Our 2018 Study-Service Theology Term group returned to Goshen at 4:30 a.m. Sunday, slept in a bit, and then started our reorientation activities for the day. The day included time for journaling, discussions about how to curate individual SSTT narratives, Juan-dancing, and singing, plus a Sunday evening pool party at…
We’ve concluded our Guatemalan experience with an overnight in Antigua, the former capital of Guatemala and a lovely, well-preserved colonial town just 45 minutes away from SEMILLA. We left for Antigua yesterday, just after centering prayer, and first went to the Capuchin Convent and learned more about the city and…
We finished last evening with an intentionally scheduled theological discussion, with students raising whatever theological questions they had. We wrote the questions on the board and then discussed a few of the questions by passing around a “talking stick” so we could hear many voices. Students had rich insights and…
We spent the morning at Margarita Tejada School, the only learning institution of its kind in Guatemala. The school is for people of all ages with Down Syndrome, from infants through adolescents through adults through the elderly. The school was set up by a family wanting to support some sort…
After breakfast and centering prayer this morning, we had an hour and a half of relaxed time, so students rested, caught up on their journals, or chatted with each other. At 10:30 Rachel Beveridge, who runs an NGO in Central America and is married to Israel Ortiz, spoke about human…
We just returned this evening from our weekend away. After a 4 3/4 hour trip from Chichicastenango, we arrived back at SEMILLA (“I can’t wait to get back home to the seminary,” some students were saying), had dinner, enjoyed worship together led by a student group, and then celebrated Simon’s…
Departing from SEMILLA at 6 a.m., on this first day of our weekend field trip, we headed for Iximche, a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican archaeological site in the western highlands of Guatemala. We had breakfast at nearby Way’bi Foundation, which functions as a hotel for tourists, whose stay helps fund a hospice…
OK, now we believe it’s the rainy season in Guatemala. The seasonal rains arrived just in time for our afternoon field trip, all of which was scheduled to be outside at several different sites. But the rain came in buckets, a true deluge, and it’s still raining now, some five…
Thus far our days have been a bit different than originally planned, with several components shifting because of a protest or newly scheduled activities or different availability of guest speakers, but the rescheduled activities and timing always seem serendipitously right. This afternoon, at the request of the local Ronald McDonald…
Today turned out a bit differently than originally planned, partly because a major march was happening in the downtown area today, finishing with a protest in the National Plaza — the precise area where we planned to go for an afternoon field trip. We revised the afternoon schedule and instead…
