Darren's back!

In 2012, Darren Streff often showed up in my blog posts as a Maryknoll Lay Missioner who was working with our PazSalud program.  Then for the past couple of months, he's been absent.  Now he's back, but under different auspices.

What's happened is a longer story than I'm going to tell, but the short version is that the Maryknoll Lay Missioner program came to the conclusion that Darren's proposed work as a coordinator for PazSalud was not a good fit with their expectations of what Lay Missioners would do.  Their expectation, as I understand it, is that Lay Missioners will work directly with a local community on a development project that can later be turned over to the local community.  I'd agree that this is not a good description of our work in PazSalud.

By the time that Maryknoll reached this conclusion, though, Darren had already spent some months working with us.  He'd come to know our program and our people in El Salvador.  He'd even come to the Northwest to meet the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and the PeaceHealth Board of Directors.  He loved the PazSalud program and was convinced that he was called to do this work.

So Darren had to make a choice between PeaceHealth and the Maryknoll community who were his friends and his primary support system for his first year in El Salvador.  The Maryknoll Lay Missioners wisely ask a Missioner who is considering leaving to enter into a formal process of discernment, and Darren entered into that process wholeheartedly, praying through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises with the help of a Maryknoll spiritual director.

He has been in that process for most of the month of January, and on February 4th finally told his Maryknoll Lay Missioner group that he would no longer be a Lay Missioner, but would continue to be their friend and would continue to carry the Maryknoll spirit in his work with us.

We in PazSalud and at PeaceHealth are sorry that Darren had to make this choice, but we are glad he chose to come work with PazSalud.  It's wonderful to have his positive spirit, his joyful energy, and his great commitment to the people of El Salvador working for us again.  We missed you, Darren, and it's great to have you back!

Eleanor's photo journal

Eleanor has visited a great round of friends over the last few days, and I've had the honor to assist with car and camera.  The best way to tell this story is to show it!  We visited Rosita and her three children, Geovany, Lupita and Edith in El Paraiso, Chalatenango:

We had lunch with Dr. Jorge Cabezas, his wife Betty, and their triplets - Dr. Cabezas is a physiatrist (hope I spelled that right) who designs rehab programs; during Eleanor's time with Jesuit Refugee Services toward the end of the Salvadoran Civil War, he helped many of her patients.  Here they are, 24 years later -

Later that day, we visited with Dra. Daysi Ramirez, her husband, Dr. Fredy and their totally enchanting 18-month-old daughter, Ana Valentina:

Then Eleanor caught up with the scholarly pursuits of Walther Jorge Martinez and Alex Hernandez, two PazSalud scholarship students who'd been outstanding volunteers in our clinics:

 And she went on to a happy reunion in Mr. Donut - always a favorite connecting place - with Lolo Guardado, who has long been helping groups of artesans to sell their work -

And with Hernan Merino, the motorista who keeps us all safe and very happy during many mission trips:

Even here in Suchitoto, Eleanor has had some wonderful days with Peggy O'Neill, and yesterday Moises Alcides Garcia came by.  This 20-year-old is about to graduate from a 2 1/2 year Tecnico program in graphic design in the Universidad Andres Bello, and he brought his portfolio to show us the work he's done.  Eleanor was remembering eight years ago, when a frail 12-year-old Moises needed two new heart valves and PeaceHealth's Roland Trenouth made sure the replacement valves were purchased so Moises could have his surgery in Hospital Bloom.  What great changes in the life and prospects of Moises Alcides!

It's been a grand time, full of memories and hope.  Thanks, Eleanor, for sharing this time with me, and for all the many years you have joyfully shared with the people of El Salvador. 

Otra vez, Eleanor in El Salvador

The past week has been filled with joyous reunions, only slightly interrupted by the serious work of getting the paperwork ready for our doctors' permits and our customs clearance.

One joyous reunion has followed another since Sister Eleanor Gilmore walked off the plane last Saturday.  Eleanor's long history in El Salvador goes back to time during the civil war in the 1980s, when she worked with the Archdiocese of San Salvador and with Jesuit Refugee Service, was twice picked up for questioning by suspicious authorities, and helped people coming in from the campo, including a few guerillas, get some much-needed health care.

