Stations at the Park by Carson

Hi everyone! In this blogpost I’ll talk a bit about a project my family and I have been working on lately. A little bit of background: We’re staying in the blue house, like Cameron said in his last post, in a Spanish speaking community. Little boys and big boys come out to play soccer every afternoon, and we’ve made friends with some of them. 

One day, at the church, the idea of putting on a Stations of the Cross service in the Spanish neighborhood came up. For those who don't know, the Stations of the Cross is a Christian tradition in which we look at each of the events of Jesus' passion and meditate on them. We thought this was a great idea, so we got to work.

First, we started by making around 50 invitations. These were basically half-sheets of notebook paper that had the details of when and where the Stations of the Cross would be. Then (with the help of our Spanish speaking friend, Marcos), we went around the neighborhood knocking on doors and passing the flyers out. Most of the people seemed happy for the invite!

Meanwhile, Autumn got to work on hand drawing the stations we would use. They turned out amazing! They’re basically sheets of posterboards that I cut in half with my knife, in which she drew a colorful station on each one.

Next, we made a scrappy little cross out of some of the scraps of wood left over from the bunk bed we were building. This we would use as the cross that leads people from station to station.

Finally, Friday came, and, at the last minute, a Spanish speaking priest was able to join us to help lead! We decided to do the stations at the park right by our house. When 4:30 came around, our audience mainly consisted of around 15 little soccer boys, as well as a few parishoner friends from Divine Mercy. I led with the cross, Autumn announced and read the stations, Fr. Javier read them in Spanish, and the little boys took turns excitedly holding the stations as we processed around the park.

It went amazing! All the boys were very enthusiastic about the whole thing, while, during, and afterwards. One boy asked my mom about halfway through, “How many stations are there?” We figured he must’ve been getting bored, but his answer surprised us: “Only fourteen? I wish it would never end!” Some boys even asked if they could take some of the stations Autumn drew home! Their enthusiasm was increased by the garlic rolls we gave them afterwards.

We plan on hopefully being able to do stations here every Friday until Lent ends, and maybe serving soup or something like that afterwards. Fr. Javier said it would also be a good idea to tell the boys as a challenge for next week to bring at least one person with them.

By the way, the Stations of the Cross are done in almost every Catholic church on Fridays in Lent. I encourage anyone (Non-Catholics are welcome, too!) to go if they're not already, because I think it's a really good way to see the passion through Jesus' eyes, seeing in a more personal way how He lovingly suffered for humanity. I hope you enjoyed hearing about one of the projects we’re doing here in Belize, and your prayers are very helpful! God bless!

Carson