Val Paraiso

Val Paraiso was unlike any other city I had ever visited. The people were inherently the same - for at the core of it, we are all very, very similar - but the appearance of the city was staggering.

Because of its location, I like to call Val Paraiso the San Francisco of South America. It had a habit of quickly becoming lost in a wall of fog for minutes, sometimes hours, at a time. Then the fog would disappear in seconds, and clear blue skies and warm salt air would rush in and fill my chilled lungs. Tightly-packed houses of pastel and fluorescent hues stretched from the beach to the tops of the rolling hills, separated by bumpy cobblestone streets.

And yet the wires overhead made it so completely unlike the cleaner, almost pristine city streets near the Golden Gate - those frayed nets of electric wires that sprawled like thick cobwebs from house to house, strung vicariously as the need arose. They hovered buzzing overhead, so low in points that I saw the tallest men needing to duck beneath them as they walked up and down the sloping sidewalk.

Our bus edged laboriously up hills and around sharp corners, and my head began to pound as the sensation of being trapped in a labyrinth became even more pronounced. Still, careening around corners in an old grey minibus was far safer than trudging on foot - I recalled a story Denis had told over dinner the night before. He was mugged once in Val Paraiso because his camera had caught the eye of a passing thief. The quaint and colorful storefronts masked a city far more desperate and impoverished than the working-class neighborhoods of Santiago.

The bed and breakfast Elizabeth booked was in the heart of that dressed-up tourist section. It was bright yellow, Victorian-style house with white shutters. The sunlight blazed overhead and reflected off the clean paint. I looked out across the patio, to the sea, and felt the fresh, warm breeze blow across my face. For nearly a week, my world had been covered by a cloud of smog.

We spent some time exploring the house before venturing out to the streets. After a bit of wandering, we made our way to a restaurant downtown. Marco led us into a building that looked like an old warehouse. Most of the windows in the cement walls were shattered, but when we walked inside the effect wasn't creepy or frightening. Sunlight drifted through the windows onto the dusty floor, and the shadowed spaces held cool breezes that smelled of the ocean. The restaurant was upstairs.

Lunch was cheese empanadas and a water-based seafood soup. I wasn't feeling adventurous that day; I nibbled at an empanada while I watched Mike and Marco devour the tiny sea creatures whole, complete with slurping sound effects. Crystal constructed bits of crustacean into a being she called "No-face," and tried to make it talk.

I think it was their blank, staring eyes. It had to be. Because shortly afterward I got sick enough to never want to eat meat again.... again.

The Miracle at the Rest Stop

The mist still hung in the air in the foothills of the coastal mountains when we stopped at a tourist-laden restaurant and bakery in a valley near the wine country. The group spent twenty minutes buying water bottles and looking around; Marco and Orlando bought pastries in the bakery and insisted I helped them eat half the plate, a habit from my Chilean hosts that I was quickly learning to expect.


Make of it what you will, but I did not come across a single unfriendly man during my stay in Chile. Orlando, the driver, had a very fatherly manner, and Marco constantly hovered around in a state of comic flirtation. (Bless his heart.) Of everyone I met, with perhaps the exception of Perla, our translator, Marco and Orlando were the most patient with my attempts to hold an extended conversation in Spanish. Perhaps it was my reciprocity; when they took the liberty to practice their English, I tried to help the best I could as they were helping me.




It slowly began to occur to me that the language barrier was not as much of an obstacle for me as I or the team leaders had expected it to be. Really, it made no sense for me to comprehend as much as I did; I had taken only introductory Spanish courses in high school, and was resurfacing from a two-year hiatus from any practice or exposure to the language. I began college and dove headfirst into the English program. On top of it all, the Chilean dialect and accent is so markedly differenct from the European version I had learned that it was shock for a beginner like me to have understood anything at all. The only explanation I can think of for it is that I was having an Acts gift of tongues experience, like God was giving me some weird knack for Chilean Spanish.



Yes, I'm serious about that. I think people are perfectly capable of speaking in tongues, if God wants them to. We often have such a narrow window when it comes to our perceptions and expectations of His power. I used to balk at the phrases like tongues or being slain in the spirit largely because of my perception of it - I heard those words and my mind would immediately conjure an image of people uttering strings of gibberish and jerking convulsively on the floor.

