Our Little Artists

Each Sunday, Andy draws a picture of a Bible story for the niños and niñas to color, in the style (more or less) of Salvadoran folk art. Here is some of their better work:

The Exodus
Psalm 23: "The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want."
John 14.6: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life."

Sitio de los Nejapa - Update

La Reverenda talking after a Sunday service at the Casa Comunal with Maritsa, Jacobo, and Chamba.

Andy: The work continues in Sitio de los Nejapa. Currently, we're working on evaluating the community, learning about the needs and problems community members experience. Yesterday we took a group of Quezaltecos (i.e. people from Quezaltepeque) from San Miguel Arcangel out to go from house to house with a questionnaire, accompanied by some of our people from Sitio. We covered 20 houses, representing 88 people. We'll probably head out again, to try to get some more, but what we have is a good start. Some things we learned:

- Only a limited number can read (almost exclusively young people; most men over 30, and nearly all women that age, can read very little or not at all. This is mainly because the war prevented the older generation from attending school.).

- Every family depends on agriculture to some degree; the cost of seeds and chemical fertilizers are a major concern, especially since planting season is coming in May.

- In addition to these costs, other important concerns are lack of access to water (there is an ongoing project in the community; we're trying to figure out how we can help with this); a lousy road; delinquency and crime; and stoves that produce too much smoke and use too much firewood.

- Other concerns are illiteracy and lack of access to medical care, and lack of food. The situation at the school, which was not specifically mentioned on the survey (we're trying to give the director a wide berth) nonetheless received several comments as well.

Our goal over the next few months will be to see how we can help in these areas, or, as in the case of the water, support activities already in progress. Unfortunately, we're kind of on our own in this; there are no NGOs already working in the area. So if anyone has ideas, or especially if anyone knows of groups that might be interested in working on these issues, we'd love to hear about them.

Semana Santa (in Pictures)

We had a busy Semana Santa (Holy Week) at San Miguel. Now that we're back after a few days' vacation in Nicaragua, we thought we'd let the pictures of our week speak (mostly) for themselves.

Monday and Tuesday we hosted the diocesan youth retreat at San Miguel. We talked about the role of youth in the mission of the church, played lots of games, and slept on the floor.

On Maundy Thursday, we had a Eucharist and footwashing service. The tradition here is that the priest washes everyone's feet, but about halfway through, Tomasa asked if she could help Leigh...

...and at the end Rosita wanted to wash Leigh's feet. It was a moving moment in a very moving service.

After the Stations of the Cross on Friday, we walked around town looking at alfombras, big pictures created in the streets on Good Friday, traditionally out of colored salt or sawdust, but now more often painted.


On Saturday, we had an all-night vigilia. We started with the Easter Vigil Service (we lit a fire and a Paschal Candle that Leigh made)...


...watched movies, played games, and sang songs (though you can see that at 1 am our singing was a little lacking in energy...).

During the night, our computer crashed, taking Leigh's translated sermon and our songs with it, and the power went out. Without any lights, most of us lost the battle to stay awake.

At 5 am, after about an hour of sleep on the floor, we had our Easter service at San Miguel Arcangel, followed by another service in Sitio de Los Nejapa. Then we went home and slept.

Community Organizing at its Most Basic

Andy: One of the goals for my work in Sitio de los Nejapa is to begin some community organizing efforts - bringing community members together to work out how to realize their own objectives, whatever those may be. Recently, I was able to see a small but promising example of organizing.

The director of the local school is perhaps best described as a tyrant. He hits children (which, though it's against the rules, is generally accepted - though not punching them in the back, as is his custom...), he has held one girl back a grade (one of the most active members of our group) as a punishment, and he has closed the school gates to prevent children from buying snacks from the same girl's grandmother, apparently more for personal reasons than anything else.

For the last couple weeks, a lot of my visits to community members have been dominated by discussions this man's behavior, and how it affects children. Several have been sent home for continuing to patronize Niña Ana's shop, and many have stopped going to any school, since the next closest is still a long way away. But parents are either too afraid or too disheartened to speak up - the director has reportedly asserted that he doesn't care what the parents (or, specifically, the mothers) think.

