VIDEO 5: SINGING IN THE RAIN!
18-19 October

Taizé Prayer

The 27th of October we are organizing a larger Taizé prayer in Almeria, so that the youth can experience something of Taizé. And October 31 we organise a similar Taizé prayer for the youth of Vicar at our home. I’m looking forward to it and curious how it will turn out.

Yesterday we went to Almeria to meet Juanmi and Presen that went to Taizé last summer with Antonio and Manolo. It was nice to meet each other, they showed us around Almeria for a bit and we talked about our experiences of Taizé. 

Since we organise Taizé prayers two times a day, you might be interested in what that looks like.  Here is a prayer I prepared for this night.

Song: Veni spirito creatore

Psalm 42 in Spanish

Song Nothing can ever

Romans 8:38-39 in Spanish and English

Silence

Litany of praise (in Spanish):
Jesus, gentle and humble of heart, you visit every human being to reveal the Father’s love.
Jesus, goodness without end, you liberate captives, you pardon our sins.
Jesus, our rest and our refuge, your yoke is easy and your burden light.
Jesus, sent by the Father, you heal our blindness.
Jesus, living bread, you nourish our hearts by your words.
Jesus, you came to light a fire on the earth.
Jesus, risen from the dead, you share wit hus your joy.
Jesus, you are the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Padre Nuestro (Our Father)

Song: Jubelt und freut euch

Prayer (in Spanish):

Bless us, Christ; keep us in the spirit of the Beatitudes: joy, spimlicity, mercy.

Song: Jesus le Crist

Second week activities

On Wednesday it rained really hard and there was even hail for a moment. This is the first time since we are here that it rains. Unfortunately some things on our program got cancelled because of the rain. But the good news is, we had time to write.

Celebration Carmen

Saturday 14 October we had a big celebration: Carmen has been a sister of Carmelites for 50 years! It was amazing to hear her testimony during the evening mass and speeches from Mila and others. After the mass we celebrated with a party. Many people stayed and everyone had brought something to eat to the parish.

The next day we went with Carmen and Mila to the beach to a meeting of Catolic Accion. These are people of the parish that pray for the parish and meet together and do activities. After a good lunch and a nice swim we sat together with everyone and shared our thoughts about Carmen´s 50 years as a Carmelite sister. What it is like to live a life devoted to God, the beauty and the difficulties. It was very impressive for me to think about this and it makes me very eager to live my daily life for God. I am very grateful to be here and that day I felt again that even though we see people maybe for the first or second time, it feels like we are part of this community. 

Presenting at schools

This week is a special week dedicated to missionary work. Because of this, we had the opportunity to present Taizé and this project in Vicar to different classes of a bilingual school in Almeria, Colegio Privado Compañía de María, on Monday and Tuesday. Antonio talked about his time in Nicaragua and Carmen about her time in different African countries. 

In these two days we´ve presented to so many classes from different ages. We sang songs together with 3-5 year old kids, presented our story to teenagers from 11 to 16 year old. It was nice to share with them and I loved it when the kids were enthusiastic and asked us a lot of questions. Sometimes you could just see from their faces how amazed they were that there is this poverty in the area.

VIDEO 4: Presenting Taizé during 'the week of the missionary' at the Colegio de la Compañía de María in Almeria! 

And two days of celebration...! For...? Check it out!
14-17 October

 

VIDEO 3: The past week also included trips to Granada, the beach and much more... have a look!!!
5-12 October

First days in Vicar

Dear reader,

Thank you for checking out this blog. We love to share our experiences of the small temporary community that we are. We came to Vicar (in Spain) for one month to share some of our Taize experiences, to help the local parish with its activities and to experience what it is like to form a community with the three of us in work and prayer. You can find more about us on the page ‘Who are we’.

First of all, we want to express how thankful we are. We are kindly welcomed by different people that let us sleep in their houses and have been meeting a lot of kind people. It is a real privilege to be here and get an insight in the culture of Spain, where meeting with each other is very important. Especially dinner is an important time to meet and we have been invited to dinner by many people already (eating paella with 20 people). The welcome here is incredible; we are hosted as if we were in their families!

We live in a house quickly restored for our arrival. It’s situated in a gypsy quarter, were there are also squats were immigrants live . Not too far away are makeshifts.

We came to help the parishes of father Antonio and father Manolo. Their parishes are involved in many activities, like bible study for children, Spanish classes for immigrants, play with immigrant children and they also often visit gypsies. For more details check out the page 'Mission activities'.

VIDEO 2: An impression of our first Wednesday, on which we attended a conference on religious fundamentalism and visited poor neighbourhoods around Puebla de Vicar.
11 October

VIDEO 1: Welcome! This will give a first impression of our daily activities here, enjoy!