Savannah Heeren

Dreams you wrote on your bucket list years ago do not often come true unintentionally, yet I found myself making black corn tortillas by hand with the sweetest of doñas on a brisk Friday night in the highlands of Guatemala. Doña Juliana graced Majo, my Guatemalan partner, and I with the opportunity to see what it looks like for her to love her family day in and day out. Juliana shared that in order to feed her family for the three days, she cooks 300 tortillas the way that her mother taught her from the time she learned at 12 years old. Her husband, Ramiro, lurked in the doorway and chatted with our group as Majo and I struggled with perfecting the forms of our charcoal-colored dough. “What a blessing it is to spend time with brothers and sisters of God like this. When would I ever have an opportunity like tonight again?” He said beaming.

This moment corrected my paradigm of how I thought Guatemalans perceived people from the United States. Were we not just rich, white people who come to extort Guatemala’s people for her beauty and resources? Ramiro’s thought challenged this. What a humble, loving man! His demeanor revealed he wanted to be hospitable to whoever entered his home, regardless whether or not he believed what he had to offer was worth sharing.

This experience exposed the belief that I subconsciously had about how other people perceived Americans, that we were worth hating because of the connotations associated with our country. Ramiro and Doña Juliana’s openness convinced me that I could start intentionally taking steps toward representing not just the United States well, but also Christianity.