Palm Sunday

As the day draws to a close at the Casa Blanca Hotel in Ahauchapan, I am trying to gather my thoughts to relate to all of you what my meaning is of sensory overload. It has been a fantastic day that started in San Salvador with some strong coffee and a great breakfast at Hotel Mariscal. We packed our bags, loaded the small passenger bus and headed for another hotel to pick up a smaller volunteer group from California and Colorado. Our first stop was at the wall memorializing the Salvadorans that lost their lives or disappeared in the civil war from 1970-1992. It was particularly moving as we had been told a story the evening before about a woman who disappeared and we located her name on the wall. We then traveled to the San Salvador Cathedral in downtown for attendance at mass. So did everybody else in San Salvador, no everybody in El Salvador (at least it seemed that way)!. There were muchas personas in attendance as not only was it Palm Sunday but the day also marked the celebration of 30th anniversary of the funeral of Monseur Oscar Romero (see previous blog about his historical significance to this small country about the size of Massachusetts). We were touched by the greetings from those in attendance as they shared palm fronds with us on arrival and graciously shared the peace with us even though we were obviously out of place in their cathedral. We were clearly all one in God's house.
After attending both the mass in the main cathedral and then touring the downstairs "contemporary" service, we loaded the bus again and headed up the road on our 2 hour journey to our final destination in Ahuchapan, but not before stopping for lunch in Santa Ana at a beautiful old hotel. We ate on the roof covered by a shelter and even though the temperature must have been over a 100 degrees F, the breeze made it a pleasant experience. Incidentally, the food was great and the ice creme dessert was perfect.
We took a quick peak in the Santa Ana Cathedral, also filled with many worshippers, though the service was not going on. This cathedral is very old and is of Gothic architecture.
On the way out of Santa Ana as we headed to Ahauchapan, we stopped by to visit the "Charlotte Model Community". This project that was a partnership between Habitat El Salvador and Habitat Charlotte, is a holistic community build that was built from a green field on land purchased specifically for the project. It includes homes, a school, day care, and community center. It was a great experience to see a completed project filled with homes, people and beautiful happy children! We were amazed at the flowering gardens that the homeowners had developed in the small yards of their duplexes. An incredible display of the sense of pride bestowed by home ownership. We were invited into homes, and one teenage girl came out to proudly say this was "esto es mi casa" - this is my home.
Finally we headed for the bus again for the last 45 minutes to our final destination for the day. We went to a small hotel bungalow in the rain forest outside of Auachapan. Here we had an opportunity to gather with our friends from California/Colorado as well as another group that we had been touring with all day. They are a group of students from California Lutheran University. We learned that our three groups will all be working together in Getsemani. We had an orientation session to prepare for the activities of the week, but the biggest highlight of the evening was being introduced to the community leadership of Getsemani and 6 families who we will be building homes with. If we were not excited enough about the opportunity to help the people of Getsemani, we sure are now. What a wonderful experience it was, having an opportunity to meet them, converse in our broken Spanish (not Clarke, Enrique, or Dennis who are our team translators), and share in the joy they expressed through their smiles and tone of voice. The closing comments by one of the board members of Getsemani, Evalia, who stated that "God had sent us as angels to help them build these homes" and that "she knew they would be finished because God would be doing it", really put it all in perspective and truly prepared us for our work tomorrow.
Clark (aka Largo now) and Tom (Tomas)