Sunday at the mission in Colon, Mexico

Well, let me see if I can remember this day, since I’m three days behind in my journal for this trip. Well, let’s start by noting that whenever you are told the time of when something starts here in Colon, the aforementioned time serves only to open a two hour window within which the event actually starts. I had the guys get up by 8am, hoping to let them sleep a little bit to catch up from our traveling, but not wanting to oversleep and appear slothful or be bad guests, but we were up much, much too early actually. The 8:30am breakfast was served about 9:45 or so. After slinking around waiting for something to happen, we eventually took a look up the stairs to the dormitory where the teenage boys of Santa Maria stay. There was one young man lazily playing a guitar and a couple of boys with him. Zeke and John from our group introduced themselves and asked if they could play a song on the guitar. They are both excellent guitarists, and after a couple of songs, boys started emerging from everywhere, wiping sleep out of their eyes, to see what was happening. They had all slept in later than we did. It was Sunday, after all. Pretty soon there were 30 boys or so on the stair listening to music and slowly waking up on a perfect Sunday morning! Finally, we had breakfast, and it was there that we found out that the 11am Mass would actually start at 1pm (or so!). This gave us a chance to ask Fr. Mike if we could climb the mountain directly in front of Santa Maria. A pretty large mountain, certainly not the biggest one around but a sizable one nonetheless. After Fr. Mike told us, however, that he could get up and down the mountain in 50 minutes, we were quite sure that the 12 of us guys from the trip could find our own way up and down the mountain in the same amount of time. Boy were we wrong. Fr. Mike asked Pedro (later to become known to us as the Chuck Norris of Mexico) to take us up the mountain. We really needed him to take us up the right trail and to help us climb through the most interesting places of the mountain. It really was a blast – I have some good video of us climbing through some crevices. On the way down, Pedro started running, showing his athletic prowess even though he is easily 50 years old. We could not keep up. In fact, loose gravel on the way down caused at least six falls for me, one into a nice young cactus that drew blood from my leg and hand. But we made it down, and showered before the 1pmish Mass. The Mass in the basement chapel of Santa Maria was kind of what you would expect. Everything was rough around the edges - the liturgy and the chapel itself with its fluorescent lights and wires hanging everywhere and ceiling fans and sound system that cut in and out, but of course it was very prayerful and beautiful. The basement Church sounded like you were singing in a bathtub. This was the first time we were able to meet the younger boys from Santa Maria, who live apart from the teenage boys. They all showed up looking better than we did – with wool pants and starched searched and perfectly combed-over black hair with the right amount of gel. And they sang and swung their little legs that didn’t reach the ground all through the Mass, and answered questions for candy about the day’s readings after the liturgy was over. Two SOLT priests from the Philippines, who are being sent to Kansas City, Missouri in a few months, were at the mission and Fr. Francisco celebrated the Mass in Spanish and did a great job. After the Mass was time for the big meal of the day – the boys just call it – la comida (the food!). After that we headed into the town of Colon to visit the markets outside the Basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows, but by this time, around 5:30pm, the markets were already closing down. We did get to pray at the Basilica, and then we all ate quite a bit of ice cream and sat around the square and talked and did what we do best – played soccer. As you will see in the days ahead, almost everywhere we go a game of soccer breaks out, mostly because it is easier for us to communicate with our feet and to break the ice this way rather than relying on our pitiful Spanish. After dark we headed to have Tacos de Pastor – a little nighttime taco joint right around the corner from the Casa de Jovenes where the KU women were staying with the teenage girls. We hit the jackpot with this place –what great tacos, quesadillas, and gringas (still not sure what this is but am sure that I ate a bunch of them!). A great family runs this taco stand out of their house and it was clear after our first night there that we would be back. Still, the night was young, so we headed over to a small park near the Casa de Jovenes and played, you guessed it, soccer. That was followed by some line dancing and some four square. We were doing things (actually not me, but my group) that looked quite ridiculous and made us stand out even worse, but people seemed to be enjoying watching us. Zeke in our group made the observation that Mexicans are very gregarious in private and very reserved in public, whereas we are more circumspect in private and tend to make fools of ourselves in public. There is quite a bit of truth to what he was saying, but thankfully, in Colon we are in a very safe place; in fact, almost too safe because it is easy to let one’s guard down. But all is well – the day ended so well. Thanks be to God!