My Scholarsip Student

Last fall I made the decision to sponsor a student here in El Salvador through the scholarship program that is organized through the Minnesota church, Family of Christ.  Last summer I learned all about the scholarship program and I was able to go to the celebrations for the 300 o so students who are n the program.  It was so energizing and inspiring to see all the students who are able o go to school beaus of the support they get through the scholarship program.  I saw some of the students meet their sponsors who had come to El Salvador.  The connection they had was so beautiful, I was inspired.  So when I heard they needed more people to sponsor students, I felt called to sponsor a student. 

I requested to get a girl student, but other than that I was surprised when I got the information about the student I was sponsoring.  I got a picture of her, a copy of her report card, and a sheet of basic information about her.  I looked at this stuff and then put it back i the envelope which got literally and figuratively buried in everything else that was going on in my life.  When I was getting ready to come to El Salvador in March, I remembered my scholarship student and thought I might bring her a present.  I wasn´t able to see her, but I left the present with someone who was able to give it to her.

I brought another little gift for my student this trip, but the best part was I was actually able to give it to her myself.  On Sunday we had a little party for the scholarship kids and my student was there.  All the students sat together and I was able to recognize her from the picture I had of her.  At first it was a little awkward chatting with her, but soon we were chatting comfortably.  Her name is Dinora and she is 16 years old.  She is in her first year of high school.  She has 6 brothers and sisters- I got to meet a couple of them who were at the party.  The thing that I enjoyed hearing about mos was what she wants to do in the future.  She wants to go to the national university and study tourism.  It was so wonderful to hear the dreams she has for her future- for many Salvadorans even finishing high school is a dream.  Only because of the scholarship program can Dinora think it´s possible for her to go to college.  Furthermore, I was so happy to hear that she wants to study tourism because El Salvador needs all the help it can get to be more touristy.

Dinora and I didn´t get to chat for very long, but I fell in love with her.  She is such an intelligent, sweet, precious, pleasant young lady.  I really wish I could have spent more time with her, but she had t head home.  We said good-bye and she gave me the biggest hug ever.  We were both pretty close to tears.  She doesn´t have Facebook or email, so it´s going to be hard to keep in touch with her which makes me very sad.   

Sorry for the lack of blogging

We just got back from a wonderful retreat at a beautiful little hotel out in the western mountains of El Salvador.  We all stayed in little cabins surrounded by lush gardens filled with flowers.  It was quiet, the temperature was cool, and it was just a nice break from everything we have been doing.  The group from Family of Christ in Minnesota is getting ready to head back home on Saturday.  During our retreat we all had some time to reflect individually on our experience in El Salvador and then we all shared our reflections with each other during a worship service.  It was a much needed time of rest and reflection for myself, but it was also so wonderful to hear from everyone how El Salvador has changed them.  I was so impressed by the depth and thought of all the reflections.  Some of the high schoolers on the trip can be immature at times, but they all did an incredible job of thinking about and sharing how this trip in El Salvador has changed them and helped them grow in faith.  They are mature beyond their years.

Family of Christ has been keeping a daily blog while they have been here.  You can check out their blog if you want to know what we have been up to and see some great pictures too.  The blog is here.  I´m really sorry that I have been doing such a poor job of blogging.  We have been so busy and the computers here are a pain to use and I´ve just felt really overwhelmed with everything that I want to be writing about.  When I get home I´ll try to do better.

Pastor Matias is in the hospital.  He has been sick for some time with pneumonia.  The oral antibiotics he was taking weren´t helping so they took him into the hospital on Monday night so he could get IV antibiotics and get taken care of.  Please keep him in your prayers.

Pupusas

I love the food in El Salvador.  Basically they try to create as many different ways of serving corn and beans as possible.  The signature food in El Salvador is the pupusa- a think corn or rice tortilla filled with cheese and/or beans and sometimes meat or shrimp.  Pupusas are eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  They are served with a tomato sauce and cortido- a cabbage, carrot, onion, and jalapeno pepper concoction.  I´m pretty sure  could eat pupusas for every meal for at least a week without getting tired of them.

