What makes me smile...

“Jeni, we met again as a group, and the young people are excited, and they want to form a group that meets, and we want you to come to support us, and when can we plan a day?!?!” I had reached my limit of in-the-office work today (I’ve been back in the city for a week after a long time in the communities where I work with the young people), so I made some phone calls to some coordinators in the communities to plan the meetings and workshops for this month. Before I could even tell this young woman who I was, she was already bursting at the seams to tell me about how the group of youth has been meeting and has had some good discussions and is ready to be more organized and have more activities…and so on and so on. I was recharged right away—a much-needed burst of energy to keep working on the material for the workshops we have planned, collaborating with some of the coordinators to form agendas for meetings, and finding some funds for some special events we want to do this month—all in order to get back to the communities next week.

I have to tell you a little more about the community and group of young people in the community of the girl with whom I talked. The community’s name is Copante and is the closest of 5 of our communities in the very rural area of Morazan to a bus stop. That means that every time I want to go to the other 4 communities, I walk first past this community. When I have time to stop, I do and chat with the ladies who run the little store located a stone’s throw from the school in the community or with the families working in the fields closest to the road. When I don’t have time to stop, nevertheless I know I walk by with a smile on my face remembering the special moments that I have already shared with that community, with the teeming interest of the youth in activities, discussions, and readings that will benefit them, how the women’s cooperative are working so hard to turn their 200+ chicken project into a success, and even how I ate 8 mangos in just one morning because I couldn’t say no to any of the kids who kept wrestling the mangos down from the trees to give to me.

I arrived in Copante for the first time in late February and I got the tour of the central houses and of the community’s prize project—the construction of the first church and meeting center that has ever been built in the community. When I first saw it in February, it was a heap of newly-dried adobe bricks and I remember thinking that it would be months before the project was completed, especially with the impending rains. When I returned to the community the Monday after Easter, the group of young people directed me to the new sight of the day’s activity—the new church that had been finished and inaugurated the previous day for the community’s first Easter celebration service. I could grasp a little bit of what the newly complete project meant for the community because I remembered how many times the young men had arrived at meetings with clay caked to their feet and pants up to their knees as they had spent the day making adobe bricks. I had visited house-to-house with the youth inviting new youth to the activities and answering parents’ questions and emphasizing that ALL were invited (its not important if your family is Catholic or Evangelical, FMLN or ARENA), and been able to say that our first meeting of the month would be in the newly-constructed place where ALL the community is invited.

Copante is a community of 80 homes, with between 2 and 3 families living each home. If you are standing on a nearby peak, you can seen that the expanse of the land that is Copante covers 2 and a half mountain peaks. I got to stand on that peak, because one morning last month we visited house to house half of the homes in the community and have planned to visit the other half the 15th of this month. Few of the youth there study, but the youth coordinator, a young lady named Idalia is one of the few who has continued in her studies. Each Saturday, she walks to the bus stop at 4:30am to attend school in the pueblo Caocaopera all day and returns in the night. She will finish high school in about 2 more years of this distance- Saturday-classes. Its very important that the youth meet with some consistency on there on, and have asked for some material to help them with themes for their meetings. Idalia will begin leading them through a text called “Accompanying the youth with values like Monsenor Romero” which has guides for leading reflections about themes like liberty, service, happiness, and perseverance. I just flipped to the contents page of the book sitting beside my computer here, and the first theme is “life”…a good starting point for any process of youth formation.

I want to end this reflection with an image, another one of those that makes me smile, both when I enter the community to stay a while and when I am passing by en route to another. An image that ties together my own childhood with the lives of the kids here. Its “Padre Abraham”—ring any bells? The young people of all ages LOVE the song “Padre Abraham” (“Father Abraham”) which I used to sing when I was a kid, and they think its hilarious when they sing in Spanish at the same time that I sing the song in English. Pumping our arms in the air, bobbing our heads, spinning around…all the motions “…right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot…” included.