Two weeks and more

Rain, rain, rain. Though it has stopped here for a few hours, we have had strong rains for the last three days. There has been serious flooding in Tegucigalpa but here we mostly have to watch out for slippery hills. This comes after some really hot and dry weeks in September.

The rain of course makes it difficult to get clothes dried, but that’s the least of our worries here.

I haven't written for more than two weeks and so a post is necessary - especially since I'm heading to Rome, Assisi, and Ames, Iowa in two days.

This past week was the week of the Ferias Morazanicas, with at least three days of time off for official employees. Most schools were closed all week.

But I have been busy for several weeks with a variety of activities – and a rather bad chest cold (which made me stay at home and try to rest for several days.)

One of my new responsibilities as deacon has been to do the interviews of couples and witnesses after they have finished their formation. Three weeks ago, one couple was married. I was at the wedding but the pastor was the official church witness. Yet I got to the church before the wedding to baptize the young man getting married. Last week, I again assisted as deacon at a wedding Mass – but this time it was of a neighbor who married a young woman in her home village.

We are having more weddings than before and this is, for me, a good sign.

I also presided at a Quinceañera celebration, a sort of coming out celebration for fifteen-year-old young women. I have been at a few, but I haven’t seen this happen often among the poor. I tried to preach about the dignity of the person, especially young women, whose dignity come from God – not from grades, jobs, number of Facebook friends, or men. I hope the message got across.

But what disturbed me was that though the young woman, whose mother is in the US and whose biological father is presumably absent, was there even without the grandmother who is taking care of her. I also was quite taken aback when she didn’t go to Communion. It seems much more a cultural event than a religious ceremony. But then I may just be too biased and critical.

Two weeks ago we had the parish mission. Forty three parishioner went to visit almost all the villages of the parish, reaching out to those estranged from the church.

During the week, a tragic event occurred. In one village a young man, about 33, committed suicide, leaving a six-year old girl and an estranged wife. He had some serious mental problems but was taking medicine which helped him control his behavior and his health. But he had run out of the medicine which, I was told later, is only available at a hospital in Tegucigalpa and which costs about $175. He tried to find a way to borrow money to get the medicine, but to no avail. My guess is that, in desperation, he killed himself. Padre German gave a thoughtful homily at the funeral Mass, trying to help people not to blame or castigate the man. (I don’t think he knew about the difficulty of getting medicine.) I felt so bad. We have a solidarity fund and many know about it, but no one suggested that as a source for the money for the medicine.

This is, again, one of the many ways the poor suffer – not having medicine nor ways to purchase what they need.

Last week we had a meeting of Social Ministry coordinators from the villages. Only five came, but we had a very fruitful meeting talking not only of problems but of what they were doing in their areas. We talked about situations of health, water, schools, housing, and more. I came away from the meeting with a bit of hope.

Last week we also celebrated the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is patron of at least four villages. I got to Delicias Concepción about 8:30 for their procession. They gathered at a home and prayed the rosary. Then they walked behind the image of Saint Francis to the church. There Padre German celebrated Mass and I preached. Here are some photos from Delicias.

Right after Mass I headed for La Entrada to have lunch with the Franciscan sisters there. It was a welcome break and a time to talk in English with one of the sisters, Nancy, who is a good friend and whom I hold partly responsible for me being here in Honduras.

The ride home was almost uneventful, since there was no road work that week. Yet on the hill from the main highway to Dulce Nombre I found the car sliding a bit because of the mud. They had scraped the road but hadn’t put down gravel. I got up the hill, but I wish I had put on my four-wheel drive before attempting the hill. At least one car was in the ditch.

Last Monday I visited the sick in San Agustín. There are many sick, elderly, and homebound there – with only one Communion minister. So I try to visit when I can. The first house I went to was the home of a severely crippled woman. I found her with a neighbor and neighbor’s children and two young girls who I think are here children. She was sitting there desgranando mazurcas de maíz – taking the grains off dried ears of corn. I sat down beside her and we talk – and I joined her and a four-year-old neighbor kid working on the ears of corn. I found such delight in sharing a simple chore with a poor ill woman.

