MONTHLY UPDATE FROM DICK

[Place Curser on Pictures for Captions]
On our drive from the convent in Amozoc to the Carmelite Mission in Olinta we stopped at three very beautiful churches. As I mentioned in the first part of my Mexico Update there are so many churches that I can’t find the name of each of the three except for the picture on the left – the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. We believe that Mary was sinless from her conception until her assumption into heaven. Anyway each of the churches we visited was magnificently adorned worthy of the majesty with which the Mexican people adore God. As we drove we could see small villages atop hills in the distance, and in each of these the most prominent building was a church.
		Most people here in the states when they think of Mexico think of tourist destinations like Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, or Acapulco; but in reality Mexico is a large country with mountains and deserts as well as gorgeous sandy beaches. It must have been over 7000 feet elevation as we start to descend through these mountains. In the distance you can see it had started to rain quite hard. Before we arrived at Olintla, elevation 3000 feet, the road was like driving down a running river. Of course we are in the tropics so rain can be expected at any time.
		We were several hours late arriving at the Olintla mission convent. It is a very modest and simple building. On the second floor at the far end of the picture is the kitchen area. They cook on not much more than a hot plate. Our parish here in Mesa will help get them a stove. A table is set for our very nice dinner they have prepared for us. We were again saranaded by mariachis as we ate. The sisters were very busy getting things ready. Also on this floor is a little chapel. The sisters sleep in a simple open dormatory room. Down below are several large rooms that once were used for a school, which they hope to open again.
		After dinner we went to the ancient mission church in Olintla. The beautiful retable forming the wall behind the altar is made of wood from local trees and handcrafted by the natives years ago as also is the alter, the pews and all the find work in the church. It was Sunday so the people had already had a mass previously. We were two hours later than scheduled, but many people still came, and they stayed to talk with Father after the mass. He was the first priest they had seen from the United States, and they felt so honored.
	We were somewhat shocked when we got to our hotel just behind the church. Our room was as if it hadn’t been occupied or cleaned for some time. Cobwebs were in the corners, and we were skeptical as whether or not to use the electrical receptacles. We had to share a shower and toilet with other rooms. Maybe they were not really expecting us to show up because they probably don’t have many visitors.
It was interesting to watch the town come alive the next morning. The streets were mostly empty of cars. School children were walking to school. They wore uniforms depending on the grade they were in even though they were public school children. There are no parochial or private schools in the area. We saw a man leading his servicing hog down the road and then returning a short time later. There is a small pretty town square like most towns in Mexico have with public buildings surrounded it on one or several sides. Everyone was nice and spoke even though we couldn’t converse. They spoke neither English nor Spanish just their native language. We spent the entire morning here because one of our group members had stumbled and fractured his leg so we had to make arrangements to evacuate him and his wife back to Puebla. This was interesting because there are only basic medical services here so we had to make a hospital bed in our van for him, and then get a second van to take us on to Cuetzalan. Notice in the picture above on the right the young man is wearing a machete attached to his belt. This seemed to be standard for all the men here because they live in a tropical mountainous region, and have to chop through jungle growth.
The mission where the sisters live has more than a hundred acres of basically jungle on a steep hillside. They grow much of what they eat. They also grow and sell coffee. In the second picture is a large kitchen and work room where they roast and grind their coffee, make tortillas in the large open hearth you see in the picture. If you look closely at the picture on the right you can see papaya fruit. The coffee beans you see will be ready to pick when they turn red, and then they are roasted and ground. The sisters gave each of us a colorful bag of coffee to take home. Yes, the bananas were grown there at the mission to. The sisters need help from men to do some of the work of course, but they not only have the mission to take care of, but they bring aide of one kind or another to communities with no road access so they have to walk for hours on very steep mountain trails. Sandals are the only practical footwear because hiking boots would only soak up water from the almost daily rains they have. They also have to contend with wildlife and snakes. We saw the skin of a snake that must have been ten or twelve feet long. They are Carmelite sisters, a contemplative order, which means they have hours of meditative as well as liturgical prayer time each day in addition to time they spend carrying for the needs of the indigenous people they serve. The church does not provide financial support for the sisters.
		We finally left the mission just after noon. The drive back through the mountains was beautiful with lush vegetation and occasional waterfalls as you see in the picture. As mentioned before on hill tops far away we could see small settlements with their beautiful church rising above everything else. We passed through two or three of these villages. At one we stopped at a church to eat sandwiches the sisters had prepared for us. The young priest there explained to Father Steve how the diocesan churches are administered in Mexico. He had eight churches he offered mass at daily. It was also pointed out that the Carmelites were true mendicants receiving no financial support from the church.
		We arrived at Cuetzalan after a four or five hour drive from Olintla through the heavily vegetated mountains. We had a good dinner in town, and then went to our rooms in a nice hotel composed of casita-like rooms or little cabins. They were very clean, nice and comfortable. The streets in Cuetzalan are coble stone and quite steep like in San Francisco, California. From our hotel we looked down on the tall steeple of the church, and across the beautiful mountainous landscape. We were not very far, maybe fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the east. Festival of San Francisco – what an exciting event. In the middle left you see the Queen of the festival being paraded around. The streets in the lower left are filled with vendors of every kind. The upper right corner is a plate of food a young boy is still filling. On the upper left is a group of dancers that are performing. There are several groups of dancers all dressed in native costume dancing at the same time. What a swirl of color and sound. The most famous I believe must be the voladores, or flyers who climb the over 150 foot tall pole, and then four of them cast of hanging by a rope tied to their foot while the table at the top turns swinging them out like birds while they slowly descend to the ground. A fifth man dances on the turning platform atop the pole playing a flute. There is a procession in which large hand-made wax offerings are carried to the cathedral accompanied by dancers and music. Once inside the church the dancers continue before and after the mass. Father Steve co-celebrated the mass with the Arch Bishop of Puebla and other priests.

