The Gospel of the Most Recent Ten Days

Almost the rainy season is good news.

Moza beer in Guatemala with Gerardo is good news.

A side hug from Betsaida on the sticky 44 is good news.

Another year in the life of Jose Gómez last Sunday is good news.

Photographic evidence that Christine back in El Salvador wasn’t just a dream is good news.

A roof and walls and a cheap little stovetop that heats water hot enough for coffee is good news.

Leftover Chinese out of morros with avocado and tortilla sprawled out on the petate with Zaidy is good news.

Ana Luz leading the commission to brainstorm how to celebrate Romero’s beatification with the communities is good news.

That Glenn let his heart get broken over one young Salvadoran’s accidental run-in with drug trafficking violence is good news.

Skyping my mom, dad, sisters, sister’s boyfriend, aunt, uncle, and grandma on Easter morning and getting the video to work is good news.

That Anita waited twenty minutes for me after the meeting to go home even though the tambo ran out of gas and her kids were home by themselves is good news.

Memena sending me her written-out thoughts – be they inspired about reading Martha’s speech from the UCA forum two weeks ago, or introspective about the walls she puts up, or proud and affectionate about her sister – is good news.

Hearing about Rodolfo spending his vacation week in a semi-rural parish learning via participation about a kind of conservative, charismatic spirituality totally foreign and originally kind of upsetting to him and then calling it the best Easter of his life is good news.

Lunch at the neighborhood grandma’s of pods from a native tree boiled in pumpkin seed paste, tortillas fried with cheese in tomato sauce, and little squashes that make your teeth squeak when you eat them, sautéed with onion and tomato around the table on the patio on the first day back to the library after Holy Week is good news.

Jorge already knowing how Claudia will react when she thought the caricature painting was 2,000 Colombian pesos when it was really 20,000, or that she will not wait for him to take pictures in the museum, or that they don’t have time to eat dinner because it’s 8:30 and the last train leaves at 9:00 and just kind of patiently knowing that she’s the best is good news.

A talk on the ride in the falling-apart micro out to Ilopango between two displaced foreigners whose defense mechanisms are on high alert in this country that, on the one hand, is theirs in the sense that they are on fire for this place in particular and give of themselves to it in a way that changes you and makes you of it, and, on the other hand, isn’t theirs in the sense that they schedule semiannual dentist appointments and arrive on time and eschew gossip, during which they put aside differences because they both love things more important than themselves is good news.