A pre-holiday Paraguay visit is to blame for the blogging hiatus this December. It had been 2 years since I last visited Paraguay, the country where I lived for 27 months while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer. My Paraguayan friends were amazingly generous. They fed and housed me. They brought me on adventures around their lovely country. We spent hours chatting and eating—recalling old times, catching up on times spent separately, and dreaming about the future. I was reminded of how easily Paraguayans show affection—through food and time given to others. I was reminded, as I’ve been hundreds of times, of how lucky I am to have stumbled upon my Paraguayan community and how spoiled I feel to enjoy the company of my Paraguayan friends.

During this visit as I walked back from church one evening, after attending the celebration that marked the closure of the Christmas in Families (which is where people go to family homes to share passages from the Bible and prayer for 9 days in the month leading up to Christmas), I was reminded of a story shared at my favorite Paraguayan mass years ago. I don’t remember the occasion for the mass or who gave the sermon, but I remember the story the priest shared. I think, regardless of religious beliefs, it reminds us that we must look carefully and patiently to see what’s hidden below other’s facades. It’s what was hidden below the surface that made me fall in love with Paraguay. It was the journey of looking deeper at the land of Guarani that taught me resilience and showed me how to find hope no matter the circumstances. Here’s the story from that mass:

A Ride in a Car

There once was a young man whose rich brother gave him a fancy new car. The young man was so proud of his car, he loved to drive it all around town. One day, the young man had to park his car in a poor neighborhood while he was running an errand.

As the young man walked back to his car after finishing his errand, he noticed a boy circling his car. The young man worried that the boy was trying to find a way to enter or damage the car. The young man hurried to his car and asked the boy what he was doing by the car.

“I’m just looking at your car! It’s so nice. I’ve never seen one like it. I hope one day I will have a car like this one!” the boy said.

The young man explained that his brother had given him the car. “Wow!” the boy said. The boy and the young man talked about the car at length. The young man scolded himself for thinking the boy had been up to no good.

“Since you don’t have a wealthy brother to give you a car, would you like to take a ride in my car with me?” the young man asked the boy after they had talked for some time.

The boy jumped with excitement and jumped into the car. They drove a little way, then the boy asked if the young man could pause in an alleyway because the boy had to deliver a message to someone. Once they stopped, the boy asked the young man to wait for him to return, promising to be right back. The young man agreed to wait for the boy, but again had doubts. He wondered if the boy was getting someone to help him steal the car. The young man waited nervously, thinking of all the bad things that could happen. He thought about leaving before the boy returned, but something made him wait.

After several long minutes, the boy appeared in the doorway of a building in the alley. The young man squinted, the boy had something in his arms. The boy approached the car. Once the boy was close to the car, the young man noticed that the boy had a sickly, disabled child in his arms. “Sir, this is my brother! Can he take a ride in the car too? I want to show him the car. I have just promised him that one day when I am rich, I will buy him a nice car just like yours.”

The young man agreed to take both boys for a ride. The young man scolded himself not only for distrusting the boy, but for thinking the boy was envious of his car.