Holy Week: I began Holy Week with the Palm Sunday Mass with the 5th graders at Andacollo. Holy Thursday all of the students came to the colegio, but there were no classes. Each ciclo, kinder-2nd/3rd-6th/7th-12th, all had special activities about the Passion and the Adoration of the Eucharist. I spent the majority of the day with one of the kindergarten classes. So, we began by watch a children's bible cartoon movie of the Passion of the Christ. and then drew pictures of who we would invite to the Last Supper with Jesus, and then went to the church for Adoration. I came in about half-way through the movie and sat down, and soon the part of Jesus ascending into Heaven came up. In the movie, the way this is depicted, Jesus basically has his arms pointing downward and his head up to the sky and then simply appears to float into the clouds. The kids, who had been pretty quite up until this point, lose it. "Jesus can fly?!?!" "But He doesn't have wings?!?!?" "Why didn't I know he could fly?!?!?!" etc. It has a HUGE thing. And Tia Rosita just very calmly responds, "Children, Jesus can do everything," and pushed the play button again to finish the movie. I sat there just absolutely dying--a roomful of 5 years olds that are all in an uproar about flying Jesus... Good Friday, I helped to organize and then run an all-day retreat for some of the high schoolers. We left in the morning and went to the Congregational offices across town. It was a very nice retreat and I think impactful for many of the students. Holy Saturday, we had a district-wide retreat at St. George's in the morning and then I helped with the Easter Vigil Mass that night. It was a exhausting Holy Week, full of lots of work but also very rewarding.
Easter & First Communions: After the craziness of Holy Week, I was so ready for Easter as a chance if nothing else to sleep! The day was pretty tranquil, and Mary Jeanne and I went out for an Easter dinner that night. The Monday after Easter, we had a special formation in the morning at the school--complete with balloons, dancing and singing, and a gospel reading. The students then didn't have class for the first hour and instead celebrated the Resurrection in their classes with a special breakfast. (This day I was also a debate judge for one of the 12th grade classes--which was overwhelming and a bit intimidating, but very interesting hearing the Chilean perspective on controversial issues such as the legalization of homosexual marriage). This past Saturday we had the masses for First Communions with two groups of 5th graders from the colegio, one at 8am and the other at 11am. It was very exciting for the students and their families, and everything went off without a hitch!
Proyecto Acción Social: We had our first Acción Social project this past week. Mary Jeanne and I wanted to start off with a rather simple project for our first time as directors, so we decided on FundaMor (the place where I taught swim lessons over the summer). We took 6 students, from 8th-12 grade, on Thursday after school across town to the FundaMor offices to celebrate Easter with some of the younger kids. We began with games, and then had little bags of chocolate eggs that we hid for the kids to find, then had a craft project where they made bunny ears, and shared a story about Jesus and the Easter Bunny, and finished with a prayer and gift for the kids. The kids all had a great time, and we managed to make it there and back with all 6 of our students. So I counted it as a success! We will be doing one project each month, and hope to incorporate a diverse group of students to participate.
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Encuentro Arquidiocesano: This past Friday, I accompanied a group of high schoolers to a retreat sponsored by the Archdiocese of Santiago. There were probably 70 or so other Catholic high schools from around the city that also participated, around 800 teens. The idea of the retreat was to help the youth of Santiago to see that the faith/the Church is not boring but is relevant in their daily lives. We began with a concert, performed by a group of nuns, who animated the crowd with song and dance. There was then a play, called "From Simon to Peter," that traced the transformation and journey of the apostle. This play also incorporated the various art forms that the students would later elect to participate in as a type of workshop. Afterwards, there were more than 12 options of art forms, like dance, theater, graffiti, hip hop, and circus, that the teens could pick as an entertaining form to learn how to communicate their faith. We then had to go, because the kids had a chemistry exam, but the retreat finished with a presentation of their works in the different groups, a presentation by a priest, and another concert. I spent the time walking around and visiting my students in the different groups, which was fun to see how creative and talented they all are! It was a nice day outside of the normal grindstone work at the colegio... :))
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