Mini update: One year anniversary!

Thought I would just write a quick update on what we have been up to recently here in Santiago:

A few weeks ago, we organized the school’s first “Semana de Beato Basilio Moreau” (St. Basil Moreau week).  The idea was to use the week to help the students learn more about the founder and charisma of the Congregation of Holy Cross.  We were able to put together a video using some clips that a friend and I filmed when we traveled to visit the work of the Congregation in Lima, Peru, clips from Notre Dame that one of the old OLMs filmed and a recorded interview with one of the Chilean priests who spent 6 months with the Congregation in Uganda, Africa.  Each grade watched the video and discussed the video in their religion class.  The biggest event of the week was the St. Basil Moreau Expo.  All of the classes in the elementary school (kindergarten-6^th grade) had to research a different part of St. Basil Moreau’s life and mission, while the classes in the middle school/high school had to research the work of Holy Cross in different countries around on the world.  On Thursday, the students set up stands with pictures, food, information, music, etc. and we invited different people from the Congregation to walk around and judge the stands.  The students, as always, went all-out in their presentation.  Here are some pictures from the event (hope that you especially enjoy the pictures of the class that researched the University of Notre Dame!  I was dying of laughter watching them cheer and shout "Go Irish" which sounded like "eeeerrrreeeeeshh" because they pronounce our "i's" like "e's").

 

This past Saturday, a group of about 60 students and parish members participated in the Caminata de San Alberto Hurtado, one of Chile’s two saints.  Saint Alberto Hurtado was a Jesuit priest, lawyer, and social worker who spent his life fighting for a more just society and dignified work for all, especially the most poor.  He actually volunteered at our Parish (Nuestra Senora de Andacollo) when he was a teen!  Groups from all over Santiago and surrounding communities participated in the Caminata, carrying banners, singing songs, and dousing people in “chaya” (little pieces of paper confetti) as we walked 8 kilometers to the Saint Alberto Hurtado sanctuary where the beloved Chilean saint is buried. 

Chaya!!!

One of our Holy Cross seminarians with a group of teens from Parroquia San Roque (another Parish of the Congregation in a different part of Santiago)

My good neighborhood friends, Sabina and Tatan, came to join us for the Caminata!

 

This week, we are preparing once again for our school’s Fonda, which will kick-off the month of September and the preparations for Chile’s most important holiday, Fiestas Patrias, September 18^th.  Just like last year, we will start the celebration with a Misa a la Chilena (“Chilean Mass”) complete with traditional songs and dances, and then everyone will proceed to the school to buy food from different stands and watch school groups perform various dances from all of Chile’s diverse regions…how different it feels this year to actually have an idea of what is going on!!   

 

Other than that, the other big news is that Mike and I officially reached our one year mark as overseas lay missionaries in Chile on August 2nd.  Hard to believe!  On the one hand, it has gone by insanely fast, and I am baffled when I think about all of the things that have happened, the lessons learned, projects completed, people who went from being strangers to friends, school retreats, students, colleagues, and housemates who have come and gone, and the amount of bread and avocado that I have consumed (...had to throw that in there!).  At this time last year, the people of Santiago were out in the streets, banging pots and pans, and marching in mass to show the government that they were tired of the unequal and expensive educational system.  Holy Cross was preparing to celebrate its 75th anniversary at St. George's College and to ordain its newest Chilean member of the Congregation.  In our little house on Pasaje General Armstrong, my 3 housemates and I were just getting to know each other and to figure out what our community would be like.  Blair was introducing Mike and I to EVERYONE at Andacollo, while we frantically tried to remember everyone's names, tag along to a bunch of events where we had no idea what was going on, and figure out how we were going to fit it to the school environment and Holy Cross community.  How much has changed since then!  Now Mike and I are only 2 in the house (with no new OLMs coming this year!), and we feel at home in the school, in the neighborhood, and among the members of the Congregation. 

It is somewhat overwhelming to look towards the last third of this experience.  On the one hand, it feels like the end will be here before I know it, and I am doing everything to avoid that end.  On the other hand, I think about all of the classes, retreats, Masses, mission trips, meetings, and other events that lie ahead in the coming months, and there seems to be so much to get done that the end is still far away.  The experience has developed from being an exotic new journey to being a true life and ministry, in the most literal and challenging meaning of the word.  Exhilarating and fulfilling on the one hand and completely exhausting on the other--and always with the slight feeling that with so much to get done, as a missioner, you are never doing as much as you could no matter how hard you try!  But even as I look to the future with some uncertainty, reflecting on this past year in Chile, I can say for certain that the decision to come here has produced much fruit and definitely sown many seeds in my life, and hopefully in the lives of others as well.