Update from Antigua, Guatemala, Week Three.

It is hard to believe that we have completed three weeks of language study in Antigua already. It has been marvellous. Antigua is an interesting place, full of ruins, old churches, beautifully-dressed indigenous people and lots of foreign students and tourists. We have enjoyed the school immensely and are impressed by how quickly the kids have picked up the Spanish language. Their French helps.

We are off to Costa Rica for two weeks vacation followed by a visit to the Mayan ruins at Tikal and a brief excursion into Belize. Then we have four weeks back in Antigua and Lake Atitlan Before returning to Canada.

Church-wise we have had some interesting contrasts: one of the teachers here invited us to attend his Pentecostal church last week. I have also attended the two RC services including the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. There are churches everywhere, both RC and protestant (mostly Pentecostal). The syncretic elements of Mayan + RC beliefs are not as evident here as we understand them to be in areas where there are more indigenous people. We shared communion together one Sunday night in our cottage, first half in Spanish, switching to English when the congregation (AKA family) mutinied. Most people we talk to have not heard of Anglicans – if one is neither RC nor Pentecostal they don’t have a category to fit you in!

Immense poverty here, along with great natural beauty. There are numerous aid agencies in Guatemala, some medical, others food/health/developmental, including a group of engineers and architects. We have talked to various health teams and toured the local Fransiscan hospital which looks after many chronically handicapped people permanently as well as hosting visiting teams of surgeons and other MDs from USA, Canada, Spain and Italy who come to do provide surgery for the impoverished villagers from the rural areas. We visited a ward of severely malnourished babies – have not seen such malnutrition since we trained in South Africa. Great to see the inter-denom co-operation amongst the teams. One very friendly Texan Fransiscan friar studying here runs a similar hospital in Honduras staffed by inter-denominational teams from the USA.

Lent has begun in earnest here: processions, special services and displays of art (consisting of flowers, coloured sawdust “carpets” and elaborately dressed figures enacting biblical scenes).

We shall only have sporadic internet access over the next four weeks but shall try to keep in touch.

Adios for now.

David+