Eleanor left El Salvador after the signing of the peace accords in 1992, but the people had found a place in her heart, and she returned in 2000 to begin the El Salvador Health Mission of PeaceHealth and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.  She and Kathy Garcia developed the PazSalud mission over the next nine years as Eleanor continued making friends.

She's stayed away for four years and a few surgeries, but this week she's back at last for a good visit with those friends.  We began the celebrations on Sunday with Mass in the Crypt of the Cathedral, where Monseñor Romero is buried, followed by a festival dinner at Estela and Susy Garcia's home, with almost all the Garcia family in attendance.  Here's Susy and Estela with Estela's mother and Eleanor- it was a glorious afternoon and wonderful Sopa de Gallina India, la abuela having provided the gallina. 

It's been like that all week - we've connected with many, many friends, and each connection has been a delight.  I get to share in the memories and in the joy that Eleanor's presence - in El Salvador again! - brings to her and to the many, many folk who know and love her.

Eleanor and I were both saddened that Sister Noreen Linane died while we were so far away.  Eleanor says she was ready and completely at peace - it's good to know that, and no surprise.  Noreen was a tiny woman full of life and energy who loved gardening and sewing and creating the most beautiful flower arrangements.  I first got to know her when, as a novice, I was told to shadow her in her work at Jubilee Women's Center, transitional housing for homeless women in Seattle.  As I quickly found out, Noreen's shadow had to move fast and listen hard to the wonderful stream of Irish talk that moved with her - I was exhausted by the day's end, and enchanted.  She's continued to be one of the hearts of our community at St. Mary-on-the-Lake, and while she's gone through many serious health crises, she always before has emerged full of energy, ready to move fast, to talk fast and to create beauty.  We will miss her so much.

Oh the permissions?  I hope all is well....it's always an area of headache and worry until that moment when the customs people wave goodbye to us, and that's still a little more than a month away. 

Introductions and New Possibilities

This long and informative blog post somehow got deleted, probably by me...  So I am trying to recreate what I vaguely remember saying a couple of weeks ago.

It's about Darren Streff, the Maryknoll Lay Missioner who has appeared in a few of my posts.  Darren began his Maryknoll mission in El Salvador with three months of Spanish study at the CIS, and while he was there - by beautiful serendipity, or as I prefer to think by grace of the Holy Spirit - he learned about our El Salvador Health Mission from Marilyn.  Marilyn, who was also studying at the CIS, met me when she was visiting in Suchitoto.  She's an adventurous Canadian, traveling on her own at the age of 80 (a great role model!), and we had connected over lunch at my favorite Suchi restaurant.  I had given Marilyn my e-mail address which she passed on to Darren.

He e-mailed to say that our mission sounded exactly like the kind of work he wanted to do in El Salvador, and could we get together?  We connected when all the Maryknoll Lay Missioners were making a retreat at the Centro Arte para la Paz, and began to talk.   Kathy Garcia and I invited Darren to come to a day of our eye surgery mission in April, and he loved every minute.  We could see how good he was with the patients and how much he enjoyed working with them, and we learned as we continued to work together that he's also reliable, creative, energetic and super-organized.  Here's a photo of Darren from that day.

Darren's background, with years of professional work in health care planning, administration and advocacy, was a great fit with PeaceHealth, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and the El Salvador Health Mission.  Kathy and I had been talking about a succession plan, as my asthma has been slowing me down and making me realize that it's about time for a quieter life.   We saw a few possibilities, but once Darren showed up, we knew that he would be a ideal person to be our new in-country coordinator. 

Happily, PeaceHealth Board President Sister Andrea Nenzel and PeaceHealth CEO and Chief Mission Officer Alan Yordy agreed that Darren will be a great person to carry on the mission that Sister Eleanor Gilmore began 12 years ago.   We were able to introduce Darren to PeaceHealth and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in October and November, in a rapid series of meetings that we all enjoyed.  Darren will be working with me until May, and then will get to take over the car and the bank account and the family support and scholarship programs and the many, many tubs of stored mission materials (his San Salvador house will be bulging!).  I'll continue to be involved with the mission in many ways - helping with fund development, updating the website, and - most important of all - participating in all our missions. 