 

We went to a little restaurant last week and they had dessert pupusas on the menu- rice pupusas filled with fruit jelly.  The idea of dessert pupusas sounded amazing to Julie and I and so we started talking about other possibilities for dessert pupusas.  We thought banana and chocolate sounded like the best possibility.  That night back at our friend Marisol´s house we talked about this awesome idea for a new kind of pupusa and Marisol responded with disgust.  In fact, just about every Salvadoran we have talked to about dessert pupusas has reacted with complete disgust and confusion.  But Julie was very persistent and got Marisol to help us make banana and chocolate pupusas.  We used the rice dough and stuffed chocolate and bananas inside and cooked them on the griddle.  The smell of the melting chocolate filled the air an I could hardly wait for them to be ready.  Marisol gave us each one and she watched in shock as we tried them.  They were SO good!!!  Marisol tried a little but wasn´t convinced that it was the best kind of pupusa in the world.  We´ve been trying to convince Salvadorans that dessert pupusas are going to be the next big thing- no one has been convinced, yet.

 

Last night, the whole group had pupusas for dinner.  The wonderful women who take care of us at the Casa Concordia cooked ¨normal¨ pupusas- cheese and cheese with beans.  Julie and I made dessert pupusas- ones with banana and chocolate and ones with marshmallows and chocolate.  We were all in the kitchen together making pupusas and it was so much fun even though most of the fun was making fun of Julie and I.  Salvadorans love to joke and make fun of people.  Some of the things they say and the things they do might be considered rude or mean by our cultural standards, but thy do it out of love (most of the time).  They made fun of us for making dessert pupusas- it´s just so absurd to them.  And they made fun of our pupusa making abilities.  These ladies have been making tortillas and pupusas all their lies.  Their hands know exactly what to do to create a perfect tortilla and beautiful pupusas.  The tortillas and pupusas I make are often bizarrely shaped- far from the perfect circles they should be.  Our pupusas were judged and the women laughed at our efforts.  Despite being judged and made fun of and laughed at I thoroughly enjoyed making pupusas last night.  I jut love being with those incredible women- they know how to enjoy life, how to find joy in the little things, how to live a life full of love (even if their love isn´t always shown in the way I usually think about showing love).

 

Most of the Salvadorans tried the dessert pupusas, but they still think it is too weird- some of them might have enjoyed them, but not enough to admit that they liked them.

Two weeks here, two weeks left

I can´t believe how fast time has passed here in El Salvador. I feel like I haven´t had a chance to breathe since I got here. I have been here for two weeks, but it seems like I could have been here for a year. I have experienced pretty much every emotion and feeling possible and we have traveled all over the county.  The next two weeks will surely present plenty more adventures.

This morning I went to the zoo. The zoo is a pretty nice zoo complete with islands for the monkeys. I´m not a huge fan of zoos because I feel badly for the the animals, but this zoo wasn´t too bad. There were a ton of school kids at the zoo and it made me think of the days when I went to the zoo for school.

Today 17 people from 2 different churches in Minnesota arrived. Most of them are from Family of Christ Lutheran Church and three are from another church. They´ll be here for 10 days. It´s been a little chaotic with trying to get all the people and all their luggage from the airport and getting them all settled here at the Casa Concordia. I already know a few people who were also here last summer, and it´s already been wonderful getting to know some of the others. I´m going to be hanging out with them for most of the next 10 days. I´m looking forward to learning more about leading mission trips and learning from the relationship Family of Christ has with pastors and churches in El Salvador.

Apologizing

On Thursday, we went to the little town of El Mozote.  This was the third time I visited this little community up in the mountains of the north eastern part of El Salvador.  In 1981, about 1,000 men, women, and children were massacred in El Mozote by the Salvadoran army.  See my post from last summer about El Mozote for some more details about the community and the massacre there.  

 

Every time I have been to El Mozote it has amazed me just how far away and remote El Mozote is.  It took us about four and a half hours to get there.  I can only imagine how difficult it was for the Salvadoran army to get there 30 years ago when the roads weren´t as good as they are now- they really had to go out of their way to commit that massacre.  It just boggles my mind that people can do such horrific things to other people.

