Maundy Thursday at Holy Cross

On this Maundy Thursday, we've posted images of the San Mateo community adjacent to Holy Cross School, and other images around the school as well. As we may have mentioned earlier, San Mateo is a community of about 1000 people that live on top of a swamp, with no sewage system, no road system, little running water, and homes that provide only the barest of essentials in terms of four walls and a roof. Most are elevated to get the living quarters out of the swamp, but most people have to trek across long thin boards at near swamp level to get to their "front" doors. Of course, today is the day we recall the actual passion of Christ on the Cross as it followed closely after the Last Supper. At VBS today, each of the 70 students made a coloring of a prayer that was important to them, and then we nailed them to a large wooden cross that we constructed out of scrap wood at the School. The cross is now decorated with all the prayers, symbolizing the joining of our prayers to the offering Christ made for us on the Cross. We also held a Maundy Thursday service for all the children and adults, with John Gibson celebrating, and later in the day construction resumed after VBS concluded. Our construction team has been working on five different projects. Nancy Atkeson has been painting interior bathrooms with heavy oil paint which doubles as a preservative. Kathy Smith has been working on staining desks and other wooden furniture, Rev Winfree and John Eick have been sheetrocking a bathroom, Phil Lambe has been working on railings, and John Gibson has been working on exterior painting. The whole crew has also worked on and completed a substantial amount of decking. The work is slow because most lumber and sheet rock has to be cut specially to fit out-of-square locations, but all in all our construction is going well. Tonight we will celebrate with a foot-washing service together with Missionaries Francis and Vernon Wilson, while we reflect on the meaning of Maundy Thursday, and I can't think of a better place to be to have this service, on this particular night...... JohnnyMac