Hope.

Do you remember the client that had the greatest impact on my summer in Rwanda? 
Well, hold on tight because this post holds little back. 

She was kidnapped, raped repeatedly and locked in a home where a candle caught on fire and burned her so badly her legs had to be amputated. Through counseling with her mother, we learned that she barely survived the genocide in 1994 and was staying in a shelter when a Ugandan man started "caring" for the women and giving them money. In exchange, he raped them. Jaime's mother was basically a sex slave for this man. When she got pregnant with Jaime, she stayed but hated suffering the man's abuse. When she got pregnant again, she finally left and left Jaime behind with her father.

When you watch the video, you see Jaime tell her story. She doesn't talk about the case, or about the intricate details of just how horrible her childhood was. She speaks of God's ability to instill hope when it seems it is lost forever.

I met her mother and father, who both abandoned her. Baraka, who speaks in the video, counseled with both of them and her father has actually been to visit Jaime and has helped financially support her. An incredible feat! I worked on her legal case against the two perpetrators. I met the principle one who kidnapped and raped her in court, and have never felt such a strange and disgusting feeling. The first guy claimed that he was under the age of criminal liability and caused us to go find his birth certificate. He was actually around 40 years old. As a legal strategy, we ended up asking the court to join the two men's cases together so that they would point fingers saying, "the other one did it" and that the Judge would see they both should go to jail for a long, long time. I do not know the outcome of the legal case, and it isn't relevant. I share this video with you because you prayed for her, because you prayed for me and my heartbreak after we met, and you pray for the incredible work that IJM does. The people and places in the video are REAL to me. I share it with you so that for four minutes, you have insight into IJM, into the emotionally charged nature of this kind of work, and into Rwanda.

Her smile is real, her hope is palpable, and her courage is astounding. I think its very possible no other client for the rest of my legal career will touch me like she did.

Please share her story, I know that I always will.

My original blog post when I first met Jaime: http://defineyourdestination.blogspot.com/2013/06/from-field-into-field.html

To read more from IJM and to donate to IJM's incredible life changing work: http://ijm.org/jamies-story

gotta learn to let me go over the rainbow

In less than a week, I will be moving back to Madrid. For me, a five week trip feels like a long vacation, but for others, five weeks is moving. So I will settle with somewhere in between. As I get ready to go back to Madrid, I find myself lost in a sea of thoughts about where I was when I left that city and who I was, what I was looking forward to, what I was leaving behind.

So much of my life in Madrid was like a fairy tale. I was living out a dream to live abroad. I was speaking a language I love. I met incredible people. I was traveling all the time. But I also didn't feel fulfilled. I hated the feeling that my most unique skills and passions weren't at work. I was acutely aware that that life wasn't real life. But for me, Madrid is a very special place. I left a large chunk of my heart there.  I have to agree with Amos Lee, we all need a place that we can go and feel over the rainbow. One of those places for me is most certainly Madrid.

I am filled with energy, excitement and enthusiasm about returning. I will live with my old roommate in our old neighborhood. I will see all of my closest friends many of whom have left Madrid but will be returning for a special reunion in July. I feel unbelievably blessed to be able to go back. It's like the stars have aligned. I'm speechless to think about it all coming together. It's no longer a plan or an idea, its real. I am returning to one of my favorite cities. I cannot believe that I get to show Brian another piece of my heart. In Spanish, that last sentence would translate into a verb that actually really means "teach." I will teach him about that piece of my heart, teach him about that place that I called home, that city that taught me. In just six days, I will be roaming my favorite old streets, eating favorite foods and... it's overwhelming all of my senses.

"Well I walked over the bridge, into the city where I lived and I saw my old landlord. 

We both said hello, and there was no where left to go cause his rent I couldn't afford

Well, relationships change 

and I think it's kinda strange how money makes a man grow

but the people on the street, on buses and on feet - we all got the same blood flow. 

we all need a place that we can go and feel over the rainbow!

sometimes, we forget what we got, who we are and who we are not. 

I'm in love with a girl who's in love with the world

though I can't help but follow

though I know that someday she is bound to go away and stay over the rainbow

gotta learn to let her go over the rainbow."

-Amos Lee, Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight