Bits of this and that

I'm almost off to the airport to pick up Kathy and Victor Garcia, here on a car-buying and mission planning trip, but first I want to introduce a new housemate, Korla Masters. Korla, who's just graduated from college, is here volunteering at the Centro Arte para la Paz until May, 2011, teaching English in El Sitio Cenizero and helping out at the Centro. She loves oranges, and was lamenting today, while squeezing oranges, that her attempts to eat locally in Minnesota will rule out oranges in her future diet. We agreed that this was a good reason to be here and now and revel in every Salvadoran orange that comes her way over the next nine months.

Korla told us about last night's concert at the Centro Arte, a combination of the Pop Ensemble of the El Salvador Youth Orchestra and the Coro de Manos, Choir of Hands, performing a combination of pop music and songs signed in Salvadoran Sign Language. Korla was especially delighted because her mother is the Pastor for a deaf community in Minnesota, and she grew up speaking ASL. SSL is different, she told us, but some of the sign interpreters also spoke ASL, so she was able to communicate, and was taped for a sign blog. It was an absolutely wonderful and uplifting evening, both because of the beauty of sign and because of the great stage presence and joyfulness of orchestra director Martin Jorge.

We also had the joy of greeting Pat Farrell, OSF, the newly elected vice-president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, here to visit her old stomping grounds in Suchitoto (Pat lived here for 15 or more years, working with Peggy O'Neill to start the Centro Arte) with a group of Franciscans and Franciscan Associates. Pat will be an inspirational leader for LCWR, and I'm sure her many years in El Salvador will come in handy, perhaps in surprising ways.