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We´ve graduated from language school!!!! Last week we left our home in Xela to come to San Lucas Tolimán on the beautiful Lago de Atitlan. It has been pretty funny how everything has worked out. After 3 months of trying to contact the mission by email without any luck I called them up and we were invited immediately when we mentioned the BVS coordinator´s name- Tom Benevento. Obviously he is well known around here! When we got here we were given a tour and then shown to our room at a hotel that is rented out by the mission. It has the most beautiful garden. The mission has several projects that they are working on in the area, including rebuilding a community that was destroyed in mud slides, helping facilitate a coffee co-op (which gives the families twice the going rate for beans), medical clinic, a reforestation project and efficient wood stove project. So far we have been visiting and working at different sites each day to get a better idea of what is happening. On Friday we had a meeting with Father Greg who has been the priest in San Lucas for 35+ years. He is very gracious and is an
immense source of information about the Mayan people and their struggles. He gave a talk that afternoon that was about
the differences between the Mayan barter economy and our form of capitalism; and how we must step out of our reality and start to understand the world from a very different perspective. He is very keen to the adverse affects of western interaction with the community and has a very effective way of reminding visitors to the mission that although we are respected doctors, engineers, college graduates and property owners in the US when we come here we are regular people. Our idea of title and status is very different from theirs. It was very good to hear from someone so wise from years of cultural experience here. He has made this his life: to teach people who visit the mission of the cultural realities of our different cultures and to walk along side the people of San Lucas. We are hoping to visit Union Victoria this weekend to get a better feel for what our future may hold. We are excited to meet the people we have heard so much about. The next blog entry should be interesting...
We hope everyone is doing well and we would love to hear from some of you we haven´t talked to in a while. ...pictures are coming....
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2 comments:
Hi guys! I've subscribed to your blog, so any time you post something new, I'll be the first to know.
As part of my sabbatical I've been taking courses and they are my priority. I'm just finishing up a huge unit on teaching the game of Go to fifth graders. They learn about Japanese etiquette too.
As a diversion (procrastination?) I am enjoying talking on Skype to people around the globe. Because of time differences, that's usually not Asians although there are a few intrepid folks who are up at weird hours willing to practice their English in conversation. This morning I was talking to a Latvian.
I told everyone I was not teaching English this year, but the conversations are another form of teaching. When it comes to teaching, I don't have a calling ... I have a yelling.
You're in my prayers.
Cathy
sent you an email with some questions I am in hopes you will answer to inform part of a series we are doing at CoJ on the Great Commission. This week is "to the Nations" actually calling it Disciples are Glocal Trekkers! you guys are great examples of this. the world really is flat...with all these technologies like skype, the internet, blogging, email, cell phones. WOW! Keep you two in my prayers regularly! SEND ME SOME PICS!
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