My friend Hawkins is out doing good for the world, here are some letters from the front.

So… i got to El Salvador safe and sound yesterday and right now i´m staying in an incredible location literally yards from the one of the better universities in central America. the food here is excellent and the people are just as tasty. and by tasty i mean kind.

There are turtles that live in the courtyard, one small male and two big females that he attempts to mate with. Apparently, they judo flip his turtley ass right off. The plane rides were all good, except for when I spilled V8 juice all over my crotch. Subsequently, as the tomato oozed it’s way into my loins the man sitting next to me decided it would be an opportune time to tell me about how the last time he doused his groin with his choice beverage he won the lottery next day. Chief… napkins are a little more affective than parables.

the group that i have been with, at least these last 24 hours is pretty interesting. they have been so close to such horrible violence that it has been quite sobering talking with them. instead of standard motivations that i feel driven by, their´s come from a place i hope to never know. today was interesting. it was basically a big conference of all of the communities that they work with, so roughly 400 people from representing the developing communities came together, sang songs, listened to lectures… to do. i´m sure that you´ll here much more about all of these more serious things soon, so i´ll try to keep this one light.

i just started a great book that was lying around the casa called: ¨n’sync: tearin’ up the chart” it´s about these 5 guys who all come from really tough places and sing from the heart. eventually they make it to the top though, so that has been real neat. check it out:

peace and love
Chris

Hey,
Cebes – FUNDHAMER has been great so far. It´s right in the middle of everything, great people, terrific food and a very clear idea of where they are headed. Many of the people that were in the program were directly affected by the war. One lost her brother, a priest who is a local symbol of the movement, a few worked along side Monsignor Romero, and a few fought in the guerrilla forces. It´s incredible that they maintain the motivation to keep fighting. Lately I have been translating the report that they had written for an international conference that was held back in March. I´ll send a copy to you guys when I´m done slaughtering the Spanish language.

Four other BC students arrived today. They all did a semester here and this happens to be a big week on campus because it is the XVI Anniversary of the killing of the 6 Jesuit priests and the 2 cooks that lived at the UCA. There have been events all week long and on Saturday there is going to be a vigil for the martyrs.

peace and love
Chris

p.s. – okay… so here´s a story that i couldn´t tell in the first letter i wrote, but that´s probably because it hadn´t happened yet. the first night that i was staying at the casa my roommate richie came home at 3am after celebrating a long week. whatever, no biggie, he went to bed. well, i wake up at 5:30 and it is raining HARD. silly hard. i kinda started to freak out because it was so loud. my interior monologue was probably something like this. “it sure is raining hard”. i figured there had to be a leak in the ceiling because it was precipitating with acute precision… hmmm… and rather close. after about a minute of the “rain” i began to realize what this truly was. as i sat up, the “storm” had stopped persay and was merely lingering in it´s post-tempestuous form. so i asked the “cloud” what had just happened… after no response and a confused glare it was clear, if ever a time for brevity, this was it. “hey man… i think you might have just peed everywhere.” the “cloud,” which happened to have just “rained” all over the face of bill clinton (it was reading the autobiography, my life), picked up the sopped book, placed it on the bed and in a spanish accent muttered “bi-eee-ll cl-eeen-tone”. then, responded “no… um… it’s just… you know…” at the same time splashing a bare foot in the inch deep puddle. then, he went to bed, i went to the bathroom, kept my feet off of the mattress and wore flip-flops in the morning.

moral of the story: if this is your dream, buy our current president’s biography.