It's a very happy development, and I'm grateful for Darren, one of the better gifts of the Holy Spirit.  May his work with the El Salvador Health Mission be full of joy and peace.

Elemental struggles

I'm back from London, where every street was rich with history, with elaborate architectural detail, with an immense variety of people from all parts of our world.  Thanks to our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Congregation Programme, we were able to see beyond that beauty and visible wealth to the struggles of those who are just trying to survive, trying to get a foot in the door, or losing their petition for asylum. 

Now I'm back in El Salvador where history is briefer and more ambiguous,where there's less variety of peoples, but where the struggle to survive is often sharper and more challenging.

The problems my Salvadoran friends have to confront and survive make me sad and humble.  One of my friends called to tell me his brother had been arrested, accused of a murder that happened two years ago.  My friend thinks he can prove his brother was at work at the day and hour of the murder, but he has to find money for a lawyer to put those proofs before the court, and his family is poor.

Another friend stopped by with her 18-year-old daughter, who is scheduled for kidney surgery tomorrow.  She's been taking care of her daughter and her father, who has a failing heart.  She makes her family's living by doing laundry, and she's looking pretty desperate right now.

I can help a little, thanks to Sisters and Associates who have generously given money that I save for the needs of people here in Suchitoto, but it's very limited help, and the needs are huge.  I'm painfully aware of the gap between the rich world - in London asylum seekers who were admitted could also get housing and some income support - and the poor world, where the struggle just to put food on the table can be overwhelming. 

Hospitality, resistance, the Catholic Worker

On Monday and Tuesday, we visited the Guiseppe Conlon Catholic Worker House in Harringay, North London, and the Catholic Worker Farm in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of London.  Both the House and the Farm take in guests - the House offers shelter, food and community to about 17 men who are refused asylum seekers - men from all over the world.

Guiseppe Conlon House is at the back of an old church in a Turkish neighborhood, almost invisible from the street.  Father Martin Newell welcomed us, told us a bit of the Catholic Worker history, talked about the grounding of their work in Catholic Social Teaching, and led us in a Eucharistic celebration.  As a community, they are "ecumenical, pacifist, communitarian and anarchist in the spirit of gentle personalism."  They fed us with the same generosity and community spirit that they offer to their guests - and at least we did help with the cleaning up: Father Terry Moran, CSJP-A on the left and Katrina Alton, CSJP Candidate and soon-to-be novice on the right, with one of the core community members.  Katrina has been part of the Catholic Worker community and has participated in some of their acts of resistance, including a protest at the Ministry of Defense headquarters for which she was arrested (see the posting of September 5, 2012)

At the farm, we met with Scott Albrecht, who shared with us some of the ways his history has led him and his family to choose life as Catholic Workers.  The farmhouse and a couple of acres are leased from the farmer who raises cattle on the farm; the Catholic Worker community has a grand vegetable garden, with plenty of kale, zucchini, chard, beans, tomatoes and potatoes for the community dinners.  Their guests are women and children, again women who are not easily able to get asylum. We were wonderfully fed on lamb stew, tomato soup, and green salad, and we returned home - in sunshine at last - full of admiration for the work of these Catholic Workers, work without salary and with many worries about having money to pay the rent and the light bill, work shared joyfully with friends and guests.

In the top photo above, Scott in front of the fireplace in the 14th century farmhouse; below, the vegetable garden.

London rain

There's a theme emerging - I last wrote about getting caught out in the rain in Suchitoto, and today all 35 of us were caught out in the rain in the London Wetland Centre, an event totally appropriate to being in the wetlands.

The glorious swans and colorful ducks found it all delightful, but for me it was a rude reminder of just how cold and wet rain can be in a cold climate.  Getting back to St. Katharine's in Limehouse meant riding across almost the entire breadth of London on various Tube lines, but then we were warm and at home, inside, which is the only perfect place to be in a rainstorm.

