What a wonderful celebration of several villages coming together to celebrate Palm Sunday.
The picture below is of St John the Baptist Church in Indian Creek who hosted the services. They took the benches out of the church and set up a large area next to the church to hold the Mass to hold more people. There's no way they would have all fit in the church.
It was impressive to watch the men organize who would do what. I didn't understand the language but I could tell that they were going through the different parts of the Palm Sunday Mass and different Village church members were volunteering to do different parts. Yes, I did say "men". They were mostly the men who were organizing it. Based on what I saw and the number of churches mentioned I would say there were probably 7 churches/villages represented. They are worked together beautifully. Wow.
A closer shot of the statue of St. John the Baptist.
Once they organized and decided which village would do which parts we all walked together to the school down the road and started the procession with palm branches from there.
The music and singing was great. It was all in their native language. The video below was intended to record the singing as we walked. It was wonderful how they all sang together even though there were so many people.
They had a procession from the church to the area where Mass was celebrated. This was the entrance procession.
That's Father Matt who is the Paster. He is one of the 3 Jesuit priest who oversee services for 30 Villages! And we think our priests have alot of responsibility!! Each priest has 10 Villages that they celebrate mass at. And most of the Villages are not close and most of them are on dirt roads so it takes a while to get there. They also go to the catholic schools and offer confession and masses for the children.
I went with Fr. Aric to a couple of villages and made some blogs about them a couple of weeks ago, in case you may have missed those.
I tried to capture a view to show how many people were there but I don't think it did justice to it. There were approximately 500 people there.
They divided all the responsibilities among different groups. This is where the women cooked the "Caldo". Made with either beef or chicken. They fed all of us without charge.
Yes, they cooked with wood fire in this crazy heat!!! Bless their hearts.
I couldn't resist taking a picture of the women cleaning the pots they cooked in. The young lady in blue noticed I took her picture and I signaled from where I was if it was ok and she nodded, yes and gave me a big smile. People are really friendly and generous. I wish I could have capture the beautiful smile.
The children are adorable and very well behaved. Even in the crazy heat they hold it together with wonderful patience.
Wow, that is so beautiful. I love the way they dress. I told Marco, I would love to dress like that. It's very similar to the way the native people dress in my pueblo. And the music sounds amazing.