San Miguel Report

Mission Report: San Miguel Archangel

Date: 5/9/95

Travel Statistics:

Hi everybody! Boy am I tired! Matt and I arrived here at Mission San Miguel at about 4:30 p.m. At 5:15 p.m. we took a long tour of this Mission with our friend Bob McConnell who knows all abut Mission San Miguel's history. He told us so many interesting things I don't know where to start!

Many people come to Mission San Miguel to study in order to become Franciscans. San Miguel has been used as a Franciscan school since the 1940s. It is interesting to walk through the Mission grounds here and see real Franciscans going about their daily routines. At other Missions we could see rooms that were set up with antique furniture to look the way they did when they were in use in the 1800s. When we looked into the rooms at Mission San Miguel we saw real Franciscans eating dinner, doing laundry, or reading! Some of the rooms have very old furniture and equipment in them. There is a big iron oven for making bread and an enormous old clothes washing machine that looks like a barrel turned on its side. The Franciscans also have many modern appliances like televisions, a microwave and some computers.

Franciscan San Miguel is the "oldest-looking" Mission that we have been to so far. In the church you can see big cracks above the doors and in some of the walls where the adobe is beginning to fall apart. Some of these cracks have been caused by earthquakes, but many of them have been caused by the train that passes right by the Mission. We learned that the vibrations from the train are causing the building to shake just a little bit everyday. All that shaking is causing new cracks to appear in the walls.

One of the most interesting things that we got to do today was to talk with some of the people here who are studying to be Franciscans. These people are called "novices." The two Franciscans that we met were named Chuck and Beto. Everyday these men pray, go to church and take classes to learn about the Bible and the history of Franciscanism. While they are here they promise that they will not work to earn money and that they will spend as little money as possible. They told us that they do keep a little bit of money aside to buy toothpaste and new underwear, and to go to the movies every once in a while. They eat all of their meals at the Mission and hardly ever go out to restaurants. This seems like a very hard life to us!

Chuck and Beto told us that Franciscans do not act as "missionaries" the way that they did in the 1800s when most of the Missions were built. Their job is not to convert people to Christianity. Instead they try to learn about problems in different parts of the world and to help people whenever they can. One way that Chuck and Beto will do this is by traveling to Guatemala. In Guatemala they will visit a very poor part of the capital city where many Guatemalan Indians live. In the 1980s the Guatemalan army forced these people to leave their homes in mountains. Chuck and Beto are going to live with these people in order to learn about the problems they have living in the big city.

--Brian and Matt

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