I slept well last night and woke up to the neighborhood chickens, dogs, and Pastor Matias´ pet birds. I´m not sure what time it was that these creatures woke me up, but it was early. Salvadorans wake up early, probably because of all the noisy creatures. I stayed in bed for a couple more hours and slept a little more. This morning we had a lovely breakfast with Pastor Matias.
We went to the little town of Guaycume for church this morning. It was a lovely service and the church was pretty full. I got to read the Old Testament lesson (I really hope that my unpracticed skills in Spanish didn´t prevent people from understanding the reading). There were some people there that I recognized or knew well from my previous trips. It is always nice to see a familiar face and to be welcomed so generously. At the end of the service, there was a time to share peace with others. This can be a time of awkwardness in any church. How do you greet people and share the peace? With a hand shake? a nod of the head? a hug? a kiss on the cheek? an all out full embrace? I went with the handshake for those I didn´t know and this seemed to be working pretty well. Then a precious little girl who was probably about 6 or 7 came up to me. I extended my hand to her, but she came right up to be and gave me the biggest hug. Here I am a complete stranger from a strange country and this little girl ignores all this and shows me some great love.
Today has been a day of remembering how Salvadorans deal with time. Things happen when they happen, and it seems like things take forever to happen. To a certain extent the time on the clock dictates some things, but the clock is more of a guide, something to take into account. But clocks don´t dictate life in El Salvador as they do in the U.S. People get ready in their own time, and if you are late for something, it´s not the end of the world. I haven´t really been keeping track of the time (just going with the flow), but I´m pretty sure that we were late for church this morning. It´s one thing if a congregant is late, but for the pastors to be late is something else. But there was no problem with being late. Can you imagine if your pastor showed up 30 minutes late to church (on a regular basis)? Things would not go well for that pastor. But here in El Salvador, time matters less and it is the relationships with other people that matter more. If you are talking with a person, that matters more than getting to something on time. It´s a different way of doing things and it is requiring me to be patient, but I like it.
This afternoon, Pastor Matias brought Julie and I into San Salvador and we are now staying at the Lutheran Guest House, Casa Concordia. There are lots of friends here! Once again it is great to see familiar faces and to see the amazing people and friends that have been so good to me in my past trips. Julie and I are still trying to work out our plans for the next few days, we´ll see how it goes.