 

While we were at El Mozote we also went to visit the Revolutionary Museum which is another little town pretty close to El Mozote.  The museum tells the history of what led up to the Salvadoran civil war, explains how the guerrilla forces fought during the war, and helps visitors get a better idea of what life was like for the fighters as well as the general population during the war.  At the museum there is a 500 pound bomb that didn´t explode when it was dropped.  There is a sign by the bomb that says it was made in the US.  Our tour guide at the museum, a very nice old man, was telling us about the bomb and pointed out that it was made in the US.  As he was telling us about the bomb, I felt like I really needed to apologize to him for that bomb that my country made and allowed to be dropped.  Thank God that this particular bomb didn´t explode, but there were probably thousands of other bombs like that one that did explode and killed, destroyed, injured, and devastated.  As a citizen of the US, I felt guilty standing there looking at that bomb and thinking about all the other bombs that were dropped during the civil war.  I felt responsible even though I wasn´t even alive when the bomb was dropped.  I wanted to apologize for the fact that my county didn´t do anything to stop the Salvadoran army from massacring thousands of innocent people.  I wanted to apologize because my country made money off the sale of bombs like that one and so many other weapons.  I wanted to apologize for the military training given to Salvadoran army battalions that went on to commit countless human rights violations.  I wanted to apologize to this old man for all that he suffered through- for his personal loss and suffering but also I wanted to apologize for what my country allowed to happen to all the people of El Salvador.

 

But I didn´t apologize to the museum guide.  I was pretty sure that that would have been an awkward conversation and I´m not sure that it would have accomplished anything.  I had no power to change what was already done years ago.  But I keep thinking that maybe I should have apologized for that bomb and everything else.

 

It makes me question a lot of things- Am I even capable of apologizing for something that my country did when I wasn´t even alive?  Isn´t it about time that the US made some sort of an official apology for all the thousands of innocent Salvadorans that were killed during the war with the support of the US? 

 

I have been thinking about my inability to apologize for what happened at El Mozote and all over El Salvador during the civil war.  If I can´t really apologize for my country´s role in this, what else am I unable to apologize for?  And what 20 or 30 years from now will I wish I could apologize for and won´t be to?  For our war in Iraq?  Our war in Afghanistan?  Will I want to apologize to the people of Mexico and Central America for our harmful free trade agreements?  Will I want to apologize to the people of the world for our immigration policy?

 

I can´t can´t change what happened in El Salvador with the support of my country during the 1980s.  But today I do have the ability to influence what my country does.  I by myself cannot stop our country from doing things that harm the most vulnerable around the world, but with my voice along with others who believe we should be acting in ways we don´t have to apologize for, perhaps we can create a world where there is less suffering and more justice.

 

I still feel guilty for that bomb though.  I guess the only thing I can really do is to try to turn that guilt into something productive to prevent things from happening that have to be apologized for.

Chaletanango!

I really wish I could upload some pictures to show you, but for some reason, the computer doesn't want to recognize my camera so I can´t.  We´ve been very busy going all over the country- based on everything I´ve done so far, it´s hard to believe I´ve only been here a week!  I´m pretty behind in blogging about what I´ve been doing- sorry.  Here´s a little bit about last weekend...

Last weekend, I got to go to the northern department of Chaletenango to visit the town where my friend Marisol lives.  I hadn´t been to this part of El Salvador so I was very exctied to go and I was excited to see where Marisol lives.  She is a university student studying at the national university here in the capital city, and she stays at the Casa Concordia (where I´m staying) while school is in session.

It took quite the adventure to get there- a taxi ride, a long bus ride, a walk, and then another bus ride.  Before our final bus ride we stopped at a grocery store to get some food for our stay because there aren´t any good sized stores by her house.  Marisol lives in a very rural mountain town and it is so beautiful!

Marisol's house

The view from the back yard

Marisol's front porch 

Marisol only goes to her house on some weekends and during school vacations because it takes so long to get there.  She hadn´t been there for a month, so things were a little dirty, but she cleaned things right up.  Her house is simple- two main rooms, a little room for her bedroom, a front and back porch.  The two main rooms are where her brothers sleep and also function as the family room, computer room, and kitchen.  She cooks and eats on the back porch area.  They have running water, but sometimes it doesn´t run and sometimes it runs dirty.  They have a shower when the water runs, but they have a non-flushing toilet, but it is the nicest non-flushing toilet I have ever used- squishy toilet seat included.

