Another sad day! Clare & Stu, Dave & Jen have now headed home after a very fast week of hard work and laughs. Hard work in the sense that they painted the entrance wall down at the school (complete with school & title small designs) and many visits around the Parish. And laughs in the sense that wherever we were, it was always fun. Even to the wee hours, it was laugh after laugh. Of course, not everything went to plan: they missed a connection on the way over and so had to stay an extra day in Miami. This might have been a good place to stay for an extra day but actually it meant they missed a day here. As well as painting, they also were guests of honour at the Inauguration Ceremony last Monday for the new classrooms: as is the custom here, the ceremony included dances and songs as well as the Blessing itself. They even put on a small play about how the school developed from bamboo huts to brick built classrooms. All four guests thoroughly enjoyed themselves throughout the week and were able to get so close to all members of the community. And, once again, it was the home visits that made the deepest impression on them. Personally I am soooo grateful for their giving and for the friendship. Muchas gracias.
A few days before they arrived, I was over in the very wealthy part of town for a wedding reception. David Cupery is an American friend I met through our school. He is over here doing a post-grad course. One of the off-shoots of his Uni work here, however, was that he met his future wife. I think she comes from a fairly wealthy background for they got married in a lavish civil ceremony on an exclusive beach and then had their reception at this very wealthy part of town. You should have seen the size of the mansions as I drove in to the reception – massive, like you only see in movies. And I thought to myself how ill-divided the world is. Here are so many people in Nueva Prosperina living in abject poverty and thirty minutes away they are in absolute dripping wealth. Still I wish Dave and Karen all the best for their married life together.
On the building front, we are still repairing the wall out at Maestro. At the start I had said to the architect that, since we were short of cash, I only wanted a bamboo structure on top of a solid foundation but then he told me that he owed me $3000. He owed me???? So I took the cash back and said to him that he should use the extra money to repair the wall as best as he can!
The Catechism classes have started again. In six of the Parish chapels we have many kids wanting to make the sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation. I think there is almost three hundred for First Communion in December and over 1,000 in total for all levels of our catechetics programme
The saddest story from this week is the visit I made with our four Scots pals. I went to see Luis, his wife and six kids, four of whom attend our School and Soup Kitchen. I wanted to see the situation of the families behind the Soup Kitchen. Basically Luis was knocked down by a falling tree a year and a half ago. After many operations (costly) in the “poor man’s hospital”, he was left paraplegic, disabled from the neck down. I went out with Dave & Jen and Stu & Clare and I think we were just bowled over by how happy the family was, in the midst of great poverty. Yes, they are poor but the mother works so hard to try and get whatever the kids need. The Scots were able to give them a Celtic top each so they were out playing football in the street. I wish I had visited them so much earlier so that I might have been able to help a bit sooner but now that I know them, I will be able to get out every other week.
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