I don't doubt that it happens, but somehow, I don't think it always works that way - unless Jesus was only kidding when he told us to lead lives of humility. When one suddenly and inexplicably speaks a foreign language with no one around to interpret, what is accomplished besides shocking others and drawing attention to oneself? Nothing.

That was what made Jesus' miracles so miraculous - each and every one of them was selfless and filled with purpose and love, whether it was healing the sick, feeding those who hunger and thirst, freeing the enslaved, or forgiving the condemned. He saw the needs of those around Him and He met them with patience, kindness, humility, righteousness, and grace. Proclaiming the glory of God through signs and wonders alone does not proclaim the good news of the forgiveness of Christ.

Paul saw this and preached it to the early church. He told the church in Corinth that "I may speak in different languages of people or even angels. But if I do not have love, I am only a noisy bell or a crashing cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy. I may understand all the secret things of God and have all knowledge, and I may have faith so great I can move mountains. But even with all these things, if I do not have love, then I am nothing. I may give away everything I have, and I may even give my body as an offering to be burned. But I gain nothing if I do not have love."*


*1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (New Century Version)

Children

I may have mentioned this before, but I come from a town where the population never reaches above ten thousand within the city limits. The skyscrapers and houses of Santiago stretch to completely fill a bowl-shaped valley, a full six-million people strong. Blanket the valley with a cloak of smog, and it is as if there is no end to the urban maze.

The sheer vastness of the city manifested itself in the first half of our bus ride that morning. We started in Florida, situated on the east end of the valley, and were making for Val Paraiso, on the other end of the western coastal hills. It took nearly an hour to make it through traffic and to break through to the fresh air at the other end of the valley.

I kept to myself and stared out the window for the first half of that journey. I was too preoccupied with what had taken place earlier that morning to be intimidated by the millions of people, choking smog, and confusion that had been pressing down upon our group since our plane landed nearly a week before.

Crystal and I had woken up that morning yet again to a sleeping house. Only Hermana Delfina was awake, and she met us downstairs at the breakfast table with bread, blackberry jam, and Nescafe. She was quiet as usual, but somehow it was different that morning. There was a sadness there that she had not shown at the barbeque on Sunday.

"You travel to Val Paraiso today?" she asked as we shrugged on our jackets. It was cloudy and cool outside, the first real traces of the coming winter hanging in the air.

"Yes," I answered. "We are speaking at another Foursquare Church tonight."

"Ah, good," she answered. "My daughter is the pastor there. Can you tell her I said hello?"

"Yes, certainly," I answered. I hadn't realized that she had other children besides Ruth and Jose Luis. I stood there looking at this woman who barely stood level with my shoulder and wondered what her life had been like. I was so curious and wanted to know more about her, but we were pressed for time and in a foreign language I would never be able to form the questions that I wanted to ask.

"Delfina, how many children do you have?" I asked.

"Three," she answered. "Ruth, my daughter in Val Paraiso, and Jose Luis. But Jose Luis is sick."

"He's sick?" I didn't understand. I had just met Jose Luis and his family last night. He looked like a perfectly happy and healthy man in his thirties. What could possibly be wrong?

"Yes," she answered. "He was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and the doctors have said surgery will not help. They say he won't survive another few weeks. Will you please pray for him and his family while you are in Val Paraiso?"

"Delfina, I'm sorry. Yes, I'll pray."

"Okay, now go."

And she shooed us out the door.

When I hear things like that I automatically want to assume that I've been told a horrible joke. I certainly didn't want to believe that Jose Luis, whom I had just met and already liked, was going to die so soon. There are so many things about them that stand out in my mind - how his wife loved to laugh, how Jose Luis had inherited Hermana Delfina's calm dark eyes, and how the children looked after one another and were far closer than any American siblings I had ever met.

But it's the awful truth, and all Hermana Delfina asked of me was to pray. They ardently believe in miracles down there and our team witnessed many of them happen simply through the power of prayer. Men were freed from chronic pain, a blind woman saw light for the first time, the jobless found work and the depressed found hope. Couldn't there be hope for Jose Luis and his family also?

I haven't been able to contact my host family since I returned to the U.S., but I still take moments to sit down and pray for them. I honestly believe God could miraculously heal Jose Luis, if that's part of His plan. Christ told his followers that if someone had faith even the size of a tiny mustard seed, that person would be able to move mountains in His name. If He can raise the dead, He can heal a man who is still fighting for his life.

