Christmas in El Salvador

Every year PazSalud puts together baskets of food items for the families we have been working with over the years and we deliver them just before Christmas.  Each basket is filled with healthy staples for the family to enjoy during the holidays.  Sharing the gift of food during this special time of year is one of the ways PazSalud continues to be a presence in our past mission communities and help some very needy and deserving Salvadorans.

Christmas gifts

Every year, just before Christmas, PazSalud delivers gift baskets to some of the families that we have been working with over the years.  Each basket is filled with healthy staples for the family to enjoy during the holidays.  Sharing the gift of food during this special time of year is one of the ways PazSalud continues to be a presence in our past mission communities and be a catalyst for change in the lives of needy Salvadorans.

Rosita and daughter

Gloribel

Sandra and family

Christmas gifts to friends in El Salvador

From Darren:

Just before Christmas, I was excited to deliver presents from PazSalud to some of the special families we work with throughout the year.  Here's a brief update on how they are doing.

Gloribel and her mother Hortensia:  Gloribel is a wonderful young deaf woman that PazSalud has worked with for several years by helping her to go to school.  She has made tremendous progress in recent years and has a loving family that helps her along the way. (Also she's really not twice the size of her mother, just a camera angle distortion.)

Rosita and her daughters Lupita and Edith:  Rosita is a double leg amputee who lives with her two daughters in El Paraiso; a modest rural community just outside of Chalatenango.  PazSalud has worked with her over the years to help her obtain some of life's basic necessities to ease the burden of everyday existence for the poor in El Salvador. 

Sandra (blue shirt) with her grandmother Maria Ines and her sister Elizabeth:  Sandra is a beautiful girl, born with arthrogryposis, who PazSalud has been helping to attend school.  With the help of an individual in-class tutor, Sandra has made great strides in the past year and recently passed into the 3rd grade.  Education coupled with physical therapy ensures that her condition no longer limits her potential.

Sonia with her children Julia, Kelly and Harry; Sonia and her family have been with PazSalud for several years and as with Rosita, we work with them to ensure they are able to live safe and comfortable lives.  Sonia works incredibly hard to provide the best possible future for her children and PazSalud is happy partner with her in this effort.

PazSalud is honored to participate - in a small way - in the successful futures of these families and all the amazingly resilient, deserving and loving people we have had the pleasure of meeting over the years.  Merry Christmas.

Happy Fiestas, Suchitoto

I have been missing Suchitoto a lot this week, knowing that the whole village is involved in the events leading up to a huge double celebration.  Tomorrow there'll be a huge procession and parade honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe, with all the children dressed as Juan Diego or as colorful indigenas:

 And on Friday there will be an even huger procession honoring the virgin Santa Lucia, mass with the church packed to the doors and overflowing, and a big party in the parque central, complete with food, dancing, a ferris wheel and other rides, the crowning of Suchitoto's queen for the year, and a great fireworks display. 

These two big days come as the culmination of weeks of preparation.  In the week before Santa Lucia day each neighborhood has its special day, beginning with a procession to the church before sunrise (you get wakened with firecrackers), continuing with events for the children or for the whole neighborhood, and culminating with the carroza (float) for the neighborhood circulating through the town in the evening with the neighborhood princess waving and a band playing.  It's an amazing, joyful, shared fiesta. 

And then everyone takes a two-day breather before the Las Posadas processions begin and the celebrations of Christmas take over the village.

There's nothing like it here, in the decorous city neighborhood I live in, and I miss it all very much.