|
Note the dedication over the door:
it reads, “This room is sponsored by the Sacred Heart Parish, St Brigid
Parish and Pilgrim Congregational Church, |
Among the
Christian Service outreach programs at Sacred Heart are ones that provide
strong spiritual and financial ties to Haiti and Honduras, the two poorest
countries in the eastern hemisphere.
I'll leave it to someone else to describe the
We have also visited and actively support the Honduran
Mission in
We are uneasy boasting about our charitable work, of which this represents a small fraction. However, under the circumstances, we feel we need to call such qualities of our parish to your attention. Without the community and spirituality of Sacred Heart Parish, and the presence of people who can perform and support such work, we are ineffectual with projects such as these.
We recommend to you the book, "The Holy Longing," by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, which describes the four required aspects of living a life of faith as:
· Attending ritual (the Mass and sacraments)
· Personal prayer and spirituality
· Community
· Charitable giving
Each aspect comes with its rewards and burdens. But missing any of the four will handicap a person's means to fully live the faith. It could be a manual for Sacred Heart, because so many individuals and families here subscribe to its principles. We know that some of us lack for one or more of these aspects, but collectively we provide a balance and an abundance of opportunities for high quality experiences in each of these aspects of faith. Come visit us, open your eyes, and see!
(letter from Sister Maria Ceballos to Archbishop O'Malley)
Parroquial Santa Rosa de Lima
Guaimaca, F.M.
Dear Bishop O'Malley,
I am writing this letter to urge you to reconsider your decision to close
The parishioners of Sacred Heart parish have been involved in our mission in
several ways. Medical groups and other professionals have donated their time
and talents to work in our mission in Guaimaca. Where as you
well know the needs are so extreme and diverse. It is from this group
that the stipend is sent to pay a doctor for our parish clinic. With Dr. Karina and myself working in the
clinic we are able to meet the needs of twice as many people. As most of our cliental
arrives from the mountain villages we feel that we are serving the poorest of
the poor in
With giving hearts, Sacred Heart parishioners have donated more that $5,000 to our mission work in Guaimaca. In addition, they have recently sent $1,300 to initiate a safe drinking water project. This is a necessary program that will improve the health of thousands.
I know, Bishop O'Malley, you are faced with very painful and difficult
decisions but I want to let you know the full impact of closing Sacred Heart
Church, not just on the community of Lexington, but on the people they are
serving in other countries. Sacred Heart parishioners have donated significant
time & money for the health and social needs of the people of
With deep respect and my prayers,
Sister Maria Ceballos OP
(end of letter from Sister Maria Ceballos to Archbishop O'Malley)
From: Gareth
To: dad
Subject:
Date:
dad! I can't get my address book to work just now, can
you help me get this out? if not, i'll just try to
send it later.
thanks so much a million times
love
gareth
Greetings all! I hope you all had cozy, if not warm,
relaxing holidays. I was definitely thinking of you
all around Christmas time.
I have been in
months. I spent three weeks of that time in language
school in
Spanish to get myself into serious trouble. And now
that I have finally learned my way around the
Comayagua Valley of Honduras, I'm moving to the North
Coast.
over the country, and I feel very privileged to be
able to go to a site called Toyos. There are currently
no other gringo volunteers there, I am moving with my
co-volunteers Tara and Elmer. This site houses about
40 middle school aged boys, and has a middle school of
about 150 students who come from the surrounding town.
I will live in a house with other Honduran staff
(thank you for language school Aunt Shelia!). And work
primarily with the boys who live on-site doing
afterschool activites such as tutoring, teaching CCD.
Additionally, we will lead groups of gringos from the
basketball court. Our school year starts February
10th, and ends half way through next November. I am
incredibly blessed to have my father coming to visit
me during this time and help me move.
I would also like to share that I have learned a
profound respect and admiration for the
underprivileged Hondurans I work with. They are a
people of extremly little material wealth, and
overwhelming spiritual wealth. They have taught me
that they value being a good person, and being a good
community member over accomplishing things. They have
taught me that being with other people is all the
entertainment/recreation/leisure that they need. They
have shown me how to make house chores into play time
by working together in everything that they do. And
they are trying to teach me how the concept of in 10
minutes, in two weeks, or never, all kind of mean the
same thing here....I haven't quite got that one yet.
