San Rafael

Today we spent our morning visiting the school at San Rafael that is supported through our TIME, that is, Trinity's International Mission for Education. One Sunday a month at Trinity we take a special collection to support schools with which we have a relationship: one is St Marc's School in Cerca la Souce in Haiti, and the other is the school at San Rafael. Its official government name is the Francisco Morazan school -- but everyone here just calls it San Rafael.

The school complex is fairly small: four classrooms (or three classrooms and a faculty room -- I couldn't read the Spanish etched in the concrete outside the doorways well enough to be sure), a small courtyard with a swingset, a kitchen-cum-shed, a washbasin and bathrooms, and a small plot of land for a garden. In these classrooms they teach about 95 primary schoolchildren in the morning, and about 75 secondary students in the afternoon. There are three teachers, an administrator named Carolina, her husband Edgar who teaches one subject and provides transportation in his pickup truck, and one other man who teaches a couple of subjects. Carolina is paid by the government (and the government is several months behind in payments). Two of the teachers are paid by Trinity's contributions through TIME, the third receives a little help from the other two, and the two men are (as far as I can tell) unpaid. They work as hard as they do with as little pay as they get because they know that education is absolutely essential for improving the lives of people in the five communities served by this one school. San Rafael opened in 2005; before that there was no school at all for these five communities. It is remarkable to see face-to-face how much they have achieved in a short time with slender means.

When Edgar drove us up to the school this morning, Carolina was waiting to greet us, along with the three women teachers and a handful of students. Classes are not in session now -- their break is from November until February, not in the summer like our schools -- but a few students had come in on a Saturday to meet their Trinity visitors and help us get to know their school. They danced a couple of traditional dances for us there in the small courtyard, including a Honduran polka that involved much flouncing of large circle skirts. One dance simulated courtship, with the boys trying to impress the girls, the girls initially refusing to be interested, and boys and girls finally circling with their hands clasped. They also spoke with us, a little, through Oakley's translations, about the subjects they studied and how much the school meant to them. Carolina and Edgar told us about their hopes to build another classroom -- which their numbers of students clearly warrant -- and how the parents were willing to do the building so long as they could get materials. I thought about what it would be like if I'd been asked to help build a classroom for the school my kids attended -- and I came to admire those San Rafael parents on the spot.

We were invited to look through the classrooms on our own. There were lots of colorful posters, charts with words and numbers, a diagram of the solar system (I've never seen planet names in Spanish before!), paper cutouts with reminders of good classroom behavior (Do your homework, Eat only during recess, Respect your teachers) which we tried to puzzle out until Oakley translated them for us. In one room I found a list of words that I could mostly recognize: Los Valores, The Virtues. In handwritten letters on colored construction paper were the Spanish words for Perseverance, Freedom, Respect, Honesty, Solidarity -- and one on the bottom I couldn't guess from cognates: Agradecimiento. I asked Oakley to come into the classroom and read it for me,and he said "Thankfulness, Gratitude" -- and then the list was complete. I thought of the core values of our society, and of the Christian community we enjoy and work for at Trinity -- and especially of that last one, Thankfulness, which is key to them all but all too often one of the last that we think about -- and I couldn't help but feel a deep connection and affection for this place. It means so much more to me now to remind people of TIME Sunday and their opportunity to be generous, now that I have been to this school and have caught a glimpse of its values -- and its value. (And it makes me even more sure that I need to visit St Marc's in Cerca la Souce one day soon, too.) This school is changing the lives of children and five communities, and we have a share in their hope.

I'm not sure how the coffee farm and community and school of San Rafael first got their name; but in the Bible (Book of Tobit, in the Apocrypha) Raphael is the name of the angel sent to guide Tobias through his journey to find a wife and to save his family. Rafael provides key advice -- even medical assistance -- to Tobias; and because of that the Angel Raphael is traditionally identified as a patron of wisdom and healing. I believe the school of San Rafael is a source of wisdom and healing in the hills above Copan, and I was humbled and thrilled -- and thankful -- to visit it today.