Sunday afternoon I went to the village of Yaruconte to meet
with the young people.
I had met some of them at the meeting they had with the
youth of El Limon. I told them I’d drop by. I wanted to get them to share what
they’d like to discuss in their meetings
I got to the church and found a good number of them waiting.
I talked to two of the leaders, Kevin and Edin, and told them what I planned to
do. They also expected me to do something.
When I was in El Limon, Kevin and I had talked and one issue
was the problem o relations between young men and women and early pregnancies.
He wanted me to do something about the issue of relations between young woman
and men.
I hadn’t planned on this and wasn’t ready. I first told him
that this was a bigger issue and I’d only do something to introduce this.
Well, God inspired me. That’s the only way I can explain
what we did.
I divided them into young men and young women on different
sides of the church.
My first surprise was that there was almost an equal number
of guys and young women – about 15 of each. So often the guys just stand at the
back door of the church and listen from afar – but here there were many young
guys.
I asked the women to make a list of qualities of a good
young woman. I then asked the guys to make a list of the qualities they’d
expect of a good young woman.
After they had done this for about 10 minutes, I asked the
guys to list the qualities of a good young man; the women had to list what they
expected from good young men.
The sharing went really well with a general agreement on most
points. But when I opened it up people began to speak their mind – especially a
few young women and men. There was disagreement and some challenging of stereotypes.
It became heated but respectful.
What I found most encouraging was their openness as well as
their respectfulness. They could disagree without getting all that defensive.
They could challenge each other without attacking the other person.
I plan to write up the activity so that other communities of
young people can use it. But I think it will only work if there is already a
sense of trust in the community.
I’ll get back to Yaruconte later this year.
But our dream now is to form youth leaders from each
community so that they can work with their peers.
Today left me very hopeful.
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2 comments:
Brother John,
I feel so encouraged that you had such a successful meeting in that area. My observation, just a few years back, in rural areas of Honduras, was that stereotype were upheld along with almost no expectations for men in marriage. This was part of a culture. I think you were able to tap into a great possibility for the future of young couples in The Church. Perhaps, if The Spirit leads, you will be able to have that conversation in other areas. Great opportunity to encourage prayer, dialog, and formation of Christ's expectations for marriage.
I didn't mention in the post that I gave them another topic to discuss and told them it would be "caliente" - hot:
Do you guys want to marry virgins and do you also want to be "virgins" when you marry?
Do you young women want to marry men who are "virgins" when you marry and do you also want to be "virgins" when you marry?
Now that should be quite a meeting!
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