January 21, 2006

We visited the Lacandon Presbytery meeting in Damascus today. We left Ocosingo at 6:15 am and drove east toward Palenque, then south west to Damascus. It took about 3 hours but it was a beautiful morning and we did not have any traffic problems. We arrived and immediately began a two hour meeting with the Presbytery leaders.

Unlike in the US where each Presbytery has a paid staff, all the leaders of Presbytery’s in this part of Mexico are volunteers. They must make their own travel arrangements to attend meetings etc. There are no funds available to reimburse for travel or provide a stipend for these volunteer leaders.

We discussed several projects that would involve churches in the Lacandon Presbytery and groups from the US. We were laying the ground work for groups this summer and next. The session of each church must agree to host a group and allow Hebron Foundation to come spend a weekend and conduct a mission conference. The conference teaches the church members the concept of missions and they must agree to begin outreach to neighboring communities.

Our meeting was interrupted by an invitation for breakfast and Pablo and I were served eggs, tortillas, beans and havenero peppers. It is the custom here to serve your guest a meal when they arrive, even if the next meal is scheduled shortly thereafter. On several occasions we have eaten twice in a 2 hour period. The other custom is to serve the guest large portions and it is insulting not to clean your plate. So when lunch was served shortly after we ate breakfast, it was a real challenge to finish the carne asada. It was very good, I just ran out of room.

After lunch I was introduced to the Pastor’s of the Presbytery and we talked about the planned clinic and working together to meet the needs of the people. I hear more Tzeltal than Spanish in the villages, so I am beginning to pick up some words.

After the meeting, Pablo was cornered by several people that wanted to discuss various things, so he went off and I was left to mingle and try to communicate with folks from the village. A lady gave me three oranges and they immediately became juggling balls which drew a crowd of children. I offered to teach them how to juggle and that is how I spent the next hour and half. As we played and laughed, they taught me Tzeltal and I taught them English.

We drove back toward Ocosingo to Vincente Guierra where Pablo was the main event for an anniversary celebration for the ladies society at the Presbyterian Church. The service was to start at 6 pm and we arrived about 5 pm. They served us a quick supper of eggs and ham and we went into the church.

Time is a relative concept in the villages. The service was to begin at 6 pm, and an announcement was made using the church pa system alerting the village that Pastor Pablo was here to speak. I was the only person in the sanctuary, but slowly folks started arriving and by 6:30 there was a respectable crowd.

Women sat on the right side of the church and men on the right. It was a traditional village church service with lots of women and children and a few men. Church services here are all inclusive….children, infants, dogs and the occasional pig, so the general level of noise in the sanctuary is much higher. I was sitting beside one of the large open windows so I could catch a breeze and slowly watch the stars appear in the clear Chiapas sky.

Pablo preached a good sermon (I guess, it was in Tzeltal) and by 8 o’clock we were having a second supper of pollo asada. Then the elders met with Pablo to discuss the Sunday service that would celebrate the Lady’s Society. I learned that while the service was to celebrate the anniversary of the creation of the Lady’s Society, it (the society) was not really functioning well. It had lost most of its members because they were not receiving the support of the elders. Pablo spent a bit of time “training” the elders on supporting the ladies.

The village and church culture here is definitely patriarchal and hierarchal. Only men serve as pastors, deacons or elders. The pastor is in complete control of the church. The deacons serve the elders at meals and all wait for the pastor to start eating or finish eating before they begin or excuse themselves from the table. So the concept of “supporting” the ladies was a difficult one for the elders to grasp. At one point I suggest they ask the ladies what they wanted to do about an issue, and I got blank stares from the men around the table.

Pablo got some acquiescence when he related a story of a church whose ladies refused to cook for the elders because they were not being supported. Not being fed seemed to register with the men and they agreed to appoint two new elders to “supervise” the lady’s society.

We slept in hammock in the church and I was thankful that I remembered my earplugs. At 1 am there was a ferocious dog fight just outside the church and then the roosters began a contest to see which could crow the loudest. I got up once during the night then struggled to get back into my hammock. I’m a bit out of practice with these and it is definitely an acquired talent to get in and out without looking the fool.