The parish has, with the help of St. Thomas Aquinas church in Ames, purchased a vehicle to be used to transport people to hospitals and clinics at a decent cost. I got a call yesterday to see if the parish car was available yet to take a woman to the hospital in Santa Rosa. I didn’t know and I couldn’t help them since I was in Santa Rosa for a few hours. After I finished what I had to do I called and found they had obtained a ride.

The parish car to transport the sick - named after Saint Raphael.

Yet this morning someone called to try to get a ride to bring her back. I ended up going. She was extremely weak and they almost had to carry her to and from the car. I calculated that the fuel for this was about 250 lempiras, about eleven dollars. However, some private drivers would charge up significantly more – especially in the evening. When this car functions, it will be a real way to help the people.

In two days I am off to the canonization of Romero in Rome and a visit to Assisi – together with our pastor. Then I’m off to Ames, Iowa, to catch up with people at St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center, which has been so generous with our parish.

I’m finishing this post with no electricity and will try to post it later today, Tuesday, if the electric returns – as it often does.

But it is not raining tonight!

I went to a youth group in Delicias tonight at 5 pm and returned in the semi-darkness to a house without electricity. Rosary and evening prayer by candlelight. And then I started making supper.

The electricity returned about 7:10 pm – just as I was finishing cooking supper.

Life goes on

In the midst of the political upheaval here, with the swearing in of the president, whose election is highly contested nationally and questioned internationally, it was a fairly conventional week for me. It also rained a lot less.

Though there have been protests and blocking of highways in other parts of the country, it’s been quiet here in the mountains of Copán, in southwest Honduras.

There have been deaths and injuries in the country, associated with the use of tear gas (made in the US) and use of live ammunition by government forces. There are also serious concerns about human rights violations. I saw a photo of one of the tear gas shells – made in western Pennsylvania.

But in the midst of this I’ve visited the sick, helped with the parish coffee harvest, preached in a rural village, interviewed a couple who will be married soon, visited with a friend in Santa Rosa, and took my pick up to a mechanic because it was over-heating.

We had over two hundred people helping the coffee harvest for two full days, last Monday and Tuesday. The first day they picked over 500 five-gallon containers of coffee berries.

This is the third major harvest – and we’ll have at least one more harvest. (Each coffee bush produces ripe coffee berries continuously for about ten weeks and so the berries are harvested three or four or more times.) I picked about one five gallon container, but mostly I helped with transporting folks to and from the field, as well as transporting the food for lunch.

 

We have had a few days of warm, dry weather – though my pick up is still caked with mud. Yet today it’s raining again – and cool.

Last Friday I went to San Agustín, about 40 minutes away from home, to visit the sick and aged. There is only on Communion minister there and 20 to 30 people who are ill or aged. I’ve decided to visit there at least once a month to see four or five people.

Margarita, the Communion minister, took me around. But the last person we visited was the most heart-wrenching.

We walked down the steep embankment to his fairly good sixed bahareque house, mud and stick walls and a dirt floor. He got up from his stool in the galera when we arrived and he invited us to sit down. I found another chair to sit on joined him.

He is in his mid-forties, but suffered a stroke three years ago and has no feeling or strength on his right side. He has difficulty talking but Margarita understood some. I mostly watched him and got a sense of what he was trying to express. He even wrote in the dirt to try to communicate.

I think I sensed a deep sadness. He is alone. He was living with a woman who left but used to bring him food. Now she doesn’t come. She seems to have taken almost all of the furniture from the house and so he lives with almost nothing. Some people give him some food, but there is no place to heat it. I talked to Margarita and asked her to have the base communities bring him food – even just tortillas and beans or pupusas several times a week.

We talked and I gave him one of the small wooden crosses we have for the sick. I placed in his right hand. It stayed there and I hope it provides him a reminder of God’s presence with him.

As I listened to him and watched, I realized that, though his clothes were dusty and a bit dirty, he took care of himself. He even explained to us, with gestures, how he washed himself daily with one hand.

He had work before his stroke – working in house construction and carpentry. As he explained this I could sense the pride he had in his work.

I don’t know if I should have gotten him some food but I left a few lempiras with Margarita to buy some food for him. She mentioned about getting something to take him. Also, she will bring my suggestion to the community church council. When I go back next month I’ll visit him and bring some food (and a thermos with hot coffee) and share a meal with him. (By the way, one of the things I learned in Santiago Atitlan about Fr. Stanley Rother is that he would take food to poor parishioners and sit down and eat with them.)

