I encourage any bloggers who might be reading this to join us in this linkup. It's a great way to be mindful of how you fill your weekend, hopefully with good things.
FRIDAY was my first time serving with the team from our church that goes out to one of the VERY small ranching communities nearby to serve mass and provide spiritual support. The team I'm on goes there every Friday (there's another community that is served by a different team from our church). Most of the time one of the religious sisters of our parish leads the mass and serves communion, although sometimes our priest is able to come out to conduct the mass.
There are 3 of us lay women who go with her to sing, do the readings, and bring the love of Christ to the small congregation there.
This is their "capilla" - their church building. The man on the far right took the offering with his hat. There were about 15 people there for the mass (not counting us). I don't know how they ever got enough money to get the building as far along as it is currently, because the congregation is very small and quite poor. One of my prayers for them is that God will provide the resources for a roof and windows.
We got back home just in time for the daily evening mass at our parish. Although I had just been to mass, I felt the need to hear the homily, and I am SO glad I did! It was the feast day for Santa Rosa de Lima, patroness of Latin America and the Philippines (where I was born), and the first nun in the Americas.
I had heard people say that sometimes a saint will adopt a person (rather than the person choosing a patron saint) and I know that Santa Rosa adopted me. However, I have had a hard time getting close to her because she was so austere in her approach to God. Padre's homily cleared that up for me (at least in my heart; my head still doesn't get it). I hope to do a post soon on Santa Rosa, but I want to talk with Padre further about her first.
After mass I stopped at the neighborhood mini-super (grocery store) and got a couple of ice cream bars. These are the top of the line Mexican bars, sort of like Dove bars.
I bought these for the weekend, since I (mostly) try to follow the "no-S" diet", first brought to my attention by the amazing Jen Fulwiler, patron saint of Catholic mom bloggers everywhere.
SATURDAY started out sort of unfocused, so we decided to go to La Paz to get a few things that were on our Big City shopping list. We went to the mercado area, passing by David's favorite hardware store:
(this is him walking past the things that the store puts out on the sidewalk to entice people like us) and finally found a store that sells molcajetes, although you wouldn't guess that from a glance inside:
It looks like a saddle shop to me. If you want to see a picture of the molcajete I bought there, you'll have to come back later in the week when I post pictures of the cooking lesson that Padre is going to give me tomorrow, which will be a salsa with chicharrones.
On the way out of the city we stopped at Dairy Queen (!?) Yep, right here in Baja California Sur! I've always been a DQ fan but there are VERY FEW of them in the SF Bay Area where we lived most of our lives, so I'm pretty stoked to find one here in my corner of Mexico.
Since it was 97 degrees outside, it was a perfect topper to the day, sitting in the air-conditioned building having an ice cream. There aren't any air conditioned buildings in our town, but then our town doesn't get as hot as La Paz - it's generally about 10 degrees cooler here.
Because of all the rain we've had in the last week, the desert has turned eye-poppingly green. Actually, what we have here isn't technically desert, it's tropical deciduous forest: mostly bushes and short trees, punctuated by cardones (the Baja version of saguaros).
SUNDAY it seemed like we needed to continue with the ice cream theme, since it was pretty hot, even in our town. So I went to the local ice cream store, where they make MEXICAN ice cream (nothing like DQ or Dove bars) and got 3 flavors to take home: Kahlua, fig, and...BACON, which actually has bits of bacon in it! I also stopped at the local greengrocer's and found out that not only had their big metal pull-down door blown off in Tropical Storm Juliette, but their roof had blown off as well. No problems - they strung up some tarps to give shoppers and produce some shade and stayed open for business, since the whole town relies on this one store for a full range of veggies and fruits.
Just as I was about to start writing this post I heard what sounded like a horse neighing. I picked up my camera and went outside, and sure enough, the local herd of horses was hanging out across the road from our house.
This is not a wild herd, but they are allowed to roam free in our neighborhood. Usually they stay in the areas where there are no homes, but occasionally they'll meander over to where houses are and have been known to munch on people's plants. I've even seen them on porches, nibbling on potted plants!
I hope you all had a productive yet relaxing weekend. Check out Wanda's blog for more Week Ending stories.
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