November was a great month!

We had the blessing to participate in the Southern Encounter, where representatives from every community in Guatemala and El Salvador traveled to Chichicastenango (Guatemala) and there, together with the group from the Open Delegation, we spent the weekend, learning from each other, laughing, singing and sharing.

The Southern Encounter, which includes representatives from every Sister Parish community in Guatemala and El Salvador, traveled to Chichicastenango (Guatemala) for their annual gathering. There, the group shares about their communities, plan activities together for the following years, each country participates on the cultural interchange, either with music, dancing or any artistic expression that represents their country; there are a couple of speakers who’ll talk about a topic that everyone is interested on, like this year, where Miriam Lopez from El Salvador, share about Human Rights and violence against women and what the local organizations are doing about it. The Open Delegation joined them, and spent the weekend together. It was a great time getting to know everyone, learning from each other, laughing, singing and sharing about our communities, like Oscar from Tierra Nueva 2, who shared that they received recently a delegation from Saint Joan of Arc, and they celebrated their 30th anniversary of relationship!

This was a great time for everyone to know each other, share about their communities and learn from the others about what it’s done between other relationships.

After the Southern Encounter, the group from the Open Delegation traveled to San Antonio Cunen. The three delegates belong to Danville Congregational Church (California) and had the blessing to visit their sister community (San Antonio Cunen) for a couple of days.

With the community, we traveled to Rio San Juan to spend a wonderful day together. There we started with a bible reflection, where everyone participated, they we had lunch together and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the views, the river, and chatting. At the community we visited families and prayed with them, shared meals together and participated at church. We had the chance to broadcast the service and had a simultaneous participation of the group back in California, there was music, praying and a bible reflection, it was amazing to see all the participation from each community, and especially the young ones who are now active in the relationship. This opportunity to broadcast the call was memorable, as it is the very first time both communities could do it together.

This experience encouraged the delegates, who returned home and shared their experiences to the congregation and now they are starting to plan a Delegation South to North!

If you would like to look at all the pictures from these two events, please click here to check out the album.