All the way driving back home, I kept thinking of him. I wonder if he could have had some restoration of muscle control of his arm if he had had therapy three years ago – the fate of the poor in a country that has money for weapons but poor health care.

For much of that day, I thought of him being alone there and I realized that I found no bitterness in him. A stroke, abandoned, alone, dependent on others for food – but with a sense of God with him. It’s almost too much to comprehend.

What struck me later is that his name means “God-with-us.” I guess Friday I was visited by “God-with-us.”

Would that I and all of us would remember this. It would make life better for so many.

Personal realities

First, the realities of my life here in the countryside.

The water is scarce, because they are putting in new water lines. But I do have enough in my tank on the roof to take a shower, enough in my pila to do clothes, though it’s almost empty, and enough in rain water barrels to water plants. I, of course, have two large drinking-water bottles. But we are in the dry season – hot, with little rain. I hope they finish their work soon.

Access is still through a pasture to get to Dulce Nombre or down and up a ravine to get to the road in Candelaria. Thank God for four-wheel drive.

Monday I went into Santa Rosa on a few errands and got the car washed. I noticed the back-up lights weren’t working and had them checked. A part had to be replaced – costing about forty dollars. Costs for my pick-up (maintenance and fuel) are among my chief expenses here – the roads and the amount of travel really wreak havoc on vehicles.

Electricity was out on Tuesday, from 7 am to 4 pm. I wasn’t home and so that didn’t affect me.

Internet has been out since Sunday evening and I waited at home on Wednesday for the technicians who arrived mid-afternoon.

But then I have watched as Isaías, the son of a neighbor, has been building a house out of adobe for his family.

Second, the real realities of life.

Tuesday afternoon, I presided at a funeral. The husband of the woman who died, probably as a result of hypertension, is very involved in the church. The couple had also suffered the death of one of their sons twenty-two days before in a motorcycle accident. It was a sad time in the small village, though many people arrived, including the remaining five sons and one daughter, some of whom have studied in universities. The pain was deep, especially in some of the woman’s sisters and in the woman’s parents who were there beside the coffin in the small church.

What can one say – except that grieving is normal but we must not grieve as those who have no hope (the reading form 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 that I chose). We prayed for the woman, for her son who died less than a month ago, and I asked those present to pray with me for the wife of a cousin who died nine days before.

As I may have written before, these funerals are not easy, but I find them a place where God lets me be present to serve, offering - I hope - words of hope and consolation.

Third, what makes sense of this all.

Tuesday, before going out to the funeral, I had a workshop for leaders in the villages to prepare them for leading services for Holy Week. In terms of our faith, the mystery of death makes sense only in terms of the death and resurrection of Christ – and our call to share in that mystery and to live with hope.

Sunday, I went to a village that has had a lot of problems in terms of its pastoral life, compounded by a delegate who is a cacique, a dictatorial leader. He wasn’t there at the celebration. I had gone to do the Scrutinies for several young men who will be baptized at the Easter Vigil. To make a long story extremely short, we worked through a series of problems, openly, in a pastoral way, which I pray will enable the four young men to be ready for their Eater baptism. It was a moment of grace, when we were enabled to break through, to solve a problem, without recriminations or blaming people for irresponsibility. I reached out in the evening (before the internet went out) to the catechist who had fallen behind in his responsibilities and, I pray, avoid, ill feelings.

Fourth, the little and big joys.

Hanging up the wash this morning, I sense an incredible smell in the air. Coffee plant in flower. It’s one of the beauties here than I cannot share. Not only does if fill the air with a beautiful perfume, but it reminds me of my childhood. Our neighbors had honeysuckle which has a perfume much like that of the coffee flower. Ah. What joy.

I am also beginning to hear the chicharones – the locusts that fills the air with their chirping around Holy Week each year. I also saw the dead body of a chichara, a bigger locust which chirps in the night. Soon the concerts will begin.

This afternoon I have also been hearing the sound of what I think might be a bird – it’s like a warble, with a little water sound. I have yet to see the bird or animal, but it another of the joys of life here in Plan Grande.

And, the chorchas continue to visit.