Easter feels like summer. The sun shines strong in the skies, the breeze somehow fresh, somehow warm. It is definitely the middle of the dry season in El Salvador, the equivalent of summer in northern lands.

Everything around, from sale signs to music, talks about sun and sand. The opportunity to enjoy beaches that are just an hour away from San Salvador is almost here.

For a full week, students are out of school and have the opportunity to enjoy beaches, visit relatives and do nothing; it is almost the equivalent to spring break in the United States.

However, there is one unequivocal characteristic that reminds every Salvadoran that it is not just a break, and that there is more than just sun and fun waiting for us during that week in April.

In El Salvador, the week of Easter is “Holy Week,” and the festivities revolve around Roman Catholic tradition. Roman Catholics account for nearly 60 percent of the population. Protestant (also called evangelical) churches account for slightly more than 20 percent.

Even though El Salvador does not have an official religion, since the time of colonization Roman Catholic traditions have been the most common and most practiced in the country. Easter Week is the most important celebration for the Roman Catholic Church.

“It is slightly different for the Protestant Church” says Sister Wendy, wife of Pastor Rodolfo at the Baptist Tabernacle Church of Majucla. “For most of the children, Easter Week is an opportunity to spend time with their families. People take advantage of this time to go back to their homeland and spend time with their families.”

One of the most important Easter traditions in El Salvador is Lent. During this 40-day period before Easter, named “Cuaresma” in Spanish, people fast, pray and give alms. The last week of the 40 days is called “Bigger Week” or “Holy Week.”

On Good Friday, there are two major processions. Early in the morning there is the “passion,” which is the representation or commemoration of the walk that Jesus took with the cross toward Golgotha. It is finished around noon.

Then in the afternoon, Roman Catholic churches and communities start making rugs on the streets with sawdust, which will later be part of the path where the “holy funeral procession” will pass, carrying the symbolic dead body of Christ.

The making of these rugs represents one of the greatest traditions for the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador, since entire streets and main avenues in many places of the country are completely closed. The rugs cover entire streets.

Appreciation of the rugs goes beyond religion. For Salvadorians, it is about appreciating the art and about appreciating the effort the people put into making the rugs. For Salvadorians, it is a gift, an offering they are making for Jesus.

Catholic or not, Salvadorians go out into the streets on Good Friday to see the rugs. Apart from this tradition for Good Friday, Holy Week develops differently for Protestants.

For the Evangelical Church in El Salvador, Holy Week is an opportunity to spread the Gospel to as many people as possible. If there is the opportunity to preach the Gospel and carry more people to the feet of our Lord, the church takes advantage of it and tells El Salvador the true meaning of Holy Week.

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Just as any other Sunday, there are people in the streets coming and going. Housewives with shopping bags going to the local outdoor market to buy the ingredients for lunch, families with their best garments coming from church, and kids going with balls to the park.

The air is filled with freshness and calm, and somehow the future seems brighter for many people going to the local church in the Majucla community.

In a neighborhood named Cuscatancingo, in a poor area of San Salvador, walls full of graffiti, stray dogs, and police and military forces are part of the normal landscape. There are also groups of teenagers with baggy pants and big shirts, some of them with tattoos. They are gang members just ‘chilling.’

In this neighborhood, there is a church named “Tabernaculo Biblico Bautista Majucla” or Baptist Biblical Tabernacle of Majucla. And on this day, at a little bit past 10 in the morning, there are over 100 people in the church.

There is a line outside of the church, and it is growing. The church is almost full. For anybody just passing by, this seems like the second service at the church, but it’s not. The message is a bit different because it is a monthly meeting that the center has with the parents of the children enrolled.

Brother Rodolfo, the pastor, isn’t sharing the message, but his wife Wendy, a respected woman in the community with vast experience in pedagogy, is.

The people attending these monthly meetings come from low-income families. Most of them do not have formal jobs. They survive making tortillas or selling vegetables at the local street market.

These meetings are an initiative in El Salvador called “school for parents,” and the initiative is being financed through a Complementary Interventions Fund (CIV).

CIV is a tool used to provide additional assistance to the families of the children registered in the Compassion programs.

“We come here to learn,” says Ana Luz, mother of Rosibel. “It is a blessing too, because my husband is not Christian, but he likes to come to the meeting.”

The purpose of a school for parents is to inform the parents what their children are learning, but also to have an opportunity to provide parents knowledge and tools that will help them in their role.

The Compassion centers have adopted this model and meet with the parents at least once every two months. In the case of Tabernaculo Biblico Bautista Majucla, they meet once a month.

The school for parents has been active since the beginning of the center, a little more than three years ago.

Just as in a school meeting, the parents get acquainted with the upcoming events at the center, they know when the next sponsor letter is due, and which children have received letters from their sponsors. There is also participation by either the pastor or a special guest, such as a medical doctor, a police officer, a firefighter, or a psychologist, who talks about a subject of interest for the parents.

The talks at the meetings touch issues from marital problems to good health practices for the family.

“We do not take our children with us for these meetings because they are a distraction, and some of the subjects are not appropriate for them,” says Ana Luz.

In fact, some of the subjects studied at these meetings teach the parents about the well-being, the trust, and the intimacy of couples.

“I believe that if the couple is ok, the children will also be ok,” says Sister Wendy, explaining that if the couple lives in an atmosphere of love and understanding, the children will also receive love.

There is also the spiritual component. The parents read the Bible, pray and sing hymns, and those seeds are starting to bear fruit.

“I was not Christian, and I did not want to know anything about church, but I liked to come to these meetings” says Dinora, mother of Laura.

Finally, the Bible studies given by the pastor at the school for parents penetrated Dinora’s heart, and she became a Christian.

“Since last December, I started attending church,” she adds.

The success of this program does not happen just because of the training and knowledge of the staff, but because of their love for the children and their families, and the commitment of the pastors and the church.

“We have spiritual help and material help,” says Sonia, mother of Edwin. “My children are learning about computers … [But also] I know that if one of them gets sick, I can come looking for the pastor and he will help me.”

This morning, Sister Wendy is talking about the psychological implications of a divorce in the lives of the children. After about 20 minutes she ends her talk with the words: “The best solution to face a divorce: to hold hard in the hands of the Lord.”

The staff plan the school for parents with love and enthusiasm, knowing that this will impact the lives of the children at a deep level.

Brother Nicolas, grandfather and caregiver of Brenda and Tatiana, shows his excitement for what he learned at the school for parents and for the efforts of the church to provide a good service, with integrity. “Whoever is not grateful with God for this blessing, and with the staff, is not being fair,” he says.

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