March 2006 Guatemala, Consecration of Bishop Fernando Castellanos, and visits to numerous Parishes, congregations, Myan ruins and aviaries. Page 1

It was impossible to take pictures of the crowds which greeted us and which attended Divine Liturgy because it would have been impolite to take pictures as we were being greeted, nor was it possible for us to take pictures during Divine Liturgy. But we do have some of our own video's, from which we hope to obtain a few "stills" which we intend to add at a later date.

Guatemala is a country of vast plains sweeping down to the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by high mountains, with plains and mountains on the Atlantic Ocean as well. Many of the mountain villages we visited were on roads made of rock imbedded in mud, as were many of the interconnecting highways. Most of the main highways are asphalt paved.

LARGE mpg video files of the March 2006 trip to Guatemala (and Honduras) available in the BBS file area 15 are:
video file 1 of 8. Myan ruins in Honduras near Copan, file name COPANMYA.ZIP; video file 2 of 8. Bird sanctuary in Honduras near Copan file name COPANBRD.ZIP; video file 3 of 8. Road scenes Honduras - Guatemala file name RDHONGUA.ZIP; video file 4 of 8. Esquipulas, Guatemala file name ESQUIPULAS.ZIP; video file 5 of 8. Road scenes Guatemala file name ROADGUAT.ZIP; video file 6 of 8. Archbishop Andres' house, the seminary, agriculture school, and fish farm file name HOUSEFRM.ZIP; video file 7 of 8 School and town Nuevo Concepcion file name SCHOOLTN.ZIP; video file 8 of 8. Enola and Santa Maria file name ENOLASMARIA.ZIP

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Pictures above (001 through 003 are of a farm which was given to landless people by Archbishop Andres as part of one of the programs he instituted. The people are the owners, who built everything, and are now self sufficient.

Below (pictures 004 through 010) is the house where we stayed for Fernando's consecration, and the very nice lady who owns it. 009 is the (then) future Bishop Fernando.

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In the mountains (picture numbers 011 - 015)

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The town of Avocado (there are no avocado trees in the town of Avocado) :-) (Picture numbers 016 - 042).

The Parishes of The Orthodox Catholic Church of the Americas in Guatemala are under the supervision of The Society of Clerks Secular of Saint Basil (The Basilian Fathers). In general, we will have a main Church Parish, with several "sub" or auxiliary parishes in villages which are too great a distance for the people to easily attend the main parish. The fewest number of sub or auxiliary parishes using this system is six. Most main parishes have twenty (20) or more, and one or two have twenty-five (25) sub or auxiliary parishes. Generally, the Priest prays Divine Liturgy at the main parish Church on Sunday, and visits a different sub or auxiliary parish each day of the week. The auxiliary parishes usually have a deacon or a lay-deacon who takes care of non Sacramental daily matters. We only visited main parishes this time.

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