I did actually manage to have one day of orientation with
the full team. We did some team-building
activities and discussed the logistics of a large organization like ours joining with grassroots organizations already at work in our respective countries and then
how to evaluate and improve independence and actual growth of a community.
Within teams, we did some activities to get to know each
other better, and I was unprepared for the depth of our conversations. In French, my small group shared details
about their immediately family members dying early, of being alone, of their
extended family telling their parents to kill them… I gently tucked away the ‘River’ diagram of
my life, which mostly involved my father and I being dillweeds. My experiences are definitely not trivial – I
raged and wept through years of frustration – but I think I have shared enough
within a community I trust and pray with that healing has begun. In a community where (at least speaking from
an Asian perspective), one may not share familial grief or heart pains either
due to pride or perceived lack of significance, I didn’t feel like interrupting
in the short amount of time we had. My
teammates seemed quite matter-of-fact about their experiences, but I don’t know
how much of that was real and how much of it feigned, and I didn’t want to
question anything in French.
For all I know, they could have been talking about summers
spent in orchards and I could have grievously misunderstood.