light up when they see me for the first time in a year. That alone is worth the repeated visits, and there are very few things that can compare.

No one from our group traveled to Mexico with a superiority complex, or with the mindset that they were trying to change the way anything was done. We made the trip to serve and to love in the best way we knew how. This week, I saw every member of my team love and be loved as they worked and played and experienced the culture. There was no judgement and no awkwardness, despite the linguistic and cultural barriers that at one point seemed daunting to surpass. The children just wanted love, and we were there to provide it.

It feels like home because I want to keep going back.

Visiting Niños de Mexico has become, for me, about maintaining relationships. The first time I decided to go, it was intended as a one-off thing for me to check a box and move on with my life. The second, third, fourth, and future visits are about how wrong that original notion was. I no longer arrive and see strangers – I arrive and see familiar faces, because at this point, many of the children recognize me and get excited when I visit, and I look forward to continuing to build relationships with the staff that I have gotten to know over the years. I was even told by one of them last week that, if I was interested and the right job was open, he would love to have me come work with him.

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Even this long-winded explanation doesn’t feel sufficient to sum up how I am feeling coming out of last week, but whatever I have left out is probably not as important. In light of my upcoming year on the World Race, leaving Mexico this time felt a little different. It was not different in the sense that I was unsure if I would return. I know I will be back – hopefully many more times. It was different because I was painfully aware that this leaving process is something that I will experience at the end of each month on the Race.

I fell in love with this mission in Mexico City so easily, and I know the same will be true of most, if not all, of the places I will have the privilege of serving in next year. It’s likely that I will never have the chance for repeat visits at any of these places the way I do in Mexico, and whether that knowledge makes leaving easier or more difficult is yet to be determined. What I do know, though, is that God used last week to continue to prepare me for next year, and I know He will keep preparing me in the months to come.