Of Worthy Mention - They are Blessed

This has no direct correlation with any particular day during the trip, but I would like to note that Crystal and I were living under slightly different circumstances from the rest of the team. As far as living situations are concerned, our host family was one of the most blessed in La Comunida Florida. Over the years, and thanks to the hard work of Hermana Delfina and the rest of her family, their general store and butcher counter had provided them with enough income to build a second story onto their house. There are three small bedrooms - one for the girls, one for Ruth and Denis, and one for Hermana Delfina. They have a car, Internet access, cable television, running water, and a washer and dryer for their clothes, all standard amenities in the typical American home. They even had the luxury of the most comfortable white leather sofa that I ever had the fortune to sit upon.



However, one shouldn't be fooled by the surface values of creature comforts. Every gift had its vices to which most of us back in the States would never give a second thought. Take the running water, for instance. Santiago has a pipe works system that reaches just about every part of the city. But access to running water is not the only issue.

More importantly, is the water clean?

Not in every neighborhood. For our water to be drinkable, it had to be boiled first. If we drank anything that wasn't bottled, it was usually scalding hot tea, powdered milk or instant coffee. The safest bet, however, was simply to drink soda or bottled mineral water - safer, but far more expensive than drinking water from the tap.

The water problem reared its ugly head once more in the communal bathroom. The showers? Infrequent. Their water heater had broken before we arrived. In late May the Southern Hemisphere is transitioning from late Autumn to early Winter, and Hermana Delfina already worried enough about our core tempuratures without adding wet hair from cold showers. I think I kept bathing to about once a week while I was there... but don't judge. It's not so bad, once you get used to it. There are bigger problems in the world than lack of hygiene.

I choose to focus so much on the lack of clean and hot running water because we so often take it for granted. I'm a poor college student. I mean, POOR. I think I have twenty-something dollars left in my bank account to last me the rest of the month. And yet I am so blessed! I drink water from the tap all the time because I'm rarely able to afford bottled water, soda, energy drinks or Starbucks. What a luxury! Every morning I can get out of my soft queen-sized bed in my own bedroom, take a hot shower before I go to work in one of the TWO bathrooms in the super-spacious, carpeted (no, the house I lived in in Santiago didn't have carpet) house that I share with only two other people.

But how much more would I think about that glass of water I had this morning if I had to boil it before I driank it? How about if I lived like so many more people in the world who don't have regular access to water, period? On the surface their lives may look so similar, and yet they deal with so many more hidden dangers that many of us will never have to face.

Want to help others get clean water just like you? Visit http://www.bloodwatermission.com/

Day 5 - And You People Mock My Vegetarianism

I am happy to say that outside the United States, there are Christians who sleep in on Sunday mornings. My host family does, anyway. Their church servieces take place on various evenings throughout the week, like the service that I spoke at the night before. The only Sunday commitment at the Foursquare Church of La Comunida Florida is an 11:00 AM Sunday school, open to kids of all ages. Crystal and I crept out of the sleeping house at 10:30 to meet our team at the church - we would be active participants in Sunday school that day.

Now I've been active in children's ministry before, but that is not necessarily what God has called me to do with my life. So anytime the team participated in anything having to do with children's ministry, I was perpetually terrified the entire time. Still, I think I made it through without too much grief. If anything, the kids thought my nervousness was funny, and even though they spoke too quickly for me to understand* I could at least figure out when they wanted a hug, which I gave freely.

After Sunday school we returned to our homes and spent the rest of the day with our families. We stayed for Sunday lunch, which in Hermana Delfina's family is a big, big deal. We met the extended family - her son Jose Luis, his wife, and their three children, two girls and a three-year-old boy.

It felt like Thanksgiving as twelve of us sat down to Hermana Delfina's seemingly endless spread. They had broken out the barbeque (bigger, hotter, and more dangerous than an American barbeque, mind you) and served the meal in three courses: Chicken, Pork, and Beef. Not to mention the rice, salad, sliced tomatoes, guacamole, and six liters of Pap** and Coke that were being passed around. Hermana Delifina fixed everyone's plate, and she asked how hungry I was.

"A little?" I said nervously.

