Back home in Honduras, November

After 12 days in Iowa, I’m back home and already in the midst of many projects.

Yesterday, Tuesday, November 11, I was with 28 catechists in the remotest zone of the parish, facilitating the last workshop of the year.

It’s almost always fun to be with the catechists who pass on the faith to young people in their villages. It’s been encouraging to see them grow – especially as we are learning together new ways to work with young people.

Here in Honduras most of the education is very content oriented. The professor gives out the information; the students write in their notebooks, because there are few textbooks; the students regurgitate the information memorized for the exams.

No wonder the twelve year old at the workshop with his mother had dropped out after the fourth grade. I spent about ten minutes talking with him, asking him about his work in the fields, and even attempting to give him a biology lesson based on his experience in the fields. He seemed to be a good observer of his work. I asked him if his teacher had ever tried to explain the biology of plants as we did together. The sad answer was “No.” Now there may be some teachers who do this, but my experience is that the norm is pure rote memorization – what Paolo Freire calls “the banking method of education.”

What we are trying to do in the parish is to use popular methodology to help people learn by doing, to learn by connecting with their daily life, to learn not only material but critical thinking. It’s a challenge but I saw some results.

Part of the workshop was beginning to help the catechists develop their own lessons and not depend on material from outside. After eliciting from them some of the elements needed, I divided them into four groups, each with a different theme.

One group had as its theme “Abraham.” What impressed me was how they started by asking about fathers.

We’ll continue working on this next year. Meanwhile I have another catechist workshop this week and two more next week.

I am also in the final stages of getting the house in Plan Grande finished. Lots of details has meant three visits there already this week.

Monday the kids in the school were playing in the road.

One group was playing hopscotch, another marbles. What a delight to see them playing.

The windows are in the house; the doors will be hung this Thursday and Friday; painting will begin next week. I have hopes that I will be able to move in the beginning of December.

The upstairs

The oratory

Then I’ll be able to be closer to the people and visit communities more frequently. This will be important next year as our parish, Dulce Nombre de María, will be planning a series of training sessions for catechists, base community leaders, delegates of the Word, communion ministers, and youth group leaders.

I am also in the midst of two projects that our sister parish in Ames, Iowa – St. Thomas Aquinas – is working on.

The first is accompanying a small coffee cooperative in El Zapote de Santa Rosa  which hopes to be able to export high-quality coffee to the US.

  

The coffee harvest is just starting and there are hopes that they might be able to sell a small shipment (1500 pounds) this year to roasters in Kansas City and Ames.

The other project is the third year of a scholarship program for poor participants in the Maestro en Casa alternative education project. Students – mostly in the equivalents of middle school and high school – listen to radio programs, fill out a workbook, and meet for about 4 or 5 hours on the weekend with a teacher. When schools are not close, this is often the only way the poor can study beyond grade school.

I have to revise the scholarship application, get them printed and distributed to the six centers before the end of the month.

And then there's parish council this Saturday, a parish celebration on the feast of Christ the King, the entry of about 50 people in the catechumenate on November 30, and parish planning on December 5 and 6. Though I'm not the person responsible for all of these, I will be present and working with Padre German as well as the parish council.

I’ve got work to do.

I am grateful for that.

More Confirmation photos

In Vega Redonda, October 3

En El Zapote de Santa Rosa, 3 de octubre

Hectic times

Next Sunday afternoon I’m heading to San Pedro Sula to stay overnight in order to catch an early Monday morning flight to the US. I’m going to Iowa for a week , mostly to attend the ordination of two young men whom I know from my time at St. Thomas Aquinas in Ames, Iowa. It’s a whirlwind visit, but a little break.

Last Saturday I had a very good meeting with the youth in San Agustín. Some had just come back from visiting a poor sick woman in her home, bringing her a few necessities.

Before the meeting started I introduced them to the ice breaker called the knot. It was quite entertaining.

I wanted them to give us in the parish an idea of what themes they would like to treat. Since this can be a rather intimidating activity for some, I had them write what they’d like to talk about on sheets of paper. I gave them a few ideas, including leaving them the chance to talk about sex and relationships, if they wanted.

I was not surprised that friendship and relationships scored high – but there were several who wanted to talk about trust and honesty.  We decided to start next month with something on trust – probably using a lot of activities to help them grow in trust. I’ll also try to work with the young leaders of the group to train them to lead their peers. That’s much better than an “old fart” like me leading them.

