Walking With El Salvador

It has been a little while since I shared a story about Greasy and Grubby.  If you are a frequent reader of my stories, you know Greasy now lives far away from Grubby, and the two made a recent visit to El Salvador together.  Greasy has a new sister church in Peru, and Grubby (that would be me) continues to be in a close relationship with her sister church community and the people of El Salvador.  Although Greasy's new church experiences carry her to another place, a piece of Greasy's heart will always be in El Salvador.  And although Greasy and Grubby tried on new nicknames during their most recent adventure in El Salvador, the names did not really stick. Our idea for the recent visit was to surprise our sister church community.  The community would not expect the two of us to show up together -- it took a long while for them to accept that we no longer live on the same street (much less the same state), go to the same church or travel together.  This wo...

We packed stones in our suitcases. OK, not real stones, but pieces of gray and brown paper, some new and some recycled, all suitable for making stones.  We prepared our stones, cutting rounded and irregular shapes from the paper, pasting an invitation to the back of each stone, and marking a J, E, S,  Ú or S on each front.  Then, we went out walking. We stopped at each home in our sister community, asking permission to enter, greeting one another, sharing a few stories and praying together.  Then we asked, "Do you know the story of stone soup?"  We shared the story together, bringing out a paper stone at each home.  The invitation was to join us in making stone soup. On Saturday, the invitation called for a pilgrimage to the river.  The tradition of celebrating baptism, first communion and confirmation together was strong, and the act of making a pilgrimage to a special location was a way in which to include all who wished to participate, even t...

Every now and then, the women and girls in our sister community play softball.  It seems to be one of those things that comes and goes, maybe depending on the availability of equipment or leaders or space on the soccer field or safety.  There are a couple of older women in the community who are all out softball stars, who hit with great power, run fast -- who play and cheer with great exuberance.  These dynamo player-coaches periodically rise up and organize the girls into one or two community teams. My all-time favorite girls softball experience in El Salvador took place a few years back.  Our sister community girls were in a tournament with a neighboring community.  The girls met at the soccer field to practice before the game.  Our goddaughter, about 7 months pregnant and wearing flip flops, grabbed hold of the bat and started hitting the ball out into the field.  I still chuckle at the memory of watching her hit those balls. I also chuckle at the...