Home in Latin America

Many of you know that I am currently in El Salvador with a group of United Methodist pastors from Virginia. I was hoping to be able to blog fairly often, but well, as with many plans, it is not quite possible. For this moment, I do have a computer with internet, and so I hope to share a bit of the journey so far.

On friday I flew from Baltimore to Guatemala City, Guatemala. For the past two weeks, several pastors have been in Guatemala studying Spanish and staying with host families. I am part of a crew of bilingual pastors who are joining the team for the El Salvador leg of the journey. Arriving in Guatemala gave me a strange sensation of arriving home. I lived in Guatemala for four months in 2001, and even though a lot has changed in the last nine years, the feeling has not. As we drove away from the airport, I could feel myself relax. It is such a different rhythm than the US, and I can´t explain it, but I feel more grounded in real life when I am here, and in Latin America.

Saturday we drove to Ahuacapan, El Salvador where we are staying for the week with host families and participating in dialogues with the Methodist pastors and a few lay people of El Salvador. We are also joined by a Methodist pastor from Colombia, so we are quite the multicultural group. This is fun, particularly since I only knew one of the VA pastors before I came, so there is always someone to talkwith and learn about.

I am staying with another pastor in the home of Maria, her daughter Brenda, and Brenda´s son Diego, who is six. We have been welcomed with open arms and experienced tremendous hospitality. Diego in particular is excited to have us around, and he likes to show us his dinosaurs, his cars, or the birds singing outside. He doesn´t like to leave the house when we are there.

It´s amazing to know that you have family wherever you go, and that is what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and a member of the Church (big C). We are received here as brothers and sisters, and it is a testimony to our connection that we can be a family so quickly. We have received grace upon grace from our hosts and the family of God in El Salvador. What a blessing it is to receive such grace!