We left Cuetzalan after breakfast Day 8 of our pilgrimage. It was a clear and beautiful day. We made two stops along the way. First not far from Cuetzalan we visited Yohualichan – “house of the night,” founded by the Totonac around AD 400. This ancient ceremonial center of the Totonaca culture was very interesting. The ruins consist of a rectangular square around which there are five mounds or pyramids with different numbers of basements and remnants of temples in their peaks. There is a unity of style given by the niches that are between the basements of each of the pyramids. On the site there is also a ballgame field, whose existence can be explained by the fact that for primitive civilizations this game was one of its main rituals; when striking the ball they were trying to reproduce the participants travel by the stars to heaven. We read that the winner of the game would be sacrificed. In other writings elsewhere they state it was the Captain of the loosing team who lost his head. At the second site we had lunch, and we visited a beautiful falls made by a river that dropped over a cliff into a deep chasm the walls of which are covered by colorful mosses and fungi. I have the name Atepolihui Falls in my notes, but I’m not sure this was that falls. Puebla is about 125 miles from Cuetzalan so we arrived back late in the afternoon around 4pm. We then stopped at a factory where they make Talavera Pottery. Puebla is world famous for the pottery made there. It is of Arabic origins introduced to Mexico when the Spanish came in the 16^th Century. We watched an artisan start with a fired and prepared plate and free handed began painting the plate you see above. It will take him an hour or more to finish, and then of course it is ready for the furnace again where it will get its finished glazed appearance. He said some plates take several days to paint the design on.

Our final day in Puebla again was filled with events and sights. We visited the temple—The five wounds of San Francisco. Its side entrance is the oldest in the city. The main facade built in the 18^th Century with petatillo and Talavery panels form one of the most representative baroque displays in Puebla. I was fascinated by the beautiful ribbed vaults that enclose the large nave. The side chapel attached to the sanctuary has a small statue of the Conquering Virgin that was brought by Hernando Cortes (incidentally when Cortes left Spain on his first voyaged to the new world he was only eighteen). Also at the side of the alter is the incorruptible body (left picture) of Blessed Sebastian de Aparicio who was responsible for much of the early road building in Puebla. We then visited two beautiful churches in nearby Cholula. They are beautiful examples of the Talavera tile work on the outside and gold gilded interiors. We then visited the Great Pyramid of Cholula. The Tenapa Pyramid in Cholula dates back to 400 B.C., and is four times larger in volume than the Keops Pyramid in Egypt, or larger though not as high as the Great Pyramid of Giza. The pyramid like most actually consists of several superimposed pyramids, and only a small percentage of it has actually been uncovered. The pyramid is a temple that has traditionally been viewed as having been dedicated to the god, Questzalcoatl. One of the pyramid’s unique features is the “Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de los Remedios,” completed in 1666. Built at the top of the pyramid, the symbolic position atop the pyramid stands witness to the success of the Catholic Church in the conversion of the indigenous people. We visited Fort Loredo where the hapless Mexican army handed a Napoleon army their first defeat ever on foreign soil. This important event is celebrated more here in the States than Mexico, and is known as Cinco de Mayo. It too is important to the Mexican people, but it is not their Independence Day as many Americans think.
Sister Soccoro (the singing nun in Part I) accompanied us back to Mexico City and stayed with us until we passed through security at the airport—she is a person none of us will ever forget. She wouldn’t let us leave until we visited the parochial school run at Amozoc by the Carmelite sisters. This was a great surprise as well as a thrill for us all. Sister, with Michael Richard from our parish in Mesa put this wonderful trip and pilgrimage together. Much of what they planned was trial and error in preparation for future pilgrimages to Mexico City and Puebla. The trip back into the mountains may not be for everyone, but there are so many thrilling things to do and learn about in an about Puebla as well as visiting the magnificent shrine of our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. And if you choose to go on Pilgrimage with the Carmelite sisters, what a wonderful way it would be to support their efforts to bring the joy of Christian brotherhood to that part of the world.