Good friday procession

I went to the annual good Friday procession in downtown Quito this past week. It was a very interesting experience, because we don’t have anything like this in the states. Parades are not for religious reasons, and the crowd that shows up for a parade consist of families and kids. So the whole event was slightly familiar, but very much a new experience for me.

The parade consisted of 4 elements, saved souls (about 80% of the parade were people dressed in all purple, with pointy hoods representing the souls saved by Christs crucifixion), men dressed as Jesus carrying crosses, bands playing music, and floats with either Christ carrying the cross or mother marry (I think its odd that she’s called the virgin Mary, because she wasn’t a virgin her whole life, Jesus DID have siblings, and that its called the virgin birth, shouldn’t it be called the virgin conception… cause thats the defining part of virginity, and the part the was the miracle, just some thoughts). This was a totally different way of showing reverence to the Lord. I found out that a lot of people are in the procession because of promises they made to God. “If you heal my mother, I will walk in the procession,” and they thank the Lord by taking on Christs suffering in the procession. Sometimes a parent will promise the life of a child to the procession as thanks. This can be problematic if the Child grows up to be Protestant, or a non-practicing catholic.

We escaped the rain by going into a museum after the procession ended. It was also interesting to see how a lot of the procession has evolved. Historically it looked like it had a lot more variety, in terms of costume and color.

Thanks for checking my blog, and thanks to those who are supporting me through prayer while I’m here. Its been a real blessing. My plans for the rest of the time here are pretty much layed out. I’d like to get the website squared away, next week I’m spending 3 nights in different communities in the Jungle (I GET TO FLY INTO THE JUNGLE!! I’M SO EXCITED!!), Sarah is flying into Quito the following week, we’ll go on a river tour, then to a community where she’ll follow a woman who does hygiene training (tannia, if you remember from a previous post), and then I have a couple days to finish up some things and I’ll be flying back to New Mexico May 15th. Thanks for everything… I’ll be posting soon.

Will

This entry was posted on April 11, 2007 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.