The reason why we teach English… Ty Stingel goes back to Calgary, Canada tomorrow…we leave here at 4:30 a.m. to get him to the airport in time for a 7:10 a.m. flight. So last Friday I told the English class to prepare a goodbye party for him after the class today. It was quite a party, complete with cochinita pibil, mole poblano, tamales, chiles rellenos and a cajeta cake for dessert.
Pretty much the whole class showed up. It was a really neat time. It occurred to me that not one person who was at the English party today goes to church. Not ONE SINGLE PERSON! So what is forming is a sort of parallel “potential church.” This is why, really, we teach English year-round. Want contacts. Well, here’s a way.
As we were eating I had a phenomenal conversation with three people about the differences between Catholicism and Evangelical protestantism. “Our faith is a lot more simple really,” I told them. We only have to search the Scriptures and understand the Bible, you have to understand the Bible plus church tradition, church councils, papal declarations and a whole host of other stuff.”
Then we got into Mexican history a bit. Curious that the apparation of the Virgin of Guadalupe happened during the Italian and Spanish Inquisitions in Europe…that the heroes of the revolution, who carried as their standard an image of the Virgin, were initially considered heretics by the same Roman Catholic church that now embraces Mexico’s peculiar brand of Guadalupan Catholicism.
Well, we talked about a lot more too. I told them the the most important thing to me was one’s relationship with Jesus. Period.
it’s great to see familiar faces in the picture! great news about all that’s going on with the students.