A Little Update

Hola amigos!

Como estan?  Yo estoy muy bien. It has been a pretty good past couple days. The weekend for me was very relaxing!  On Sunday we celebrated the Solemnity of Corpus Christi aqui at the monasterio. I was very excited because one of the Benedictine brothers asked me to help altar serve. It was great to get back in the saddle and altar serve again!  Mass is very similar to how it is at home, however, they give very long Sunday homilies here. They average around 30 minutes each.  Mentioning Mass also made me think about this past Saturday. I got to be at my first quinceanera. A quinceanera is a celebration for a 15 year old girl on her birthday. It is sort of her moving from being a girl to a woman. They had a Mass for her and a big party after. There wasn't much different at the Mass. She answered some questions and then publicly thanked God for all the blessings she has received in life.

Classes keep going well. I have to admit, it is very difficult to be in class from 8am-12:45pm Lunes a Viernes, pero it's paying off!  As you can see here and there I'm using Spanish words in my blog, and I understand A LOT more than when I first arrived. I still can't speak it very well, but that is just going to take time and practice. However, I can understand a lot better what people are saying. Por ejemplo, hoy during the homily at Mass, Padre talked about, "where is your heart?" and "It's always the time to start up...to start reading Scripture..."  I'm only able to catch little parts, but it's nice to start understanding individual words and getting basic concepts.

We had 4 new students arrive today. Some are here for just over 3 weeks and another one leaves the day after I do. What's great is we are all seminarians ( but one) and all are trying to learn Spanish together to help our local church in the future as priests.  I'm still super excited that part of my final exam is to celebrate a practice Mass in Spanish!  What a blessing that will be in the future.

I hope everyone is doing well in the states. I really missed American food all day yesterday, but that's bound to happen. I explained to my teacher today in Spanish all about Portillo's, so I definitely earned some when I return home. Please know of my prayers from Guatemala and if you could please pray for a priest at my Seminary in Mundelein. I got emailed the other day and found out he has stage 4 cancer. His name is Fr. Oakes. I know he would greatly appreciate the prayers through the intercession of Fr. Augustus Tolton!  Thanks everyone!

-Cris