The nicest non-flushing toilet in the world

I felt like I was at a tucked away jungle resort retreat house- it felt so calm, quiet, and isolated. There were neighbors pretty close by but you could see or hear them through the trees.  After we were at Marisol´s house for a while, we went down to the river to bathe because the water wasn´t running at her house and we were hot, sweaty, and dirty after our journey.  We wore shorts, t-shirts, and flip flops down to the river.  We left our flip flops on the bank of the river and slowly waded into the cool and quickly flowing river.  Eventually I followed Marisol to the far side of the river by swimming through the quick current in the middle of the river.  We got all wet, shampooed our hair, soaped away our dirtiness, and washed our faces.  We stayed in the refreshing water for some time talking about real and mythical water creatures that may or may not have been in the river.

The river is where many people in town bathe and do their laundry- especially before there was running water and when the water doesn´t run.  We eventually got out of the river and went back to Marisol´s house.  We changed into dry clothes and then walked around a little to see the town.  The town is made up of a few dozen house from what I could tell- all set back into the trees of the mountain.

There is a new store in town that sells snacks and some basic food items.  There is a beautiful view of the mountains, valley, and the river from the store.  W bought some chips and Marisol chatted with the owner of the store while we ate.  Th store owner was wanting to hire someone to work at his store and make some pupusas and other simple food to sell.  Marisol told him that I am looking for a job and that I can cook, and so the store owner offered me the job.  So if all else fails with my job search, I can always live at Marisol´s house and work at the little store.  It might actually be very nice working and living in the little mountain town.  Everyone I met there was so very friendly (as pretty much every Salvadoran in).

The little store

The next morning, Sunday, we went to the Lutheran church in town.  It was a very nice service led by a pastor from Germany.  The most exciting part of the worship service was that this was the first time that I have had the opportunity to worship with bats.  I´ve worshiped with dogs, cats, chickens, bugs, and of course people, but never bats.  The bats flew around a little bit, but most hung from the celing or wall.

The church

Look closely- you can see two bats hanging in the middle of the picture

The only not so wonderful part of my stay at Marisol´s house was that a couple of bats had moved in while Marisol was away from her house.  The bats left when we came that afternoon, but they returned at night.  It was good because they ate the mosquitoes, but it was a little bit scary having them fly around while I was sleeping. 

Coffee and Tourism!

My friend Julie Laven who is here with me is blogging about our adventures. Thus far she is doing a much better job at writing about all we are doing, so you may want to check out her blog for some more details about what we are up to. You can check out her blog here.

Today we went to the little town of Jayaque. I had been there last year for a little bit for a celebration and march at the Lutheran church that is there. We went today mostly to see if we could find some coffee farms and learn more about coffee growing. I wanted to start investigating how I could potentially get coffee from farmers here in El Salvador to serve at a coffee shop I want to start back home in the suburbs. We looked in the El Salvador travel book for places that grow coffee and Jayaque seemed to be the best option because it said it had coffee tours and it was the closest of all the places in the book. It took us about an hour and a half to get there (with Cesar driving we got home in less than an hour). We stopped by a little museum and found the most wonderful tour guide, Henry. He is studying tourism at the national university and lives and works in the city of Jayaque. Henry showed us around the little museum and then took us to an old coffee plantation. We went up to the top of the mountain near the town and had some beautiful views! We had lunch at a nice restaurant that is also a coffee plantation. We stopped by an artist place that makes things out of used wood, metal, and cardboard. They had some pretty cool things in there. Then we stopped by a bakery and bought some cupcake things. Henry spent most of the morning and afternoon with us showing us around and explaining things to us. He was so knowledgeable and really understood the concept of tourism. If there are a few more people like Henry in El Salvador, tourism really has a chance to take off. There are so many cool places and things in El Salvador, but you really need someone like Henry who knows about the places and things to show you around.

It´s not coffee season, so nothing much was happening in the way of growing or harvesting coffee, but we did get to see some plantations and got a general idea of what the harvesting process is like. I still have SO much to learn about coffee and coffee growing, but I think I got a really good start today. And I think that Jayaque was the perfect place to go.