A busy week in the parish

This past week I’ve seen some of what our parishioners do, even during the coffee harvest when most people are picking coffee to earn cash, one of the few opportunities for people here.

I assisted at Masses on Sunday and Wednesday (the feast of the Black Christ of Esquipulas) and attended parish council on Saturday. But there were two days where parishioners came out to volunteer with the parish.

The parish is doing a major renovation of the parish center so that we can better serve those who come for our formations and training sessions. This effort is being done with the financial assistance of our sister parish, Saint Thomas Aquinas in Ames, Iowa.

An initial part of this effort was taking down the old kitchen and dining room, which were very small. More than sixty members of the parish came in from rural villages to help. I was especially impressed by the number of young people. (I guess they like the “destruction” we did.) The area cleared out is now very wide open and very welcoming. I took one group to their village and almost 200 bricks which they'll use - recycling.

On Thursday about forty came to work on the parish coffee field. I brought one group in – from a village more than 45 minutes away. They picked coffee for several hours. Since there was not much coffee this year, they picked both ripe and unripe coffee berries. We were finished before noon.

Friday, I went into Santa Rosa de Copán with Moisés, the president of the coffee association in El Zapote which export to Ames. We were investigating the possibility of a new company to do the processing and transport. Talking with the local director we were impressed and will probably go with the company since this will make the whole process easier and more efficient.

Saturday after the parish council meeting I went to a distant village to talk with a woman who has taken in the four children of her sister who was killed in Guatemala. She has three grown children of her own and is very poor. We talked about some options and we’ll see how to help her, her children, and her nephews and nieces. It is incredible how some poor are very open to help their relatives, stretching their resources.

On the way back, as is my custom, I picked up a number of folks walking on the hilly roads. As we entered the hill town of Delicias I realized that it was time for their youth group meeting and so I went and spent abut half an hour with them.

Today, I slept in but then went back to Delicias for a late morning Mass.

This week the pastor will be away and I have a few things planned – visiting the sick in a rural village, a diocesan meeting, and a meeting of the Delegates of the Word on Saturday. I’ll probably be spending a lot of time preparing for that meeting – as well as covering four or five Celebrations of the Word with Communion next weekend.

But there are always surprises.

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.

Election, curfew, and coffee

Late Friday night, December 1, the Honduran government declared a curfew for ten days from 6 pm to 6 am. Though elections had been held last Sunday, there were no official final results, but a series of delays and anomalies. Many suspect fraud on the part of the governing party to maintain its control of the three branches of government. On Monday night, December 4, the hours of the curfew were shortened: 8 pm to 5 am.

Still there are no final results and not only the opposition alliance but the Organization of American States are calling for an open and transparent review of the election results.

It has been tense. People have taken to the streets in many cities in generally peaceful marches and occupation of the streets. There has been some violence, not only about 10 deaths from government forces but destruction of some public property – a city hall in one place and highly-contested toll booths in another. There also has been some looting in major cities. There are suspicions of government infiltrators as well as common criminals taking advantage of the instability.

Where I am it is peaceful. Saturday night I stayed in Dulce Nombre. The only disturbance was at 9 pm when I heard some people making noise and shouting, “Fuera JOH” – “Get out, JOH.” (JOH are the initials of the president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is running for a second term. Many consider his candidacy illegal since the Constitution rules out presidents running for a second term; Juan Orlando managed to get Congress and the Supreme Court to overturn this article of the constitution which was supposed to be irrevocable!)

In the midst of this, the parish of Dulce Nombre is hosting two seminarians on a three-week pastoral experience. Since our pastor is gone for a well-merited vacation, I am working with them.

I met them on Saturday at the ordination of two new priests in Cucuyagua and brought them to Dulce Nombre. Sunday morning after a 7:00 am Celebration of the Word and communion in nearby Concepción, I presided at the Rite of Entry into the Catechumenate of 51, mostly young, people at 10 am in Dulce Nombre. They will continue their formation and discernment and will God willing, be baptized at the Easter Vigil next year.

I was going to stay in Dulce Nombre Sunday night with the seminarians but since we were going to a Celebration of the Word with Communion in Plan Grande that afternoon, I decided that we’d stay at my home in Plan Grande.

Monday, we planned to finish harvesting coffee in the parish coffee field which is in Plan Grande. We had two groups come last week but still there was plenty to be harvested. I went and picked up about 15 people in Delicias, Concepción, and made a second trip to pick up three people in El Zapote. There were about 68 people harvesting coffee, including the two seminarians, Dany and Marvin.

We finished the harvest about 2:30 and I took the two seminarians and the others to Delicias.  When I was about to leave I got a call from people in the other car which had gotten stuck taking people to Buena Vista Concepción. This was a long process and we ended up driving in the dark past 6 pm, not knowing that the start of the curfew had changed.

Today, I left my car for follow ups to the major rebuilding of the motor that had to be done a few weeks ago.

Though life has been tense for people in the cities and in some other parts of the country, it’s been calm here. But I must be careful lest this calm clouds my perception of the problems that have come to a point of crisis here in Honduras.

The past few weeks - in words and pictures

The last half of February kept me busy. I haven’t written much or shared photos here. The rainy season seems to be over and we've had lots of hot sunny days - and some of the trees are blooming.

The parish had a meeting of coordinators of Social Ministry in the communities in mid-February. Sad to say the turnout was poor – only 15 from the more than 45 communities. But it’s the beginning of an effort to revive this ministry in the parish.

We also had an assembly of catechists which was also not very well attended. Only 55 of the more than 150 catechists showed up. We’ll have workshops in the four zones of the parish in March. We’ll see how this turns out.

It might be that there are still a number of communities where they are still harvesting coffee. We'll see.

I also had several Celebrations of the Word for anniversaries of those who had died. In some strange, unknown way, I find these celebrations life-giving for me. I find myself able to share words of consolation and hope, without overlooking the pain and, at times, the violence. The message of the crucified but risen Lord seems to be able to get through.

I also am trying to visit communities without the Eucharist for Sunday Celebrations of the Word with Communion, about twice a month.

At one community, San Antonio El Alto, I arrived in time for the end of the First Communion catechism class.

The week before I had stopped at one of the Maestro en Casa alternative school programs after the Celebration in Joyas Galanas.

Last Monday we had the last coffee harvesting at the parish’s coffee lands. I got up early and went to pick up folks. This view greeted me as I crossed through a pass.

The harvest went fairly quickly, with just about 28 workers since we picked all the remaining coffee cherries. After this, we separated out the green from the ripe.

A few weeks ago I had the chance to meet with the coffee association in El Zapote de Santa Rosa which is exporting coffee to the US by way of St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames. They were meeting with a lawyer from Caritas which is helping them get full legal status. (Contact St. Thomas to buy some.)

Tomorrow and Saturday we have the training for the candidates to become extraordinary ministers of Communion – which is a two year process here, partly because they lead Word and Communion services in their villages and bring Communion to the sick in their homes.

Next Sunday we will have the rite of election of catechumens in the main church in Dulce Nombre. I expect about 45, mostly young people.

Next Monday to Friday I’ll be attending the diocesan retreat for clergy (since deacons are clergy). I’ll miss part of time a medical brigade from AMIGA will be in the area, serving at the local clinic.

In the middle of this, life goes on. I even had time today to bake bread, while preparing for upcoming events.

And they are beginning to pave the road here in Plan Grande from the church up to the main road, but first up to the mayor’s home.

This means I have to use alternative roads to get to my house – including one through cow pastures and another up and down really steep hills. 

Thank God for four-wheel drive.

And thank God for the continuing gift of being able to serve here.

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