I am loving the double experience of being in this great city of London, with all its delightful and bewildering variety of peoples and languages and being with my Sisters and Associates of St. Joseph of Peace community, whom I miss greatly when I'm in El Salvador.  Our times of prayer and deep reflection are powerful - and so are the times of laughing over card games and counting noses on the Tube.

Suchitoto to London

Tomorrow morning I get up very, very early to fly to London.  And I have to say that it sounds so unlikely as I sit here, stewing in the wet heat of September - to be going from this quiet village to one of the world's great cities, from this tropical heat to classic British weather (chilly and gray, I believe).  I'm going to be part of a Congregation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Program - we will be learning about responses to climate change, to poverty, to trafficking, hearing from inspiring people, and inspiring each other with our prayers and reflections. 

Today I would have been happy with sunny, hot and humid, the normal mix.  But about an hour after I hung some laundry out to dry, rain started, and I had to rush to take it in, half wet.  I had one errand outside the house, mailing some letters and paying a bill and yes, I got caught in a downpour without an umbrella.  Saved the letters from getting wet, but not myself.  We need the rain here, I'm not complaining... well, not complaining a lot.  I hope Suchitoto will get plenty of daily rain while I'm gone, and I hope I'll come back from London longing for the heat and the warm rain. 

Hasta luego, Margaret Jane

I'm taking Margaret Jane to the airport tomorrow for her plane ride home to New Jersey, and this time I don't expect to see her back here until late November.  She's acquired some new responsibilities on a Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace committee or two, and as a new member of the Board of Directors for PeaceHealth.  These meetings come just a little too often for her to come down to El Salvador for the six-week stays that have been her pattern for the last three years.

It's been three wonderful years of sharing household and community in Suchitoto, while I worked on our PazSalud missions and Margaret Jane taught English at the Centro Arte para la Paz.  Her connection with El Salvador is much longer than mine - she was first here during the civil war in the late 1980s - and she has taught me a lot over the years - what to expect, what's reasonable, how to be prepared for water shut-offs and electricity disappearing, how to survive scorpion bites.  Gracias, Margarita, por su compañerisma, sabiduría y por sus grandes historias - thanks for your companionship, wisdom and for your wonderful stories!  Here she is last Thanksgiving, with Peggy and me:

As she flies home, I'll be getting the house ready for Kathy Garcia, who arrives Sunday night: she and Darren Streff and I will be working together through next week.  After that, I'm anticipating a new housemate, Maria del Carmen, who will be doing some volunteering at the Centro Arte para la Paz and working at the house on some artesania - a connection through Peggy O'Neill.  So I won't be too lonely!

And that reminds me to say that Margaret Jane and I have been praying with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious through this week of meetings, and we have been very proud of the clarity, vision and strength they have shown in their public statement today.

Pray for us, pray with us, Dorothy

One of our great Sisters and a great friend died last week - Dorothy Vidulich, CSJP, a passionate, engaged woman, writer and journalist, justice seeker.  She wrote a biography of our founder, Margaret Anna Cusack, Peace Pays the Price, that attracted many of us who've since become sisters or associates. 

I will always remember meeting Dorothy at a Call for Action (I think) meeting in Albuquerque - must have been about 1993 - and the way she welcomed me like a friend she'd known for ages.  It was a time when I needed a friend, so her welcome touched me deeply.  I suppose we may have met four or five times since then - not often, as she lived in Washington D.C., and then in New Jersey, while I was in Seattle/Bellevue and then El Salvador.  But each time, it was the amazing experience of stepping into a deep friendship that didn't need any light conversation.  I can only imagine how many friends Dorothy must have left remembering her with love, as I do!

Dorothy led an amazing life - you can find a good summary here from Susan Francois, CSJP, and another, with a sample of her writing, from Arthur Jones, her colleague at the National Catholic Reporter.  She will continue to pray with us from the community of saints, and people who never met her will find two new friends, Margaret Anna Cusack and Dorothy Vidulich, when they pick up Peace Pays the Price. 

