Catholic Church

Here in San Marcos, and Honduras in general, religion plays a big role in society. Contrary to what I anticipated the Catholic Church doesn’t have as much dominance in the towns, the Evangelical churches are growing at a much faster rate. In San Marcos I’m pretty sure the Catholic Church is the larger and more dominant religion. Although I had never been to Catholic Church before, I go a lot here because there isn’t really that much to do here besides soccer. I usually go to the Thursday service and the Sunday night service and I’m becoming more involved with the youth group that meets Saturday nights. It is interesting seeing how divided they can be though, although this is mostly only seen/talked about with the old people. Where it is most seen by me is when people die, if they were Catholics there is a ‘velorio’ or wake the night of the death from 9ish to 4,5,6 in the morning where the entire community comes by and hangs out, the family serves bread, coffee, and rum. Then there is a big church service followed by a procession to the cemetery for the ‘entierro’ or burial. If they are evangelical only a small group of people go to a service and only a handful go to the burial.You’d think that this wouldn’t be that apparent, because we are a town of less than 5,000 people, but somehow there are tons of deaths, at least one a week since coming here, sometimes up to 3 in a week, I really don’t know how it works. During our training they say it can make work difficult if you associate yourself with one church or another, fortunately for me, when people ask if I’m Catholic or Evangelical and I say I’m Presbyterian they have no clue what to make of it and they leave it at that. Gotta go to a funeral right now…seriously.