Santa Lucia, Honduras Dear friends in our supporting churches: Last week more than 15,000 Hondurans celebrated the 500th anniversary of the first mass to be held on the mainland of the Americas. The original event took place during Colombus’ fourth trip to the New World, when a group of his merry men (the explorer was sick and stayed aboard his ship) came ashore near today’s city of Trujillo and celebrated their good fortune in having survived the assorted dangers that sailors worried about in those days. There was lots of controversy about this year’s anniversary. To begin with, a debate raged among historians about whether the original event was really a mass; you need a priest for a mass, and the evidence that a priest was present is not very convincing. Yet church leaders essentially did here what they did with Juan Diego, the saint recently canonized by Pope John Paul II in Mexico: they ignored the doubters and declared the historical case closed. And on with the show. And a show it was, with the presidents of Honduras and El Salvador present, along with the vice president of Nicaragua (Honduras is in a tariff tiff with Nicaragua so it was deemed inappropriate for the Nicaraguan president himself to attend) all in the front row. In fact, a couple hundred of the region’s light-skinned political elite sat on comfortable chairs in the shade while the mostly dark-skinned masses had to stand out in the sun on the other side of a six-foot high metal fence guarded by elite counterinsurgency troops with automatic assault rifles. Nothing much has changed, it seemed, since that first mass (or non-mass) 500 years earlier. This semester I’m co-teaching a weekly class on "Latin American reality" at the Honduran Theological Community. The other teacher is a Honduran pastor. The class is designed to help seminary students think in bigger terms about the issues that they face everyday in the poor urban neighborhoods where their parishes are located. The class includes students from a wide variety of theological traditions, from Anglicans to Methodists to students from very conservative evangelical churches. Along with classes in Biblical studies, homiletics, and church history, the course on "reality" is a required class. What’s fascinating to me is the way this diverse group of women and men can tear apart and analyze a variety of issues. This week’s session focused on how historic memory is used in Central America. We looked at a variety of issues, but used the 500th anniversary mass as a case study for how contemporary political interests manipulate history. I’ll spare you the details, but what I want to highlight is the way this heterogeneous group reflected together. I had launched the discussion with a description of the mass, which I covered as a journalist, and some of the historical and other contextual issues. Yet the students took the discussion from there, and I observed with delight as they listened attentively and respectfully to each other. They had very different approaches to the issues involved, as you can imagine, but this made the conversation more profound rather than more conflictive. And they did a good job of bringing the issues down to earth in terms of what these implied for their day-to-day work of proclaiming the Gospel in the midst of poverty and misery. This is a great strength of the Theological Community where we serve in your name. Compared to many other seminaries where students are usually taught how to think alike, we cherish diversity, and the students and their ministries thrive on it. As we equip the churches of Honduras and Central America with tools for ministry in the 21st Century, we give thanks for your support for this unique environment. This semester Lyda is the academic dean–coordinating a lot of what seem to me to be boring but necessary activities like grades and teacher schedules–and is teaching the field education course, where she helps students reflect on their concrete experience as pastors. She also flies to the north coast once a month–in a rickety little plane that encourages you to believe in the power of prayer–in order to teach an intensive course which is part of the Theological Community’s outreach in that area. As part of my work with the seminary, I’m beginning to plan for a regional conference on immigration and pastoral issues that we’re hosting in late 2003. This year’s conference on gender and pastoral work is coming up in two months and we’re trying to figure out how to make it happen with almost no funding. (That’s one of the reasons we’re beginning now to work on next year’s conference!) In other news, at least two churches in the States have written to say they used my Angola writing for adult Sunday School classes. Great! I’m glad somebody reads that stuff. As you know, we’re big fans of fair trade coffee, having watched Central America plunge deeper into poverty in the last couple of years because of the international coffee crisis. Many of you are now serving only fair trade coffee in your churches. Wonderful. You might also be interested to know that House Resolution 491, introduced in July in the U.S. House of Representatives, would express the "sense of the Congress" that all branches of the federal government should purchase only coffee which is Fair Trade Certified. Your representatives are currently in their home districts, and you could easily contact them to let them know you support the bill. We have no trips planned in the coming weeks, and look forward to all of us being home together for a change. The kids just began their new school year, so helping with homework has once again become an integral part of each day. As always, we appreciate your prayers for our ministries here. Please know that we keep you and your outreach ministries in our prayer. South and north, together we are engaged in this exciting adventure of mission that God has entrusted to us. Shalom, Paul