On the way

I'm in SeaTac Airport on the way home to Suchitoto from home in Bellevue.  The retreat week was a huge gift - time to slow down and pay attention, to enjoy silence and eagles crooning, to pray and meditate, to pick blueberries in the Mercer Slough, to delight in Alexandra Kovats' insights into our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Constitutions (that might sound like a dull subject, but our Constitutions are amazing, a real gift of the spirit.  And then the fun of talking again at the end.  Yesterday, the day after the end of retreat week, we had our annual picnic at St. Mary-on-the-Lake, trees and flowers and people all at their best:

A good northwest summer day - gray, with occasional gleams of sun, a few sprinkles of rain, but nothing serious, temperature somewhere between 65 and 72.

And now I head south and east, back to the rainy season, tropical heat in the Central American season of winter, the corn growing, back to my other home in another world.

Vacation into Retreat

We had a lovely week, my sister Kathy and I, driving down and up the west coast with Robert Caro's Passage to Power on the iPod, visiting cousins, and revisiting our childhood days at the Hahn family vacation home in Dutch Flat, California (it's on the road to Lake Tahoe).  Our cousins Margie and Mike Jager and Dowrene Hahn welcomed us to a home that looked very much as it had when we were all young, right down to the exact shade of dark green paint.  The town hasn't changed much either: the store is still where it's always been, the old hotel, now restored, looks ready for visitors, and the swimming hole, which was really a hole in our days, is now properly concreted and tiled and chlorinated, but it still keeps the old irregular shape.  What a rare satisfaction!  I'm far more used to trying to remember what used to be on a familiar corner that's suddenly sprouted a 10-story building.

Dutch Flat is an old mining town set into a dry Sierra forest of Ponderosa pine, western red cedar and fir, a spare and beautiful landscape that in summer is reliably sunny - a pleasure for northwesterners who'd been going through the usual Seattle soggy June.  Here we are in the forest, visiting the grave of my uncle and aunt, George and Dot Hahn.

We managed to visit other cousins, Margaret Rooker and Emilie Sturges Hance, along the way, and we had a grand family time.

Tomorrow I begin the other much-anticipated week of my U.S. time, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace community retreat here at St. Mary-on-the-Lake.  A week without all my electronic toys will be very good for me, and a week of silence even better.  Even the weather is cooperating, as a sunny wave began on the 4th and will - in theory - last through the retreat week.  I'll be back to blogging afterwards.

Vacation pause

I haven't blogged much these last couple of weeks because I've been working hard on our PazSalud report to our donors (done, printed and mailed!) and connecting to my CSJP Sisters.  I've been blessed to be present when our Sister Cecilia Marie Gri went home to God at 98, dying as she lived with clarity, grace and the deepest faith.  I was delighted to join the community yesterday in celebrating our 7 Jubilarians, who've given a collective 395 years of ministry.  And today I head south, driving to northern California with my sister Kathy to visit cousins and have a vacation.  So I'll be back in July, and meantime here's a couple of Suchitoto photos:

From the Corpus Christi procession -

and from a celebration of art and artists at the Centro Arte para la Paz -

A dash of tropical color as I set out on a rainy Northwest June morning.

This week

In so many ways, I'm in the usual "day before" state - slacks and shirts ironed, customs permissions and paperwork in hand, the to-do list and the to-bring list checked over.  I'm just about ready to go meet our eye surgery mission group at the airport tomorrow night.

And at the same time I'm feeling - along with a lot of U.S Catholic Sisters - like I've been punched in the stomach (to paraphrase the elegant words of Simone Campbell, SSS, poet and director of NETWORK, the Catholic Social Justice Lobby).  The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), to which my Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace belongs,  has been ordered to reform its statutes and is being put under the direction of Archbishop Peter Sartain for five years. 

