Today is my last day with my host family. Tonight will be spent with the CASAS students, watching a movie and eating pizza, I believe. Then on Monday, we’ll all be splitting into small groups and heading out to different service placements in Guatemala and El Salvador. I will be in San Juan, Atitlán, very close to the town that we visited last weekend. It is beautiful there, and I am looking forward to it very much. Three other girls will be joining me, and we will be working with a local health clinic. I’m ready for a change of scenery. A month and a half spent with a family who is not your own, with parents who are not your own, in a house that is not your own, with no siblings, is just a bit of a stretch. And the city is getting a bit old. Cities aren’t really my thing - too crowded, too many black clouds of exhaust.
Our last day of classes was Friday. It’s wonderful to have everything over and done with. Each language/literature class presented a small project – a song, a comic drama, readings, etc. In the afternoon, we all spoke for about 5 minutes on a selected topic that we had each written a paper about. We went to get ice cream to celebrate.
Church this morning was pretty rockin’. For 2½ hours. There were about 25 people there, an increase of at least 25%. Another Sunday, a few more spirits cast out. Turns out it’s practically requisite to fall on the ground if one has had a demon cast out. I still don’t know what to think about that. Is it legit? Or is it a placebo effect, a result of the high level of energy and social expectations stemming from a guy shouting prayers in your face and throwing purified water and vegetable oil all over you? Does one have to believe in evil spirits and/or the casting out of such before the casting out actually “works”? Or can anyone and their dog have a demon cast out of them, whether they like it or not? The sermon was about Jesus as a sacrifice, and how various OT ideas related to him. The scriptures actually formed a coherent idea, which is kind of rare.
I may or may not be incommunicado for the next several weeks. I don't know the Internet situation in San Juan, but I almost certainly won't have regular access. But don't worry - I haven't fallen into a sinkhole, drowned in a tropical storm, or been fried by a volcano... yet.
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