Thursday Night and Friday morning I taught Kara how to pray Evening and Night prayer. This is something that I have just learned recently how to do on my own. I have prayed Morning and Night prayer before but only in a group setting and never on my own, so being so new and fresh to this it was nice to be able to share with Kara how to pray these prayers. As I prepared for this trip it was my intention to learn how to pray both these devotional prayers each day in order to be in solidarity with the Catholic Church. I want to stay connected with the Church as much as possible throughout this journey…When I have the opportunity to attend Mass you can for sure count on me being there so I am able to receive the Eucharist and be in total unity with the Church. Tomorrow (Saturday) we venture out into the local township to explore and get our bearings straight and I have every intention of finding out where the local Catholic Church is located.
(Saturday)…I found it!! After quite the walk we found the Cathedral. Will, Julian, and myself ventured out in the town in search of the Cathedral. I was told that the Cathedral was two blocks down and to the left a bit from the internet café that my team had used earlier in the day, so we headed in that direction. We got two blocks past the internet café and went left and all we saw were homes and businesses along the road and no sign of the church…so we kept walking. About 15-20 blocks later I could see the steeples of the Cathedral towering over the local businesses. We walked up to the church and looked in and I realized that they were preparing for Mass for the evening. Will had asked a lady what time Mass started on Sunday morning and she had told us 7am…how excited I was to being able to attend my first Mass in a foreign country. We then just chilled in the square for a few mins and before leaving I just wanted to make sure we had the correct Mass time. In my broken Spanish I asked a guy and he told me it started at 6am…now this is where the problem lies two different times, it’s at the butt crack of dawn, and it’s a 45minute walk…this did not matter I told myself. I figured whoever wanted to go we would just leave the house at 5:40am in hopes that it started at 6am but if not it would be a perfect opportunity to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament for an hour.
Instead of going back the way we came I suggested we try going a different route going straight down this one road and if need be take a left to get back to the main road. Well we started walking down this road and after about ten minutes we came up to the super market where we had shopped at earlier in the day, which was only a 5 minute walk from our house…so basically we took the extended route on the way to finding the Cathedral which made it eased my mind for the morning so we would not have to get up super super early just super early.
The alarm went off at 5am this morning and I got out of bed to get my butt in gear and prepare myself for the morning ahead. After waking everyone up and getting ready we started our walk to the Cathedral. Kara, Alisha, Mari, Julian and Myself were ready were the 5 that decided to go to Mass. Mari, Alisha, Julian wanted to experience a Catholic Mass in Spanish…Mari and Alisha had been to Mass once or twice before in the U.S. but Julian had never been at all. I love the universality of the Church because I knew exactly what was going on, but also found it hard to pray the parts of Mass in English as many people were around us praying them in Spanish. It was a beautiful Mass and I am grateful I had the opportunity to receive the Eucharist. It may not have been the best for Julian being that everything was in Spanish so his frame of reference to ask questions is jaded to a degree, but I told him I would teach him as much as I could…I am glad that the 3 of them are interested in learning more about the Catholic faith as are a few others in our group of 46. It’s reassuring to know that people want to learn more and clear up the misconceptions they have been taught previously…this gives me the opportunity to be a witness to the Catholic faith and share not only my knowledge but my faith
