Oh the intricacies of life....
Yesterday I got a call from Dora, the team leader (?) of UCSD's chapter of InterVarsity. (I'm not sure what her title actually is. She's in charge basically.) The conversation was about volunteer staff which is something I've been wanting to do for quite a bit. We talked and basically, I'll be volunteering with InterVarsity!!! Which is pretty exciting. I'll be helping out with the LaFe team which is even more exciting!!!! LaFe has become such a huge passion of mine in these past couple of years. I'll be volunteering with UCSD's chapter, I helped plant USC's chapter and I got to meet one of the guys who helped start it up at CSULB last semester. Oh and while helping plant the USC chapter, I got to work with the LaFe director for the greater Los Angeles area which was pretty cool. Basically, LaFe has been dominating my life for a bit.
So now that I'm getting a chance to work with LaFe and use this year to discern if full time staff is where I want to go, I made time to reflect on my life. I just graduated with a degree in Literature/Writing from UCSD and my life is waaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy different from how I pictured it would be four years ago.
Four years ago, I was just about to enter UCSD as a literature/writing major AND pre-med. Yep. I was going to be a pediatrician. For some reason, people always ask "Oh, so you switched to literature?" No. I was doing both at the same time. I don't know why it's hard to understand. I was taking literature classes alongside science classes. Which I really liked.
My life plan was to do my four years of college, followed by immediate acceptance into med school, cause that's how awesome I would be. I would go on to become a doctor and be rich. I would have accomplished the American Dream. The son of immigrant parents making six or more figures a year. Living in a two story house, with a pool and the white picket fence. All that stuff you see on television. I was still going out with my high school girlfriend. I had no thoughts of ending the relationship at all. I barely even thought about my ethnicity. In fact, I DIDN'T want to think about it. I wanted to hide it. To be Americanized. When other Latinos called me whitewashed, I took it as something to be proud of. It meant I was hiding my Mexican identity well.
But it's crazy how life turns out. One by one, all these things started to disappear from my life. I believe that God already knew where He wanted to place me and He was starting to pave the way. I mean, I'm still not entirely sure where God wants me to be, but I think I'm starting to see the bigger picture.
The first thing that disappeared were my dreams of med school. Although I was passing my classes and doing fine, I wasn't loving it. I was super stressed all the time. On vacations, my only thought was "Which classes do I have to take next and should I start studying now?" It was bad. I also started thinking more seriously about ministry at this time. My whole life, I've wanted to do ministry, but it always seemed more like something that would take second place to being a doctor. So as I started thinking about ministry and my future plans and such, I felt God telling me that med school wasn't for me. It took a lot of conversations and a lot of prayer, but I ended up dropping the pre-med stuff. As I spent more time with my literature and theater classes, I started thinking about grad school. It was during Urbana though, that I decided I would put that on hold for at least a year and try and see if I could volunteer with InterVarsity instead.
The second thing that altered my life plans was my girlfriend breaking up with me. We'd been talking about it, so I saw it coming, but that didn't make it hurt any less. In the midst of the pain, I saw God's sovereignty over the whole process. When I thought about ministry in the future, it also took second place to my relationship. Because she wasn't a Christian, the way we talked about the future was a lot different than how it should have been. We talked about moving in together. When conversations about religion came up, we would quickly try to move past it. When I thought about a future with her, God was never heavily involved in it. So as the relationship ended, I saw it as an opening for my future. I was now more free to focus on God and strengthening my belief in Him. This lead to me seeing ministry become more and more of a real possibility.
The third major characteristic that has changed these past four years is my view on ethnicity. Growing up, I never wanted to think about my ethnicity. I grew up being ashamed of who I was. I desperately wanted to be like the people I saw on television. And even though I was in an interracial relationship, I never really thought about the ways coming from two different cultures affected the way I interacted with her and her family. For the first two years of college, I only had one Latina friend. Molly was somebody I could relate to really well. We clicked instantly due to coming from the same culture and feeling the same way, being Latinos at a school dominated by Asians/Whites. We would have conversations about ethnicity where I mentioned that I wanted to distance myself from my ethnicity. My kids wouldn't learn Spanish unless they learned it from my mom. There was a lot of self hatred there. When I heard about LaFe my junior year, I was intrigued. I checked it out and immediately felt at home there. I went week after week. When the time came to apply for leadership I was like "Yeah! I want to do LaFe!" However, I also applied to lead the off campus Bible study. When picking my first choice, I was slightly torn. There was still a part of me that didn't want to do LaFe. I didn't want to be associated with the Latino group. Issues yo. I put it as my first choice though cause I felt that's where God was leading me. So I joined leadership. My first quarter was a bit disappointing. I felt like I wasn't doing anything with the team. I started to wonder why I was doing it and thought about asking for a transfer to another team. However, through God's amazingness, I was able to go to Urbana.
At Urbana, I got a chance to check out the LaFe lounge and talk to various people there. I met up with Abner Ramos, the area director of LaFe in the greater Los Angeles area. Dude is amazing!!! Hearing him talk about his vision for LaFe was so inspiring. The main change that happened was during one of the nights there. I got really depressed and so I went to a room to pray. I just started venting to God and I felt His peace come over me. As God comforted me, I felt like He was also affirming me in my ethnic identity. The passage that came to mind was from Exodus 3, verses 7-12
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”12 And God said, “I will be with you....
I felt a call to go back to UCSD and minister to the Latino students there. I returned to campus with a renewed sense of mission. Like yes! Let's talk about ethnicity and work through our many issues! Soon after Urbana, we had Encuentro and after that, LaFe exploded with people! It was amazing to see. And as I started to build relationships with these people, I grew sad because I knew I would soon leave them. Except I felt called to stay. To volunteer with LaFe in order to keep mentoring the next generation of Latino leaders. So that's how I got here. Which is pretty crazy.
I'm still thinking of full time staff, but we'll see what happens. In the meantime though, I definitely want to be there for others. For me, it would have been helpful to have had someone to guide me through my ethnic identity issues. I guess I had God which is like the best person right? But yeah, I want to be able to be there for others that need to talk. So that's my life. Isn't it crazy how God shapes and molds us? Doing ministry with a Latino group was probably the last thing on my radar. But here is where God has placed me and at the moment I couldn't be happier. Well, if I got a job, I would be happier. Let's keep praying on that one.