It's personal to me because I was a member of LCWR when I was on the Leadership Team of what was then our Province.  And it's even more personal because Pat Farrell, OSF, the current President of LCWR, lived here in Suchitoto for many years, and is a friend to Peggy, Margaret Jane and me.  I've been going about the daily work and the extra work of getting ready for a mission, and I've been feeling kicked in the gut and I've been praying for peace, a prayer that feels necessary right now. 

I'm glad to have a week ahead that will keep me running all day, glad I have a mission to do and work that will help some people to see more clearly.  And I pray to see clearly myself, and to be peace-filled.

Feliz dia de San José

Happy St. Joseph's Day!  I've had a great double celebration of our community's patron saint.  Yesterday I took Kathy Garcia and Mitch Costin (they flew in Saturday night) out to San José Villanueva where we handed over twelve special prescription eyeglasses that were organized  by our February mission optician, Heather Downes, and made and donated by an optical lab.  Lots of happy eyeglass-wearing faces!  Then we helped out, a little, while Iris Chacon of San Rafael Cedros did a first workshop for the families who will be receiving one of the water filters we're donating, and we got a chance to exchange hugs with our San José friends.

Today was an even more special Dia de San José because I've had the great pleasure of watching while Mitch Costin of Eugene - a great stand-in for the saint - did an amazing lot of plumbing, carpentry, and electrical work to a) stabilize our operating microscope, b) fasten the handwashing sink firmly to the wall, c) install a toilet paper holder, d) put up a new lamp above the dishwashing sink, e) put up the new paper towel holder Donna gave me, f) re-hang all the mirrors at the right height and g) unstick my sticky kitchen table drawer.  This afternoon Mitch and Kathy and I went in and had a two-hour gambol through EPA, the new fancy hardware store here, that will lead to a few more things being done tomorrow.  We also bought a new super-sized toolbox to hold all the new and wonderful tools that Mitch has found for us so that our PazSalud toolbox is no longer a wussy and pathetic sight, full of curtain rods and odd lots of tape, but a proper manly St. Joseph sort of toolbox.  It was great fun!

On top of all that, Mitch took some wonderful photos - the two in this post are his.  Oh yes, and I began the day by teaching a computer class at the Centro Arte para la Paz with the help of Patti Moore and her Spanish teacher Beatriz, where the kids - ranging in age from about 11 to 18 - tore through the material I thought would take up two classes in the first hour.  St. Joseph come to my aid as I try to figure out what we'll do on Wednesday and oh yes, St. Joseph, a special blessing please for Mitch Costin who does your kind of work with such joy.

The view from my window

Here's the view from my window in Cusack Hall lately:

The new Gaffney Hall - it will be our home health center for Sisters who need some assistance in their daily living - is going up right across from my room, and it's been illuminating and fun to watch the men at work.  An astonishing level of planning and coordination and complex ordering are required for even a simple building like this one: for us, watching the assurance with which the tasks are done and the pieces come together is a joy.  I think our workers are having a good time, too.  Aside from having a first class view of Lake Washington while they work, they're being treated to coffee and Joan Holiday's cookies - and, of course and most important, earning a good wage. 

By now, as I prepare to head to the airport and to El Salvador, the building has progressed quite a bit: almost all the siding is up, the roofing is being completed, and interior walls are beginning to be formed.  The promise is that when I return in June, it'll be almost ready for the move-in. 

A grand weekend

I'm in the Northwest for a couple of weeks - primarily to attend our community's spring Assembly, which took place this past weekend.  It was a joy!  Our presenter, Sr. Tere Maya, had a lot to say about interculturality and the joys and challenges of making community across cultures - a very important message for us, as our recent new members and inquirers come from an amazing background of cultures (Kenyan, Portlandian, South Korean, New Jersey-ite, Nigerian, English, Haitian, Indian).  This is riches, indeed, but also fertile ground for confusion and misunderstanding.  Thanks to Tere for her humor, great stories, and challenging concepts.

In the photo above, Tere is on the left, talking to Srs. Ede Reif (center) and Mary Keough.

The other high points of the weekend were our annual Jubilee dinner (followed by dancing for the hardy ones) and the covenanting of seven new Associates. 

