Someone left an anonymous comment on my Bolivia series using the “send comment” function of the Times-Gazette web site:

I have been reading your articles as I always enjoy reading perspectives on Cochabamba. However I found the manner in which you relayed your experiences frustrating. In my opinion, going to another culture requires an open mind to learn and experience things as they are and adapting, even when things are frustrating. Your writing seemed to be tainted with a negativity – which since is evident in your writing, was probably also evident in your behavior – which likely framed your experience.

It’s really annoying not to be able to respond to this person. I thought the whole point of the series was that I was trying to “learn and experience things as they are and [adapt], even when things are frustrating.” I completely understand that entering another culture requires an open mind, and I think I’ve done better at that on each of my five foreign short-term mission trips.

There were some genuine frustrations on this trip, and I was trying to be honest about them. I always try to make these mission trip stories honest, not the typical sugar-coated “we built a church and everybody had a great time” story, and that honesty also applies to my own shortcomings, which I have certainly raised in detail in previous years. Most of the time in this year’s series, with a few exceptions, I talked about my own attitudes and tried to avoid assessing blame. Many of our frustrations stemmed from misunderstandings during the planning phase of the trip which were clearly no one’s fault. I thought I made this pretty clear.

If anything, I underplayed some of the frustrations on this trip, and left out a few details that would have been embarrassing to specific people, since several of our hosts have Internet access and could conceivably stumble across my stories in the future.

Of course, it’s generally my experience that people who want to criticize without taking responsibility for their criticisms aren’t worth listening to. So I don’t suppose I should let this anonymous person get to me.

(The IP address from which the comment form was accessed, by the way, belongs to Cornell Med School. I’m assuming that perhaps the commenter is a Bolivian who has come to the U.S. to study.)