But neither Crystal nor I had eaten breakfast, and she insisted we wouldn't starve on her watch. She piled a heaping serving of everything on our plates, so that lunch stood a good six inches high as we sat to say grace.

"We'd better pace ourselves, Crystal," I muttered. And pace ourselves we did. There was no way we were leaving that table without cleaning our plates. Just like a traditional Thanksgiving, the two of us sat back half an hour later a little fatter, and feeling both content and slightly sick at the same time. I'd never eaten that much meat in one sitting in my entire life. It was certainly the most I'd eaten in the last three years, and I remembered then just how much I missed being a vegetarian. It wasn't bad then, but I would certainly pay for my carnivorism the next day in Val Paraiso.

*Two of my teammates stayed with a host family who had a three-year-old son, Benjamin. While most of the children in our host families eventually came to understand that we didn't speak Spanish fluently, Benjamin insisted that we were fluent in Spanish and really could understand every word he said.

**Pap. They say it is papaya flavored soda, but somehow I detected something more along the lines of Dubble Bubble Bubble Gum. Pap, Fanta, and Coke dominate the soda scene in Chile.

Day 4 Continued - Past the Iron Bars

This blog might take longer to finish than I originally anticipated. I could trump it up to my work schedule, summer classes, and a million other commitments that eat up all my spare time, but I still manage to find myself regularly putting the final touches on a post at three o’clock in the morning before hitting the ‘PUBLISH’ button. Clearly I want to share this; normally I only lose sleep over things I care about very deeply. I just never thought that an experience so amazing would be so difficult to write about. Some nights I will finish a post and remember five minutes later a little miracle or interesting conversation that occurred, but I forgot to write down in the long run. It took me so long to recall those amazing memories that I don't want to risk losing them again.


So I am going to linger on Saturday, May sixteenth, for a little while longer. I hope you don't mind.


THAT AFTERNOON:


In the midst of getting to know everyone Denis took Cata, Areli, Crystal, and myself for a walk around the neighborhood. I was really impressed with the the way Denis successfully maneuvered Cata's stroller over the sidewalk. The concrete ended abruptly in some places where packed dirt and gravel took its place; at intersections the small hills we were walking on dipped and the sidewalk broke off completely, baring jagged concrete and metal scraps ready to catch stray toes unaware.


It made for slow going, but it was nice to be able to explore the neighborhood and take in its urban beauty. The sun was out and the smog wasn't too bad; I had a clear view of the Andes towering over a sea of shimmering tin and tile rooftops. The graffiti melted into itself, a cloud of undending and indecipherable red and white words thrown like strawberries and cream against the brick walls that separated shops, schools, homes, and people.



"Es muy linda,"* I said to Denis. He kept looking forward, keeping a watchful eye on Areli and Crystal hopping down the sidewalk about ten meters ahead of us.



"Florida?" he replied. He scoffed and shook his head. "No!"

I tried to explain how I'd never seen such huge mountains or colorful homes before. It was different, certainly, but that didn't mean that it wasn't beautiful.

"The smog is terrible," he said, and as if to affirm his complaint I coughed into my sleeve. "And it's very dangerous here. There is a lot of crime."

"Is that why there are so many fences?" I asked. The fences we were passing ended in sharp points, but we had passed concrete walls earlier whose tops were embedded with broken glass.

"Yes," he said. "Do you not have them where you live?"

"Well, in a few places. But I'm lucky. Where I live, it is very safe."

"What's it like?"

I spent the next few minutes attempting to explain the small coastal town where I grew up, the freezing clear water of the river that cut the town in two halves, the crowded, slanted house of my childhood and the giant redwoods that grew up all around where the homes ended and the wilderness began. I described to him how the beach was never sunny and the sand wasn't white, but how with the iron-gray waters and the rocks rising like mammoths from the surf, it was still one of the most beautiful places God could have chosen for me to call home.

