Sitting in Holy Hour with Wilmer sleeping in my lap, and love completely enveloping my whole being. Sending an old man home in the middle of the night after I spent an hour trying to help him breathe better in the clinic. Teaching the kids how to play baseball. Running to the posa with Beau and Kevin, jumping in and then running back. Speaking Spanish. Spending the first 24 hours of Oscar’s life at the Farm in the hospital with Oscar. Having my sister Erin as my roommate for the whole summer. Drinking pineapple juice with my parents and my friends in Buena Vista. Ana Christina’s quincenera. My godson Jacob’s baptism. Bringing a medical team through a road block/strike. Living, eating, working, loving, and being friends with the other volunteers. Sitting on the front porch hanging out with our kids. Playing with the kids of house three on a random Friday night. Meeting Pablo. Playing duck duck goose with the house parents, ayudantas, employees, sisters, and volunteers around the courtyard in the vol house.

I wanted to continue working with marginalized kids; return to Catholic community; and work, pray and play with people of Christian mission. But why the Farm? Its volunteers would most inspire my life in Christ. I knew that one year is not enough to intimately know the kids and the culture and the project to effectively serve them. And the volunteers here raise money just to give for 27-months! I want to live like that. I want to live forever with people like this, people of genuine dedication to children, community and Christ. Getting to be influenced by Farm volunteers is how I reasoned what my heart had already known. Knees shaken by prayer on a sandstone canyon wall, an all-night vigil of adrenaline and wonder and an aggressive mountain lion, the year\'s largest meteor shower, a prophet in Compton, an abandoned convent and dancing in my tighty-whities on grandmother\'s carpet of shaggy green told me before knowing a single detail that I was going to Farm of the Child.