Today, though, as we wrapped up a Stations of the Cross service, I started asking about the situation, and what the parents can do about it. A plan developed to go, together, to talk to the director in a non-confrontational way, and if he continues to ignore their concerns, to write a petition to the Ministry of Education. A simple enough approach, and probably obvious to many of us. But in a community where a problem as obvious as an abusive school director is endured for 6 years because of resignation and fear of failure, even a simple plan can be an accomplishment.

At last!

We're sorry to have left you for so long with nothing new to look at besides Andy, shirtless, in a hammock. But we've been busy: School has started!



Colegio Episcopal Anglicano San Miguel Arcangel opened on January 21 with 10 students (now we're up to 11), ages 3-9 (yes, all in the same class...we like to keep things interesting). It's a parvularia, which means it consists of pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and preparatorio, the level before first grade. There's still a lot of work to do, and we still need to raise some money to make it through the year, but the kids are wonderful, the teacher does a great job, and weekday mornings at the church are so much more joyful than before! Leigh teaches a "Christian Formation" class every week, using the Godly Play curriculum, which the kids enjoy. They also seem to enjoy climbing on Andy at recess.

Our other big news is that we've moved out on our own. We found a casita a block above Doña Carmen's house, still close to our parishioners. We continue to see Carmen all the time, and she always brings us little presents. But it's nice to be on our own - cooking, cleaning, and even trying our luck at gardening.

Los Sitios de Nejapa

Some of you may be wondering, in this our sixth month here, what, exactly, Andy does. After all, you may be saying, La Reverenda is in charge of a parish; she preaches and leads Bible Studies; she celebrates the Eucharist. What's El Esposo doing all this time? Allow us to answer your question with a photo.


That's a joke. Actually, in addition to assisting at the church - leading music, helping organize the youth group, helping translate sermons, driving La Reverenda around - Andy's main task has been reestablishing the church's presence in a rural canton nearby called Los Sitios de Nejapa. The community is very poor; most of the people grow corn, beans, and sesame seeds, and pick coffee or cut sugarcane when they're in season. The Episcopal-Anglican Church has a casa comunal, or community house, that was taken over by the military during the war, and until now, remained practically unused.


The goal is to reestablish a mission there, Misión Santo Tomás Apóstol, and begin community development efforts. Right now, Andy has been visiting with the people and leading weekly Bible Studies. We've taken some donated clothes out there, and we had Eucharist there on Sunday, which went very well. We hope to continue to increase this presence and work with community leadership to bring the resources of the diocese, such as the medical team and community and human rights education, to the community here. Hopefully, Los Sitios de Nejapa will one day have the kind of community organizations that the church has already established in other parts of the country, to help the people have more control over the economic and social development of their communities.

¡Feliz Navidad!

Merry Christmas to all of our readers and supporters! We had an exciting Christmas here in Quezaltepeque. On Sunday we celebrated the fourth Sunday of Advent with a pastorela, or pageant, of Las Posadas, a traditional Latin American celebration in which a group, led by San Jose and Santa Maria, go from door to door searching for a place to stay. Our Holy Family was accompanied by pastorcitos (little shepherds) and angelitos.













On Monday, we held a service in Los Sitios de Nejapa, the rural community where we've been working to establish a mission. The Bishop came and preached. We went from there to Quezaltepeque, where the Bishop joined us for a Christmas lunch and the Eucharist. We had a few local guys helping out with music (you may recognize a couple of them from our third-place Copa del Obispo team), and had a great service. We were very happy to have Leigh's family in from the states for all of the festivities!










After a very busy weekend, we took some needed time off and traveled around the country with Leigh's family. We visited the beach and some nice little towns in the mountains, on the very pleasant Ruta de Las Flores (Route of the Flowers).

Now, as we start the new year, we're looking forward to opening of our school (we're up to 5 students!) and continuing to strengthen the church. As always, we are grateful for all the support and prayers we receive, and we'll continue to keep you updated as often as we can.