Email: Leisha Reynolds

Dear Friends and Family,

“Take nothing for the journey, and listen along the way.”

This was the charge given to me at YAV orientation event at Ghost Ranch a year ago. We were gathered together, getting to know one another, worshiping, preparing ourselves for the many unknowns that were to come, being charged to take nothing, to listen. Many of us were probably thinking: but wait, I’ve just packed up the maximum amount of luggage that I possibly could! I’ll be at this for a year, after all! The depth of this charge stayed with me, however, as the year began, and I realized the importance of allowing myself to “be” in my simplest and purest form and allowing my ears to be open more than my mouth.

It hasn’t been an easy journey. In many ways I could say that I’ve talked when I probably should have listened. At some point I packed baggage that maybe I shouldn’t have: defensiveness, bitterness, pride. Meanwhile, recognizing this, I tried to get rid of this baggage, free myself, allow myself to “be.” Saying that it’s not easy being a foreigner in any place is a vast understatement. The more I threw myself into this place, the more I revolved around life and language and la gente here, the more apparent it was that I was a foreigner. While “being” was the ideal, the reality often looked a little bit different. At the beginning of the year I took a used piece of cardboard and turned it into a recycled reminder that I put above my door: Dios, que este dia sea tuyo. Amen.  (“God, may this day be yours. Amen.”) Looking back, I have to wonder how many days I truly gave things over to God to make them His own; how many days I existed, trying to “be,” really not succeeding because I had not given up my own, very weak power, to God, the Powerful.

But in all of this I can say that I’ve learned. Here are some of the things I’ve learned this year.

• Mission has many different faces. Little did I know that by serving in the Migrant Resource Center I’d end up serving a hungry, drug-addicted white woman in her 40s who begs for food on the streets of Agua Prieta as a local. Our interaction at the beginning of the year was harsh, as I tried to defend both myself and the center from her stealing and taking advantage of our services that were offered to a population other than her own. As the new year arrived, little by little, she started opening up to me, sharing about her life, eventually requesting hugs, requesting prayer. Just when I shared with her that I’d soon be leaving my position at the MRC, she started crying, sharing with me that I’m the only person who’d ever treated her like a human being. Little had I foreseen the impact of this unlikely friendship.

• Although throwing rocks at dogs seems harsh at first, when I saw what a dog bite looks like, my attitude changed. Having survived being chased by up to five big dogs at a time on sketchy streets in the dark made rock throwing look a lot less cruel to me. Besides, the goal was not to hit the dog. And ten rabies shots didn’t sound at all pleasant to me.

• Community is one of the only ways to truly live in this world. It also has many faces, many goals, many ways to either be beautiful or be messy. Intentionality is one way to carry forth community. Covenant is another. My YAV mates taught me what this looks like, and I picked up on little pieces in different ways both in Douglas and Agua Prieta. I’d say it was a year-long struggle to feel truly “connected” in any one place, but the little pieces of what I’ve learned in each of these places have been rich enough to last a lifetime.     

• Food is to be shared with others. Bread is to be shared with our neighbors. At the MRC, bread was broken literally day after day, with person after person. It was the most real reenactment to breaking bread in the Biblical sense that I experienced. 

• When the doctor says it’s best for me to rest for a few days, it’s time to step back and take a look at how I’m treating myself. If I take a day off and feel guilty because I “could have or should have been working,” I have to wonder, “Where did this come from? Where do we start feeling like we should be human ‘doings’ instead of human beings?” Bouncing back from four years of much study, little sleep, I have learned to step back, rest, and sleep, just as much as I want or need. Oh, have I slept!

• Frontera de Cristo isn’t something that can be copied in any other place, not even along the border. As mission co-worker Mark Adams has said, he used to think that people came together here in spite of their differences, but now he believes they come together because of their differences. There truly are borders in all places here—spiritual, physical, mental—and learning to work among these borders is valuable.

• Speaking of borders, I protest a wall being built by my own government, but at the end of any given day I am left to reflect on the ways in which I build my own personal walls around me. Was I conscious before of the ways in which these borders are put up in daily life, without importance given to geographic relevance to a national border? Or has living just ten blocks from this huge, ugly, expensive (both in terms of dollars and in human lives) wall served to open up my eyes to this? Would it take an experience like this for everyone else to be able to open their eyes to the walls we build around us daily?

