My assigned blog day was our first full day at the AIDS conference in Mexico City. Alas, it is a week later and I am still not sure what exactly to share with you all. I loved Caitlin’s comments about Jesus not discriminating and her attempt to describe how uncomfortable each of us felt in our own skin over those days at the conference I appreciated her description of our slow adaptation.

I was ready for a new day that Monday, or at least I had convinced myself that I was. I arrived that day totally overwhelmed. We pulled up to the complex where the conference was taking place after riding the subway, catching another shuttle bus, and sitting in the traffic of Mexico City. My head could not fathom the amount of people represented at this conference. Over 23,000 people. Some were representing organizations who work with HIV positive people, some were just positive people coming to learn about the disease that was constantly changing their own life, some, like me, were curious unobtrusive seekers yearning to know just a bit more. I sat through two sessions that morning, I heard Bill Clinton speak for the first time and I felt paralyzed and in need of a break.

As I went to lunch with Meredith, John, Nina and Jen I was silent. I did not have anything to contribute. As I waited to continue on to the next session I had already picked out, Meredith and I decided to wonder through the resource fair. We came upon this shack- literally wood and tin- thrown together in the middle of booths flaunting the names UN and International AIDS society. The outside boasted a sign, “Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction.” We staggered inside and followed it’s course of three small rooms. I finally felt comfortable inside of that small structure. I finally felt like I could breathe. Mere and I circled it slowly, it turned out to be a sort of exhibition. It was a photography show that was set up to demonstrate first hand the living conditions of the people pictured on its inside who were living with HIV in desperate situations. As weird as it was, this is the sort of thing I had become familiar with and the unfamiliar of the conference and of new innovation was facing me as I stepped out of its door. It was a strange normalcy and I dare say comfort in the midst of a situation that I could not comprehend.

Even now I am still struggling to figure out how all of the things that I have seen fit into the life that I left behind. I cannot deny who I was before and yet I cannot move on unless I admit that I am different. I don’t know how to answer questions and I don’t have words to say when tears flow uncontrollably from my eyes. One of my favorite questions I have been asked thus far is “Is the Jesus inside of you different?” Thanks be to God that he is indeed.

Thank you all for your prayers and words of love and wisdom even when we could not access the Internet anywhere.