I finished my time at the Finca and returned home two weeks. The last two weeks have been a rollercoaster of emotions: Sadness, grief, joy, gratitude, love, and so much more. I haven't posted a blog until now because I was waiting until I fully processed my experience and found the perfect words to articulate to you all exactly how I have changed and all that I have learned this past year. But, I realized that I will never be able to fully express to others, in words, the fullness of this experience. It is something that only the Lord and I will be able to completely understand. I have to trust that it is not necessary for you all to know every detail and experience, although I wish I could share it all. It is not through me tirelessly attempting to articulate every detail of my experience that you will understand, but rather through my changed heart.
Through the way I am now able to stop and have a conversation with someone without worrying in the back of my mind the whole time about the million things I have to do. Through the way I can look at a stranger's face and see Jesus. Through the way I think less about how other people see me and more on making other's feel seen. Through the way I focus more on filling the unknown of someone's intentions with trust rather than filling it with my own assumptions about their intentions. Through the way I try to display patience and mercy rather than jumping immediately to judgement and anger. Through the way I care less about sticking to my plans and more about living in the present. Through the way I detach from material comforts and attach to spiritual realities. Through the way I share myself with others more freely and boldly, without caring so much about the opinions of others. It is through these, and so many other small, and from the outside seemingly insignificant, gestures, that I can demonstrate how the Finca has so substantially changed me on the inside.
St. Clare of Assisi said that "we become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.” I gave my whole heart to the Finca and loved hard. I received so much more in return than I could have ever imagined or asked for. The Finca shaped me into who I am now, which is a very different person than the one I was 16 months ago. Although I no longer have the title "Finca missionary," and I no longer live in the inexplicably beautiful/joyful place that is the Finca, I have not lost the missionary spirit. We are all called to be missionaries. We don't need to be thousands of miles away from home to serve. We each are called to find our own 'Calcuttas' (as Mother Theresa says so wisely) and, in those places, to love God with all our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). As I ease back into life in Lake Oswego, Oregon, I see it as my own Calcutta. This is my Finca now. There are people everywhere craving to be seen, known, and loved. There is a great need here. Now is when the true challenge for me begins. The challenge to step back into the comfort of life in the US and to not live comfortably, but to live radically. My greatest prayer right now is that the Lord gives me the grace to remember who I have become and to continue to live and to love in the same radical way that I did at the Finca.
To all of the family, friends, and strangers who made my time at the Finca possible through financial support and, most importantly, prayers, I cannot thank you enough. You have invested in something incredibly special. Not only does the Finca provide a home, family, and refuge for children in need. But, it is a place rooted, grounded, and overflowing in the Lord's love and presence. A place that, once someone encounters it, they cannot leave unchanged. A place that has a ripple effect that positively impacts the lives of so many people.
-Kenna
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