Walking With El Salvador

During the third week of January, students began the 2025 academic year. After the kids were settled in school, the Los Héroes Women's Project got things organized and started producing this year's batch of   Days for Girls kits.    It didn't take long for school directors and community leaders to start sending invitations to Pastor Sonia, the Los Héroes Women's Project coordinator, to come and lead education sessions and distribute the menstruation kits to girls who need them. If girls don't have access to hygiene products, they cannot attend classes. Teachers and directors recognize this need. School staff are interested in learning about the kits themselves so they can promote their use. Over the past 9 years, it has been most common for teachers and community leaders to gather groups of women and girls, not men and boys, to participate in the menstruation education classes. Guys were never specifically excluded, but they were not typically included in the target...

Twenty-five years ago, our nurse practitioner did pelvic exams and pap smears for women in our Salvadoran sister community. She brought glass slides, used hairspray as fixative and somehow got those test results back to the women. She diagnosed many infections. We brought medications for that. It was a bold move for one of our first activities as sister churches together.  Girls in a remote community learning about their bodies, 2024 Helping women and girls to learn about their bodies, to listen to their bodies, to have agency over their bodies, and to have access to what they need to care for their bodies: this has been a  twenty-five year ministry of our churches working together. Twenty-five years of making  steady steps and bold moves  together. In many families, frank talks about sex, reproductive health and menstruation are open and honest. In other families, these conversations include misinformation or don't happen at all. Through the years of doing Missions ...

I received a quick email message a few moments ago from a new friend from St. John's Lutheran Church who traveled to El Salvador for the first time earlier this month. She asked, "How did the partnership begin?"  "Can I call you?' I texted. But then I gave it a little thought. Have I actually written down the origin story of our sister church* partnership? I searched my blog, and I did not find a story. It seems perhaps is it one of those twisty-turny tales that lives in the oral tradition of the few of us who are old enough to be originals. It might be easier to call, but I think it is time to write. I messaged my friend to watch for a link. Where to begin... The year was 1995. I had recently joined the church staff at St. John's ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) in Brookfield, Wisconsin as the Parish Education Coordinator for babies through adults. One of my responsibilities was to plan the programming and train the staff for Sunday School. I le...

 Part 2: Off the Beaten Path at Ecoparque El Espino View looking down from Mirador Aleman  Before dawn on a recent morning, my husband and I headed up the San Salvador Volcano to do some hiking and bird-watching. Our destination was Ecoparque El Espino - a place we have heard about for years but a place we had not yet explored. We will definitely make this a recurrent destination to enjoy on our own and with delegations of visitors. Situated on the southeast side of the San Salvador volcano, Ecoparque El Espino consists of 102 acres of protected land, at an elevation of just under 4000 ft above sea level. Unlike Parque El Boquerón (featured in Part 1 of this story),  El Espino is not managed by the national park system, nor has it been developed as a tourist site with "fancy" amenities. It is owned and managed by the El Espino Cooperative, which garners income from coffee production and, since 2003, eco-tourism.  Can't pass up a swinging bridge! We wandered, carryin...

Part 1:  On the Beaten Path at Parque El Boquerón The San Salvador volcano is called the sleeping giant for good reason. It is a geographically broad, primarily stratovolcano made up of layers of built-up lava and tephra (ash, cinders and rock that blasts out as pyroclasts during an eruption and then settles). Stratovolcanoes are usually cone-shaped. More than 40,000 years ago, the immense, conic San Salvador volcano dominated the landscape of El Salvador. A mammoth eruption truncated the volcano, leaving behind an ancient crater in which the Boquerón volcano grew. About 800 years ago, Boquerón erupted and the central cone collapsed, leaving behind a crater lagoon and the profile which we recognize as the San Salvador volcano today. Photo taken on the day of writing this story: the San Salvador volcano as seen from southeast of the volcano, with an approximation of volcanologists believe was the ancient profile of the San Salvador volcano about 40,000 years ago. In the photo, El Bo...