I took Sunday off – just Mass, reading, and stuff around the house. Monday and Tuesday morning I spent in Caritas, but went out to the house building site on Tuesday afternoon and , after talking to the guy in charge of the building project, rushed back to Santa Rosa to buy cement and rebar.

But Wednesday started the ministry I really love. I went out to the most remote zone of the parish to do a workshop with base communities leaders. For prayer, I am using the Ignatian contemplation method with the story of Jesus calming the torment. I’m doing this since once a month the base communities are supposed to do a reading of the scripture during their meetings using St. Ignatius' imaginative method of reading scriptures. I wrote about this in an earlier post, here.

The workshops went well and we were finished early. I knew that Padre German and a group from one of the sectors of the parish was working on the parish's new coffee field in Plan Grande. They were weeding and putting up fences. 

The field looked rather good - and the plants are a new variety of coffee, called Ovata. This is one of the first fields planted with Ovata in the region. It is supposed to give a good yield.

ovata coffee plant

Today, Thursday, we had a meeting of the delegados de la Palabra, the delegates of the Word, those who are in charge of the Sunday celebrations in their villages. We reviewed the nature of the Triple Ministry (prophetic, liturgical, and social) of the base communities to make sure they are integrating their ministry with the base communities. Then we began the process of looking for the characteristics of a Delegate of the Word. We only got started, but we’ll be meeting again next month.

Tomorrow, I have a workshop with the base community leaders in one zone;  leaders from another sector are supposed to show up. Luckily, for me, it’s in Dulce Nombre and so I don’t need to go so far.

Saturday is the meeting of the parish council. But I will be getting up early to take a young engineer friend of mine out to the building site to see if he can help design the roof for the house. We’ll leave Santa Rosa at 7 am. Then I’ll try to get to a part of the parish council meeting, come home, and pack.

Sunday is Corpus Christi, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. Devotion to the Eucharist is very strong here – and there will be several processions throughout the parish. Also, several villages where they have the Eucharist will have the Forty Hours devotion – forty hours, usually continuous, of prayer before the Eucharist.

I will be leaving Sunday afternoon on a bus to San Pedro, but not until I get through a busy morning.

Corpus Christi will start out early, with a procession and Mass in the town of Concepción. After Mass, I’ll be going out to Plan Grande. The catechists of that sector are having a get-together for those preparing for Confirmation. We could have up to 130 young people. It starts about 8 am and goes to Mass and procession in the early afternoon. I’ll go out to see what I can do and to spend time with the young people.

It is really great to see the efforts of the catechists and young people in this sector. In some other parts of the parish we are struggling with religious education and sacramental preparation. That’s not unusual or unexpected – especially when we are expecting up to 600 confirmations this coming October, and there have been more than 2,000 baptisms since last August.

When I get back from my trip to Iowa, I will have lots more to do, especially since Padre German wants me to go out and see what’s happening in religious education.

I’ll be glad when I live in the parish – and will be able to do this much more easily.

The newly elected

This morning about eighty-one mostly young people participated in the rite of election in the church in Dulce Nombre.

They have been in the catechumenate process here since last September and hope to be baptized and confirmed in the Easter Vigil.

The rite is simple – they are presented to the priest and the assembly after the homily. The priest inquires about their readiness. They then are inscribed as the elect.

 

Padre German addressing the sponsors (with raised hands)

In our celebration, we had the catechists read the names of the young people who were to be enrolled as the elect at the beginning on the rite.

When it came to the inscription we had to do something different.  Instead of having each person write her or his name in a book, we had all write their name on slips of paper which they then placed in a bowl at the front of the church.

With 81 persons, this made the rite a little less hectic.

I watched as they placed their names in the container. In some I saw a spark of life, a sense of peace, a quiet joy.

They are all very different, but in many ways they are a cross section of the young people here – mostly poor. Some cannot even write (and so had someone write their names for them.)  Many are working in their family’s fields.  A few are studying. Most are a little shy and not very talkative.

They were dismissed and a few catechists and we spent a little time with them. Then I had them wait at the back of the church for Mass to end so that people could greet them.

It was a blessed day.

The newly elect have just a few weeks until they are baptized. 

I have been joking with the catechists that these are the elect, but not those elected in the governmental elections. They are chosen by the faith community, the Church, to become a part of this Body of Christ present in the world.

Pray they may be faithful.

One of the elect waiting for a ride home after Mass