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Beloved Community,
Recently I’ve found myself incorporating our Lenten theme into conversations with family and friends and at the start of meetings, “Tell Me Something Good that’s happened to you this week.”
Today when I asked my nieces and nephew, “tell me something good that happened to you today?” One niece shared, “Well, we only lost our soccer game by one point.” The other said, “We saw a protest on the way home from school!” And my nephew said, “I found a new dinosaur show.”
Good news takes many forms. Sometimes it appears in unexpected places, even in grief. With all we are personally and collectively navigating, with the many unknowns and fears, it is a spiritually grounding practice to pause and ask, “Tell Me Something Good.”
With that in mind, I want to share some news with with our community. Rev. Álvaro’s older sister, Stephanie Duran, passed away early yesterday morning. Over the past five years her health declined significantly after Parkinson’s and other neurological complications. After spending the past month in the hospital fighting a highly resistant infection, Stephanie passed away peacefully at the age of 47.
In Latin America, funerals happen immediately following death, so the services were last night and this morning, with Álvaro able to be present through a video call. As you can imagine, this is a tender time for Álvaro and his family. But as we were speaking yesterday, he said, “My sister is at peace. This is the good news today. My sister is finally at peace. There is good news in the pain of the world and the pain of our own life.”
Rev. Álvaro will understandably be taking some time away from church this week. Please join me in holding Álvaro, his mother Martha, brother Carlos, and sister Luisa in prayer. May the peace that surpasses all our understanding surround them, and you, in the days ahead.
In hope,
Rev. JV
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