They are, l-r, Laura Trettevik, Bob Scheri, Kathy and Max Lewis, Ken Otto, and Sharon and Lloyd Lewis, a wonderful group (two are friends from PeaceHealth, Laura and Bob; I know Kathy and Max from my days at Rose of Lima House; and Ken, Sharon and Lloyd are new friends).  They're each of them a gift to our community life, and I pray that this new connection will bring them great peace and much joy.

Ready

That time of year again...

Our medical mission team arrives tomorrow, and at the last possible minute today (4:50 pm, to be exact) I got our franquicia (permission to import our medications and supplies without paying customs duties).  The franquicia is always a nail-biter, the essential part of our process that's pretty much out of our control once the papers have been handed over.  And I have to say that, like the good gringa I am, I really hate having to depend on something that's out of my control.  Illuminating, that.  As if my life or anyone else's was in my control!  But I do love the illusion.

And now, at last, the franquicia is in my hands, I've ironed the necessary shirts and slacks, I've checked my way through the long to-do list, I'm ready to meet the team at the airport tomorrow, and to introduce them to San José Villanueva on Sunday.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying the company of Margaret Gaffney, an Associate of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, who's going to be part of the mission team.  Margie's been brushing up her medical Spanish in Guatemala for a few weeks, in preparation for helping with interpretation and came here on Thursday to help with the packing.  I've heard from Pat Clausen, who'll join us tomorrow at our retreat house lodgings and from Silvia Pleitez, who'll meet us at the airport, and from Hernan, our beloved motorist, who will be driving his new beige microbus to the airport tomorrow.

We're ready.

Chickens, eggs, and the Guacotecti women

I've been waiting for quite a while for the Guacotecti women to get their chicken farm up and running - and so have they!  They found a great property and were able to purchase it with help from some Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace (you know who you are!), but then they had to wait to get the paperwork completed, and wait to negotiate electricity, and wait to be approved by the appropriate government agency.  It's been a long slog, but today I visited them with Leslie Schuld and Iris Alas of CIS, and there's a real chicken farm rising up from the dirt, soon to be home to some 600 cackling hens.  The foundation and walls of the henhouse are in place; a man is coming today to erect the metal framework and roof that completes the structure.  A new well is being dug for the community just a short distance away, and piping will bring water to the farm. 

The women were all there working hard as we bumped up the road - working with pick and shovel and wheelbarrow in the blazing sun, with a couple of guys helping out.  The guys are being paid.  The women have to wait until the chickens come and start laying and the eggs get sold, and they'll keep working hard together every day to make their dream a reality.

We had a short meeting - in the shade by the side of the road - to go over progress and next steps.  They'll be purchasing the hens next week.  It's going to be a real chicken farm.  And I promise to go back for more photos with actual hens involved.  Meanwhile, here's the whole gang, including Leslie and Iris and me and a few kids -

The Nenzel Sisters

Andrea and Judith (Knight), the two Nenzel sisters, are safely back home in the Northwest - Andrea in Vancouver, WA or somewhere up or down the highways from there on the way to many PeaceHealth meetings, Judith in Nanaimo sorting through photos and memories to share with other family members.

It was a joy to have them both here, and it was fun to get to know them as sisters.  After working for six good years with Andrea, I know her pretty well, but it's always a new light to see the family connections, the shared jokes, the pauses, the likenesses and differences.

As you can see, it's not at all difficult to guess that these two are sisters, and since they're both tall and blond women, I had a rather nice two weeks of being short - not my usual experience in El Salvador.  We also got to hear, from Lita Calderon, Dina Dubon and John Guiliano, some good stories about Andrea's time here at the Calle Real Refugee camp from 1985-87.  My favorite was about Andrea using every one of her inches of height to insist peacefully and with great determination that an unhelpful local priest send a water truck up to Calle Real.  He did. 

It's always a moving experience for me to hear the Calle Real stories as I continue living my part of our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace history in this country, which now stretches back more than 25 years.  And it's wonderful to see the love and gratitude that greet Andrea and Margaret Jane in this country.  The people remember who was there with them in a dark and uncertain time.