Continua la tradicion...

Chinese food for Sunday dinner. It´s not just a New Jersey tradition. After church Pastor Moises and his family treated the two Sarahs (there is, as always, another volunteer here named Sarah) to chinese food and strategic planning for the coming weeks. I´ve committed to preach three times during my stay here. Maybe I´ll post my sermons...in Spanish.
This week went by quickly. On Saturday I taught the first theology class for the youth group. Ten students came and we reviewed the syllabus. I tried to keep panic to a minimum but the reading is heavy and not easy by any means. I closed class with a poetry exercise. Kind of risky with a group of teenagers but I think they really enjoyed it. Each student wrote a line of a poem/prayer. The final product was read aloud by one of the older students. My hope is that the creative activities will make up for the dry spots in the text. We are using the Great Doctrines of the Bible by R.C. Sproul. Probably not the text I would have chosen (I´m very diplomatic in blog entries) but it certainly could be worse. The biggest problem is that it is very much directed at a U.S. context. He used a golfing example in the last chapter. Speaking of which, I´m going golfing tomorrow at the 18 hole course just down the street from the church. Mentirosa.
On Thursday I went with two elders from the church to visit Benjamin, a man who just lost his wife in a bus accident last week. A difficult visit to say the least. I wanted to claim my lack of Spanish skills as an excuse to keep quiet during the visit...but the language difficulties had nothing to do with Spanish. Benjamin described in bittersweet detail every loving thing his wife did in the house - fresh bread for the grandchildren, help in the fields, care for the livestock. Grief is universal. But what is not universal is the economic difficulties he will face without his wife to help with their fields. Though CAFTA was never directly mentioned it is the unspoken cause of the plummeting value of coffee in Guatemala and the increased demand for temporary workers on farms, two of Benjamin´s burdens. We left his house in the late afternoon. His grandchildren were washing banana leaves to make tamales. On our way up the steep incline that led back to the road, we walked past a dirt embankment that had washed away during the last rainfall. The rainy season is rough here.
This week is full. Tomorrow morning I will stock up on fruits and vegetables for the week, wash clothes, etc. I am settling in and falling in love with this town, the people, the mountains.
Happy Birthday Peter and Lucy, mis sobrinos queridos! Que los cumplen feliz.