Posts Tagged: St Francis Coll

And our first day finishes…

August 13, 2012

To finish up our first day, let me tell you about our visit to Santa Clara and Paso a Paso . Santa Clara is the nursery that International Samaritan runs in cooperation with the city of Guatemala.  There we met Sonia La Roche, a small but strong woman, who runs the nursery; she has worked at Santa Clara for years, since she met Fr. Vettesse. She shared with us that the people in the area told her she had to talk with “the crazy gringo …

read post
2 comments

Some excerpts!

August 09, 2012

Here are some excerpts of impressions from my journal (mostly about things you’ve already read about here) “There’s Jorge–My friend from St. Francis Coll, who sat next to me at the assembly and loved looking at the pics as I them them on my camera. He’s very talented: he played recorder, offered a greeting/welcome to us, and he played drums for another act.” “The generosity: these people live hospitality, abundance, welcoming.  The light in eyes–and yet also, in some, the …

read post
no comments

Welcoming the Stranger

August 08, 2012

Somersaults , music, and hula hoops later, our group of 14 set out into the neighborhood, to visit several homes. Our route led down a narrow lane; accompanied by several children from the Coll, numerous mangy dogs, and our police escort, we followed our Pied Piper, Andres. Most noticeable was the smell– which I had last noticed in Nicaragua– of burning trash.  It permeates everything and eventually is unremarkable, but that first walk, I thought, “Oh! I remember this.”  Once past the smell, I …

read post
1 comment

How to do hospitality well…

August 08, 2012

… That’s what our arrival at St. Francis Coll was all about on our first day. As we entered the facility we were given small handmade placards that said “Guatemala” and had a small doll on them. We sat alongside the walls of the inner courtyard and waited, warily, to see what came next.  Andres informed us that an assembly would occur shortly and that we should sit tight. The bell rang. Chaos began as children poured from classrooms and …

read post
2 comments

A & B: Arrival & Beginning

August 06, 2012

Customs was the simplest I’ve ever been through: our luggage was safe, we had all our teens, and we walked out into chaos outside the airport. People were standing along the edge of a gate perimeter that was on the street.  We saw a sign “St. Francis of Assisi”! It was Carlos Andres.  He felt familiar and safe—just because I knew he was expecting us. “Please, call me Andres,” he introduced himself.  Andres introduced us to our driver, Juan Carlos, …

read post
1 comment