The Day that Shopping Changed My Life

I don't really love shopping.  When I go, I go fast and only buy what is necessary. My dad will be a witness to the fact that I am one of the most frugal people that you will ever meet.  So, it is funny to me that my job here involves so much shopping.  Never would I have thought I would say that a day of shopping changed my life, but it did...

There is a group of ladies here that intimidated me like I had never been intimidated before.  I honestly did not know what to think about them.  I always felt awkward around them. I never knew what to say.  My spanish would get even worse when I was nervous so that made having an intelligent, meaningful conversation with them basically out of the question. So, I often just stood around or played with the children with little interaction with this group of caregivers.  They seemed a little bit brash to me.  I had to interact with them a lot and ask for keys to get into the auditorium while we were making plans for Wendy's quinceañera.  I always felt like they were just waiting for me to mess up. But then, we went shopping and my life has never been the same...

  Jenn and I decided that, even though I was intimidated beyond all get out, we wanted to be their friends. So what do women do when they are friends?  They shop.  In preparation for the quinceañera we decided to go shopping with the caregivers so they could look just as fine as all the kids were going to look in their new clothes.  I was really excited, but also super nervous. We started out at Walmart looking for dresses and I remember thinking "Oh gosh, this is going to take FOREVER!"  The ladies were just kind of walking around looking at a few things (which, in my opinion, there were actually some really cute clothes), but didn't seem to have any direction. After about 15 minutes of people running their hands along the sleeves of shirts we still had nothing, not even anything to try on...  For me, because I hate shopping so much, I am usually in and out as fast as possible.  I could already tell that this was not going to be one of those shopping trips.

We moved on to the next store and I decided I was going to be a bit more proactive.  I grabbed some different dresses and matched them up with the different ladies and tried to herd them toward the  dressing room.  However, I think I was successful with getting maybe one not even into the dressing room but just to hold on to a dress that potentially, she just might wanted to try on, maybe.

sharing tea and cookies at our apartment

But then, I don't even really know how it happened, we were all in the dressing room and the ladies were showing off their different dresses and I was showing off the dresses I had picked out. We were posing, giving our opinions ("Does this make my butt look big?" "Should I go with the blue or the black?" "What kinds of shoes will I wear?"), laughing, and trading dresses just like the best of friends.  At the end of the day every single person had a dress that made them look beautiful and ready for the party!

These women put up with all the craziness and the attitudes and the brokeness of the children that so many visitors never get to see.  These women are there, day in and day out, fighting and caring for these kids' lives.  These women see group after group come in and love on the kids while they stand to the side with hardly anybody truly seeing them for who they are and what their lives are like. These women are my friends.  These women are some of the people that I feel closest to here in Mexico and who I feel like truly care about me.  These women will always hold a very special place in my heart and in the story of God's redemption of my time here. These women have changed my life.

And to think, it all began with one trip to the mall...

the product of our shopping trip