Roots take time!

Like the overcast day, I woke unable to shake the sleep. One week in St. Thomas. Inevitably there is always a day in which one needs to recover from stress. Fortunately there has been very little if any stress at this post so far! "Stress in the Virgin Islands, Cara, get over yourself!" you may think, but trust me, service is active and being active brings challenges.

In a sense of virtue it is different from altruism, from help, and from kindness; the term “service” suggests an element of action.

Dr. Elena Vanderdussen

These words come from Dr. Elena's Master's Thesis on service in education. There are two elements to spiritual transformation: developing one's self and assisting the development of one's community. This process occurs simultaneously. Sometimes we emphasize one more than the other depending on the situation but generally speaking a person is not an island and community development consists of people.

Mobilizing ourselves has been a challenge during our first week in St. Thomas; partly for lack of car and partly for lack of friends. We've spent the better part of most days studying, reading, planning, reflecting. Until yesterday! Ada is a dear soul who invited us warmly into her house with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. One has the sense of a strong motherly presence when she begins counselling the neighborhood junior youth and babysitting the neighbor's nine-month-old boy while simultaneously preparing a salt fish feast for two stray pioneer girls looking for some company and a sphere of usefulness. How humble we felt to be so cared for by such a lady! After many goodbyes and kisses and laughs she handed us a copy of "Johnny English" (the only english movie she had to lend us) and sent us on our way through the little community of Savan where men sit on the corners in packs and boys ride their sisters tiny bikes through the hills.

Today, though the sun may be covered and our plans to meet people on the beach (hey, it's legit!) were replaced with making addas polow and forming goals in the mosquito-y kitchen, we are happy. Planning, acting, reflecting.

"If only the friends could realize it, the glory of our Faith is not that people with unique abilities do the work of the Cause, but that it is done by the sacrifice of loving and devoted souls who arise selflessly to undertake work they feel themselves incompetent, sometimes, to achieve. God works through them and endows them with gifts they did not dream they could ever possess."

(Compilations, Quickeners of Mankind, p. 67)