College Essay

1. People find many ways to express their inner world. Some write novels; others paint, perform, or debate; still others design elegant solutions to complex mathematical problems. How do you express your inner world, and how does the world around you respond?

I consider myself blessed in the fact that both of my older sisters have found husbands that truly live as disciples of Christ and provide for me a perfect model of what I need to strive to be when I’m older. When I heard Mark, my brother in law, had planned to spend a couple of weeks in a small Mexican town doing missions work, I had to follow in hopes of learning from him. Only I had no idea this trip would bring me to fruition of the complete adoration I experience working to help others; in a way, expressing my inner world for everyone to see.


We spent the time in a Celtic monastery, the Cuirim House, which focuses on ministry in the slums of Nogales, Mexico. Everyday we would go out into the neighborhood and work with locals to repair homes and play soccer with children. These twelve days for me were summarized by the proverb, “Tears are words the heart can’t express.” How true that is when sitting atop a cinderblock wall, looking out over rolling hills sparkling as the setting sun reflects off the scrap pieces of metal which provide shelter to the very same people who have smiled for a week straight because you have brought love into their lives. The kind of love only discovered in the presence of God. The kind of love that lets this ministry thrive in a place so desolate of hope and optimism. Christ lives within me and I in Him, making my inner world only expressible through being a servant to God’s work.

The energy created by living out this inner world, I believe, is what created such an inspiring connection between Juan, a local kid who found most of his time exhausted in and around our house, and I as we relaxed together in a hammock one starry night. Somehow, after building doors, lying concrete, and repairing churches, the act of resting with a small child brought me to realization of who I was actually helping. We did nothing more than periodically provide slight laughter at my pathetic attempts to ask him questions in Spanish, yet somewhere in the shallow conversation about his favorite subject in school, existed a deep and profound presence that neither of us could possibly understand, but still embraced. Maybe we accepted this presence of something so extraordinary and terrifying because it was a glimpse into the perfect harmony God originally created on this earth. Juan was somewhat of a terror in the neighborhood, but for this brief span of about twenty minutes he became the most peaceful seven-year-old I had ever encountered. Among the distant and still vivid sounds of wild dogs barking, music which, played by the water trucks, was heard all throughout the night, and car horns, the two of us were able to communicate in a silence that was capable of drowning out the loudest of sounds.


Yes, I cried. On that wall made of cinderblocks, tears ran down my cheeks. Tears representing hatred that people had to live the way the people did down in those glistening metal shacks. To this day the only reason I suspect I was able to uncover this beauty came from the possibility that the Cuirim House had brought such an insurmountable amount of love to the area, that a layer of holiness had glazed over the city of Nogales. I am this city. My inner world, one that suffers because of sin, glistens due to the tremendous love of God, which I desperately try to extend to kids like Juan.