Summer 2024 newsletter

Sarah Bueter, El Salvador

Sarah making tortillas for breakfast

Greetings from Huizúcar! In May, I moved to this semi-rural town a few hours from San Salvador to continue discerning a ministry with the San Miguel Arcángel Parish and its surrounding hamlets.

The town of Huizúcar is charming and quaint. By 9 p.m., the only sounds are crickets, barking dogs or the rumble of motorcycles down the stone streets. The church itself is a big colonial beauty, built at the end of the 18th century, with inverted, coffered ceilings and a baroque altarpiece rising like opulent frosted cake. Its termite-ridden pillars and blackened paints lend it a weary, aged look.

Views from Huizúcar

Beautiful, too, is the surrounding landscape. The land is volcanic, not quite mountainous, instead rather rumpled, like a thick blanket. The ravines and hills are myriad shades of greens, rendered more beautiful by swift passing clouds and glinting sun. After it rains, the countryside develops a thousand new smells, the river runs chocolate brown, and the pale blue of the ocean appears in the distance with one long, pearly line of breaking surf.

To get to the rural communities, I take the “bus” (i.e., the bed of a pickup) or I walk. Few are the walks that are not filled with the fragrance of green, good, growing things. No formalized ministry has emerged yet, as these early stages are for listening and being open to what the day holds.

Some days I attend church processions or night vigils. I spend a couple days a week at a rural school. I visit the sick. I learn why people are sick. Staying overnight as a guest in people’s homes helps me get to know them, their dreams and the complexity of their challenges. We drink cups of sweet coffee and slap at mosquitoes.

This afternoon was a burial of a young man from a rural hamlet. A large contingent of elderly, kids, babies and adults descended a steep, slick route down to the town cemetery. Those who worked formal jobs asked for time off in order to bury him. Whether they knew him well was of little importance. He was from their community, therefore, they attended. People in the rural hamlets are often very devout, making great sacrifices to support one another. They have a lot to teach us about community.

Sometimes it is difficult to spend so much time listening. Wouldn’t it be easier to slide into frenetic problem-solving, to hold people at arm’s distance, to view them as problems to solve instead of as my neighbors with autonomy and creativity, with whom I’ve decided to share life?

But when the desire to problem-solve dissolves, what remains is being with a person. We are equals. We sit together in discomfort. Sitting together in discomfort begets understanding. And understanding begets compassion.

In Peace Is Every Step (one of the books from the Maryknoll sisters’ library, now housed in Huizúcar), Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves ‘inside the skin’ of the other.”

Thich Nhat Hanh taught that “love is compassion in action,” and the foundation of love is understanding. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to be in contact with another’s suffering, not enough to beget understanding. Only once you are in contact with a person’s suffering, once you put yourself in her skin, does understanding become active in a response of “I will do something so that she will not suffer so much.”

Yes, it would be easier to rush into problem-solving. But the upcoming months are to understand, to set a foundation for compassion in action. Now is the time for coffee and tamales, for language blunders and the consequent chortling, for handshakes that greet and for abrazos that promise to return.

It is a time for, as Thich Nhat Hanh offers, peace in every step.

Please support my mission in El Salvador with a donation through the link below.

I also invite you to walk with me as a “COMPANION IN MISSION.” Companions in Mission are friends and generous donors who give financial gifts on a regular (usually monthly) basis. For more information, visit Become a Companion in Mission. Thank you so much for your generosity!