As mournful processional music played
and smoke rose from a wood-burning caldron, Guatemalan members of Alfo-Conce
delicately pressed flecks of colored wood into the ground. In the shadow of St.
Anthony of Padua Church in Falls Church, sand, rice and sawdust became images
of the Trinity, Our Lady and Christ crucified.
It was a sunny, mid-morning on Good
Friday, March 30, but the construction of the carpets had begun hours earlier,
and wouldn’t be finished until mid-afternoon, said Jorge Cabrera, who leads the
organization. Alfo-Conce is an abbreviation of alfombra, the Spanish word for carpet, and Concepción
Chiquirichapa, the members’ native town in Guatemala.

A man works on a sawdust carpet of Our Lady of Guadalupe
on Good Friday, March 30, at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Falls Church.
To participate, members pay money for
the materials and collect money to send to Guatemala. When they started in
2005, the group collected $4,000 to fix the church in Concepción. They continue
to send money to the less fortunate there.
In addition to aiding their countrymen,
the carpet artwork, which they make on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, is a way to
keep their faith and culture alive in the United States. “We learned from our
country,” said Cabrera.
Weeks before, members purchased sawdust
locally and special dye from Guatemala, then mixed them together. Images were
chosen and sketched onto large sheets of paper.
On Good Friday, some 30 adults and children
wearing purple Alfo-Conce T-shirts crowded around the nine drawings laid on the
sidewalk. Surrounded by bags, buckets and bowls of tinted sawdust, the members
gingerly poured the shavings in between the lines, then smushed them together
with their hands or pieces of cardboard. Slowly, a crown of thorns, rays of a
halo, and outstretched arms emerged.

Some 30 people, including teens and children, helped to
make the nine sawdust carpets for Good Friday.
The carpet of Our Lady of Guadalupe was
especially vivid with a sky blue and teal background, and Mary’s bright red robe.
At the bottom was written, “In memory of Mrs. Z,” the recently deceased mother
of Father Matthew H. Zuberbueler, pastor of St. Anthony.
After the carpets were completed, many
attended the Good Friday liturgies or the Vía Crucis procession. At the end of
the evening, the labor of love was swept and shoveled away.