He said that the America I described was very different from the America he had seen on television, so I told him that America was so big that just about every state is different from the next. How is one to know if they've never been, or never been told? We can only know what the media tells us unless we have the means to go to a place and see for ourselves what it is really like. I think the media has been painting a very skewed picture of Americans for a very long time, and the sad thing is that we let them, because for some reason we believe that strange portrait of ourselves is the ideal that we should live by and the kind of people that we should try to be. How many of us own a six-bedroom house with a pool in a sun-drenched suburb, or drive brand-new sports cars, or have the means to send our kids to Ivy League schools? Those of us who are fortunate enough to live where iron spikes and walls topped with jagged glass are uneccessary still struggle to find well-paying jobs and live on Ramen noodles for weeks at a time. And yet we still happily support that image and flaunt it to the rest of the world. Our blessings as Americans lie in our opportunities, not in our abundance. Any image of affluence that we might have is often borrowed, at best. So why do we lie to the rest of the world and make them feel like they have to attain that impossible ideal as well?





*"It's very beautiful." I'll write the rest of the conversations from here on in English, but unless I was speaking to a team member from NCU, about 90% of the conversations I had took place in Spanish. Poor, slow Spanish, on my part, but Spanish nonetheless.

Day 4 - Hug Me

My first few days in Chile consisted mostly of tourism. I've got to be honest - in the midst of doing all these things that were certainly fun and interesting I couldn't help being a little frustrated with it all. I spent six months preparing myself for missions work. When were we going to help people? Where was God supposed to fit in with all this?









I was excited for that Saturday. It was the day we moved in with our host families and visited our first church. I was ready to see something amazing!



















My group had yet to see the neighborhood in which we would be staying. From brief converstaions with Marco the most I had learned about La Comunida Florida was that it "was nothing like the hotel" in which we'd spent the last two nights.


Okay. Telling. Then again, most homes aren't like a four-star hotel.



So our team drove away from the rich city center still unsure of what to expect. The buildings and streets got smaller and more closely packed together, spiked iron fences rose up, and unrecognizable graffiti crowded the brick and concrete walls that surrounded homes and businesses. Thin stray dogs roamed unchecked in the streets and cars were parked on the sidewalks. From our position on the ground, the houses seemed to stop only where the Andes began in the east.


La Comunida Florida was unlike any place I had ever been before. I am from a quiet, small town and I felt like I should have been intimidated, but I wasn't. There was nothing but peace. I only wanted to meet my family and prepare for the service that night.


The night before, during a team meeting, Elizabeth told us how we would be conducting our church services. After the church finished their worship service, the whole team was supposed to introduce themselves, and then sing a Spanish version of "Open the Eyes of my Heart"* Once introductions were finished, three team members would share their testimonies in place of a sermon, and we would make ourselves available for a time of prayer at the close of the service.


Elizabeth asked for volunteers for that first night, and God called me to volunteer. God had to have called me, because the thought of sharing my testimony with a crowd of strangers absolutely terrified me. I would never have done that on my own.


Those nerves were twisting around in my stomach as we pulled up at the church and I met my host family for the first time. We dragged our bags into the sanctuary, where a handful of people were waiting in a semi-circle to meet us. Afternoon sunlight was streaming through the windows onto a brown tile floor and lit up yellow walls. Even though it was warm and sunny outside the room was surprisingly cool.


Our team made our way one-by-one around the circle and greeted our hosts. Because of the language barrier, conversations stayed brief.


Lisa introduced me and my teammate, Crystal, to a petite, elderly woman at the far end of the room. She had stayed very quiet the entire time, to the point that I had nearly forgotten that she was there. Her name was Hermana Delfina,** and she was the head of the household with which Crystal and I would be staying.


A man was waiting in a car for us outside. His name was Denis, and he told us in Spanish as we loaded our things into the car that he was married to Hermana Delfina's daughter, Ruth. He, Ruth, Delfina, and their two daughters, Areli (5 years old) and Cata (1 year old) lived a few blocks away from the church, and they ran a general store and butcher shop from the first floor of their home.


The conversation was entirely in Spanish, but I was surprised to discover that I could understand so much. Crystal had taken French in high school, so I operated as translator most of the time. Although I had to apologize for my atrocious grammar and gringa accent,* I was communicating. After a two-year break from a high school beginner's Spanish class, conversation was a miracle and a blessing from God. Even the days I thought we had wasted on tourism proved helpful; Denis knew about many of the places we visited and it acted as a springboard for more conversation.



We met Ruth, Areli and Cata at the entrance to the store. Areli and Cata were shy at first, and stayed close to their mother as we hauled our things into the house and up the stairs to Areli's room, where we would be sleeping for the next two weeks.