• We’ve got to ask ourselves every chance we get: What brings us most joy? What brings us most life? And conversely, what removes our joy? What takes life from us? Consolation and desolation of everyday life play a huge part in discernment, a process that we YAVs learned wasn’t just about this year as a YAV, but is about the rest of our lives. I feel like I have tools to use for a lifetime that will allow me to always be in a spirit of discernment. It’s important to be thinking about tomorrow, but living fully today. Finding a balance can be interesting. Thanks to Teresa for her patience and willingness to serve young adults like me this past year. In many ways, I feel indebted to her and to the many others who’ve walked me through the year and listened to the many options that I went through, eventually to close more doors than open, and end up where I am now.

• Anybody can hold up a sign at a protest, or throw a bumper sticker on a car to make a statement. What about making a statement with our lives? I recently read that “the frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace.” Being carried away by the concerns, demands, and projects is to succumb to a sort of violence that counteracts the good intentions of being fruitful in our work. It goes beyond activism. It’s about solidarity, about a lasting change. 

• A political society might say that the work I’ve been involved in this year with migrants has been “un-American,” or “counter-cultural,” or just plain “off.” I’m ready to claim that, as a Christian, perhaps I have been called in some ways to be each of these things. I pledge allegiance to God my Creator before any flag or nation, and I tell you that the gospel is entirely counter-cultural. Nobody can tell me that Jesus walked among us on this Earth comfortably, following the rules, caring about what the “social norm” would think of him. Jesus was a radical. He washed people’s feet, ate with those who were considered the ugliest and the poorest, fed thousands with very little, and welcomed and loved the stranger (besides about a thousand other things I can think of). He did all this while people were betraying him, questioning him, talking foully about him, threatening him, even killing him. Jesus knew what the Father required of him. This year has given me a glimpse of what the Father requires of me. And I can say that not all of these things will conform with that social norm, nor will each thing be comfortable. But God calls me out of my comfort zone. It’s the only way to begin to see beyond myself. I challenge each of you to follow this call as well, understanding that it will look different for everyone, and that, in essence, is what the Call is all about.

The biggest question of this year has really been, “What’s next?” It seems like the year had barely begun when we were first asked this question. Wait a second, shouldn’t we see first what’s right now, before deciding what’s next? But the time has come to answer the question, at least to the best of my ability for the moment. In a spirit of “living in the moment” and continuing exploration of a deep appreciation of Mexico and a sense of solidarity with the migrants I’ve met (or have called out their name, for those who had already passed on in the journey) this year—as well as deep respect for all those involved in the Café Justo community, and in my allowing myself “time to be”—I will be packing my backpack and heading to the interior and southern Mexico for a time to reconnect with old places and faces and connect for the first time with new places and faces. My starting date is “soon,” my flexible, unset itinerary looks something like Agua Prieta to Nayarit, to Guanajuato, to Oaxaca, to Chiapas, to Veracruz, to Puebla, and back to Agua Prieta again, and my ending date is “well, when I feel I’m finished” or when my savings runs out. I will be considering this a time of reflection for me over this past year as well as a search for how to cap off my experience and share it with those whom I come in contact upon returning to the United States.

I close now with a prayer by Thomas Merton that was used at the YAV re-entry retreat at Ghost Ranch last week, which hit pretty close to home for me.

My Lord God,
We have no idea where we are going.
We do not see the road ahead of us. 
We cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do we really know ourselves,
And the fact that we think that we are following
Your will does not mean that we are actually doing so.
But we believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And we hope we have that desire in all that we are doing.
We hope that we will never do anything apart from that desire.
And we know that if we do this,
You will lead us by the right road
Though we may know nothing about it.
Therefore we will trust you always though we may
Seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
We will not fear, for you are ever with us,
And you will never leave us to face our perils alone.

Thank you, friends and family. Thank you for everything.

Que la paz de Dios sea con todos Uds., ahora y siempre,

Leisha Jo Reynolds

To find out more about my year you can explore my blog.

If you would like to financially support me over this year you can send a tax deductible check to:

St. Mark's Presbyterian Church
Attn: Linda Marshall
3809 East Third Street
Tucson AZ 85716

Checks can be made out to St Mark's Presbyterian Church with "YAV" and my name written in the memo line.