Today was our last day of work on this trip, and possibly our last day of work at this site. Oakley and Ted and Concepción and Olman have already discussed a new site we may well work on next year (these things can be somewhat fluid), in a barrio called San Pedrito up the hill from Copan. The youth will probably do some work at Santa Cruz when they come in June; but for the adult mission trippers, this was our last day on this site.
As workdays go it was much like the previous workdays: some people mixing cement, some flinging it on the walls as stucco, some breaking rocks on the back hillside. Can you guess which group I went with? We got a lot done, all the way around. The interior of the church is not entirely stuccoed, and it still has to be finished and polished before it can be painted; but when I looked inside at the midday break today, I was amazed how little of the wall was still bare cinderblock.
Meanwhile, out back, we picked and poked and chipped and levered and made big rocks into littler rocks and basically reshaped the hillside. The local congregation members will eventually build a retaining wall out back, to make sure the reshaped hillside stays in place; but from the perspective of one week's work, it's pretty surprising how much we dug out of that back section. Someone showed me a picture they'd taken on the first day; comparing that to how it looked this afternoon was quite a contrast! I'll post before and after pictures when I get a more reliable internet connection.
But we did more than work today — we also ate. Breaking bread together is an important human and religious ritual, and we engaged in it in several different ways. At fruit break in mid-morning there was fresh pineapple, a special treat of this climate. For lunch we had chilaquiles, shredded stewed chicken served over tortilla chips, one of my top favorite local dishes. And in the middle of the afternoon we broke from work entirely to break bread in a different way, by celebrating the Holy Eucharist together in the church.
We've had a concluding Eucharist with the people of Santa Cruz every time we've come here; but the previous two years it was held on a nearby porch. It really meant something that today the service was held in the church. Yes, the floor is still bare cement, not tiled. Yes, the walls are rough stucco, not yet complete. Yes, the dais for the altar is filled with bags of cement and boxes of tile, not with the altar, and, yes the altar is a little wooden table on the floor and the pews are boards on cinderblocks and plastic lawn chairs. It didn't matter: this was their church, their own house of worship, and they were happy to have it and happy to share it with guests. The Christian mariachi band that is part of this congregation, led by Cruz, the congregation's lay leader, has new outfits, black with great gold trim, and they were in their element this afternoon. I read the Gospel in English, and was invited to give the final blessing, which of course I can only do in English (I vow to learn some liturgical Spanish by this time next year!), and I did my best to follow the rest in Spanish. It's a little easier when you already know what it all means, from long familiarity with the liturgy in English. But knowing what it means is not the same as knowing how to pronounce or speak it, nor does it confer the ability to keep up with a roomful of native speakers. But the liturgy is the liturgy, however it's spoken, and the actions of gathering, blessing, breaking, and sharing are the signs of communion in Christ no matter what language us being used. It's another kind of experience of being carried along on the prayers of others.
And so we finished our work for this trip. We got back to the hotel, divvied out the bags of San Rafael coffee — some for personal use, some for Trinity — that each of us must carry, had dinner together as one big group — our only such dinner this trip — and retired to make our preparations for the morrow. We must leave very early in the morning, so bags need to be packed and coffee stowed and sleeping done fairly early tonight. And that is what I must attend to now.
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