Entrance to the Church of the Epiphany festively decorated

Meanwhile, a memorial service for someone not related to the congregation had been mysteriously scheduled for the hour immediately preceding the Ascension Day celebration—they would scarcely be out of the church before we were scheduled to begin, leaving no time for the musicians and singers to rehearse! And then it began to rain pretty hard… and folks from Santo Domingo never go out in the rain if they can help it! As the time for the service neared, those who attended the memorial service were still at their reception, leaving no room for anyone else to park. The organist and the trumpeter were caught in a traffic jam way across town, and hardly anyone was in the church. We wondered if the service was going to happen. About twenty minutes after we were supposed to begin, we decided to go ahead and start, with Michael playing the piano to accompany the few of us who were there. By the end of the first hymn, the organist and trumpeter had arrived and slipped into their places, and a small crowd had managed to arrive, despite the rain and the attendant traffic jams. The musicians sang and played wonderfully despite not having a rehearsal, and we adjourned from the church to the parish hall for one of the best parties we’ve had in a long time. Hallelujah! But here you just have to go with the flow…

As interim vicar, Michael has had opportunities for pastoral ministry at life-cycle turning points with some of the very interesting people who cross paths in our congregation. For example, he got to visit Miles Davidson in his last days, and presided at his funeral. Miles was an American who spent most of his life in the DR, living through the Trujillo dictatorship and its overthrow. He had been, among other things, a journalist and owner of an independent credit agency. It was said that in these two capacities he had gotten enough dirt on everyone to make him untouchable. He was a self-made intellectual, and author of one of the definitive books on Columbus, using an immense library of sources that he himself collected. At his funeral the church was packed with folks from every sector of Santo Domingo society.

Joshua and Nieves tie the knot

Michael was also privileged to preside at the wedding of a young couple, Joshua Schroeder and Nieves González. Josh grew up on a ranch outside a tiny town in Montana. Nieves is the daughter of a Dominican Episcopal priest—one of several who came from Roman Catholic Church in the 70s. They met as university students in Spain. The wedding service was a bilingual blend of the two cultures, which included the exchange of arras (coins) as well as rings, to indicate the joint property provisions of the Spanish legal tradition.

April has become more involved in the Episcopal Church Women—something she was reluctant to do at first because it’s all in Spanish. She attended their diocesan convention on May 4-5, along with a group of women from Epiphany. The editor of the diocesan newspaper Episcopax asked April to translate an article about the convention into English, and she surprised herself by being able to do so. She has also found a good role to play in the life of the pre-school, Ovejitas de la Epifanía. This is its first year, and there have been staffing problems. Earlier April had to fill in whenever a teacher or aid was needed, until the position could be filled. While involved in this way, she discovered that there is a need for the kinds of visual materials that she can draw and design well. She has been turning out posters and work sheets showing kinds and parts of plants, the Founding Fathers of the Dominican Republic, modes of transportation, and weather phenomena, etc.

San Gabriel's Church, Consuelo, welcomes the Episcopal Church Women	Women's Convention business session

Women from the Church of the Epiphany get in line for the convention procession	Bishop Holguin presides at the Women's Convention Eucharist

April with two preschool students in front of a poster she made for them, showing modes of transportation	April's birthday party - Alfredo, Carlos and Roberto on one side of the table

Michael continues teaching in the Centro de Estudios Teológicos, this semester a course on Old Testament theology. He also preaches in Spanish at every Friday morning chapel service. On April’s birthday (April 7) we invited the seminarians over for a Mexican-style dinner featuring turkey mole. They found the very idea of mole strange—chocolate and chiles on poultry—but they seemed to like it nevertheless.

April blows out the candles (but they're not actually on the cake)	April's birthday party - Juan Pablo, Nelly and Napoleon on the other side of the table

For the past few months public life has been dominated by the presidential campaign. It came to a frantic climax the week before the election on May 16, with posters plastering every available surface, massive rallies in major cities all over the country, and sound trucks blaring through the streets. The incumbent, Leonel Fernández of the Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD), took an early lead and won, but he was closely followed by Miguel Vargas of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (PRD). There were several other candidates with tiny percentages of the vote. Although the two leading parties both claim the heritage of Juan Bosch, who won the first popular election after Trujillo’s overthrow but was soon forced out (with the help of the US), both seem to have departed from Bosch’s progressive ideals. There are differences, but both are pretty well accommodated to neo-liberal economic principles. It remains to be seen whether the DR’s problems can effectively be solved on this basis.

PLD ralley supporting Leonel Fernández	PRD rallies around their candidate, Miguel Vargas
The figures of Leonel Fernández and other candidates are everywhere	Two Carmelite nuns voting