I knew I would like Ruth from the moment I met her. She was young, only in her late twenties, and I thought she was one of the prettiest ladies I had ever met. We chatted while the store was mostly empty and Crystal and I were beginning to get settled in. She told me that Areli was learning English in Kindergarten and she hoped that Crystal and I could teach her some new words while we were there.



When the store emptied of customers a young man who worked at the butcher counter came in and introduced himself. His name was Daniel and he was a relative of Ruth and Delfina. He was twenty, closer to me and Crystal's age, and much to Crystal's delight, he knew a lot of English! He studies biology at a college in Val Paraiso during the week, but on the weekends he helps the family run the store. I asked him where he learned to speak English and he laughed.



"From television," he replied. "I love American TV!"



I think I'm going to do myself a favor and start watching Telemundo more often. My language skills need all the help that they can get.


Business started to pick up again after lunch, and Crystal and I were left to entertain ourselves for the afternoon. They had cable and internet access, so Crystal checked her email and watched cartoons with Areli while I prepared for the church service that night.



I sat with a pen in my hand and my journal open in front of me. I knew I should write it down (I would be pausing frequently for a translator), but where should I begin?



I had told my testimony to others in the past, but I had never been able to bring myself to write it down.**** How on earth could I tie it all together and make it make sense? There was something about writing it out that made it seem all the more real and permanently fixated in my memory, and there was much that I would sometimes rather forget.


So I prayed as I wrote. God is the author of my story, not me, and I kept that in mind as my mind blanked out and my pen scribbled across the page. I put it all out of my head and trusted Him to give me the right words, even though I was scared that they would be neither recieved nor understood. I finished with barely enough time to change into a skirt and blouse before we left for the service.






Our team drove through heavy traffic for nearly half an hour to get to Puente Alto, a community in another part of Santiago. In the dark it looked almost exactly like Comunida Florida, and I wondered how we made it there without getting lost.











The Puente Alto church was slightly smaller than the church in Comunida Florida, but it was filled with smiling people and a wealth of energy.



The worship service began, and the congregation exploded as people began to sing and dance at the top of their lungs. Girls in white and pink flowing skirts swayed to the music and waved brightly colored scarves, and a boy blasted out a brassy melody on the trumpet. I could not understand the words but I could feel God's presence nonetheless, so I began to sing and dance with them. I had never worshipped with such carefree abandon before, and I was almost sad when the music ended and my team took over for the service.






After our introductions and the song, I was the first to speak. It took me until I had walked up to the podium and opened my journal to realize that all my nervousness had disappeared. I wasn't scared at all. Why should I be? I was reading verbatim from notes, Lisa was on the stage with me to translate, and the end, God was in charge of it all.









I spoke calmly into the microphone and forgot the crowd completely. The story was telling itself with hardly any true effort on my part. The world didn't become real again until I realized that I finished and everyone was applauding and I looked over to see that Lisa was crying. Before I went to sit down again, she gave me a hug.



I was exhausted and stayed very quiet after the service. Somewhere in it all, God had affected some people very deeply that night, and I wasn't sure what He'd made me say to produce such an effect. Three women approached me after the service crying the same way that Lisa had been and just held me for a while.























No words, just a hug, warm and comforting and full of nothing but love. It reminded me of "The Hug Poem," by Bradley Hathaway. It is my favorite beat poem, and it brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it read aloud. If you would like to read it (and I strongly recommend that you do) I've attached a link to a video of Bradley Hathaway performing "The Hug Poem" at the end of this blog.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AYvnfGJoxg





*The Spanish translation (Abre Mis Ojos)


Abre mis ojos, O Cristo
Abre mis ojos, Senor
Yo quiero verte
Yo quiero verte

Verte alto y sublime
Brillando en el luz de tu gloria
Derrame su poder y amor
Cuando cantamos santo santo


Santo santo santo
Santo santo santo
Santo santo santo
Yo quiero verte


**Hermana is the Spanish word for "Sister." It is not uncommon for adult members of the congregation to address each other as Brother or Sister in conversation.

*** "Lo siento! Soy gringa, y mi gramatica es muy, muy mal!" Marco loved that one.

****If you haven't heard my story and would like to hear it in its entirety, I would be happy to share it over coffee or a long walk around town. It is too long and personal for me to share here, but I am very open to questions at any time.