So I would like to again say thank you to each of you
for all of your prayers and support. I carry it with
me as I meet the challenges of each new day and I am
very grateful for it.
hugs from
-Gareth
From: "Gareth"
To: "dad"
Sent:
Hi everybody this is Gareth. I finally have an
official job here at
write and tell you about it. Three weeks ago my dad
helped me move to a town called Toyos, which is four
or
five hours from my original house. I live on a campus
that has six houses for 40 boarding students (boys), a
big house for the grownups (a teacher, the director of
the students who live on site, and us couple of gringo
girls), and a school that also takes in students from
the surrounding area. We have about 150 students in
grades 7th through 11th. Their ages range from 11 to
22. There is no correlation between age, physical
size, and grade level what so ever.
>
I teach religion, yes, in Spanish, and help with
English classes during the school day from
In the afternoons, we are working on fixing up the
buildings and grounds. In the future, we will host
groups from the states of 20 for a week at a time to
help us with the physical labor.
>
The ceilings at my school are literally falling in on
the students. We just got electricity for the first
time in five years - since hurricane Mitch. There is
one working toilet in the whole school, in the girls
bathroom. Unfortunately it doesn’t correspond with the
only stall that still has a door on it. We don´t just
have termites, we have ferocious carpenter ants that
can swallow small children whole. I’ve observed that
the boys who live on-site go back to their dormitories
to use the bathroom, the external students just go out
past the soccer field and find a good spot amongst the
banana trees. The water source is one outside spigot
faucet for washing hands and drinking, watch the mud
puddle under it, it’s deep. The first three grades
have almost 40 students in them. We didn’t have enough
desks so we bought plastic patio chairs. We have a
textbook for most of each of the classes that the
teacher uses. The students have to acquire notebooks
and copy everything from the board. I was amazed at
the creativity of these kids in finding things to lean
their notebooks on while they wrote, they used the
seats of broken desks, they leaned on random pieces of
wood. There’s no garbage pick up so you can always
find random stuff laying around. The library is a
modest two book shelves they has nothing newer than
five years old on it, they have half a set of
encyclopedias and no fiction. There is nothing
decorative in the classroom. The windows aren’t glass
they’re chicken wire. The only things in the
classrooms are the chalkboard and the desks. The
students stay in the same room all day and the
teachers move around.
I just have to mention at this point that the other
day I was trying to study and these three boys kept
talking to me, so I issued them each a Harry Potter in
Spanish that I brought...they disappeared, I haven’t
seen them in three days.
I live with 37 ¨muchachos¨ who I just absolutely
adore. Edwardo is 18, 4.5 feet tall, and in the 7th
grade. There is no roof on his house where his parents
live. Marvin and Orbin, brothers
from a family of 15.
They got sent to school with one of everything one
sheet, one towel, one toothbrush. If they were in
the same grade, I’m sure they’d be sharing
a notebook
too. Nicolas, our littlest guy, his father killed his
mother and then himself, all of his clothes are
enormous and full of holes except his school uniform.
Half of my kids didn’t come with sheets, a third
didn’t come with towels, none of them have pillows.
And these are the happiest children on the face of the
planet. They are so joyful and so playful. They work
hard, they study hard. Their lives are simple and they
know how to laugh and see the joy in everything. They
really nurture my Spanish; they are endlessly helpful
and accommodating, never demanding. They share,
collaborate, and cooperate. I have so much to learn
from them and I look so forward to having that
privilege for the next nine months. And so much of
that is due to your generosity - thank you again.
>
Today I’m bringing up clothes and pillows and school
supplies that were donated from the
have already completed replacing or fixing all the
windows on the boys housing so they don’t look like
slums with boards and plastic anymore. The day I
replaced Marvin’s window, he just kept bouncing up and
down with excitement. It must have been sweltering in
his room at night with six teenage boys, in the
tropical weather, and a boarded up window.
I definitely have my work cut out for me. And I know I
could not be doing this without your emotional
support. For this I am the most grateful. Thank you
God Bless
Gareth
From: "Gareth"
To: "dad"
Sent:
Subject: Can´t believe I forgot your birthday
I still can’t believe
I forgot your birthday, it´s in
my calendar and everything. I am very
excited to be
writing you because it’s been so long
since I’ve been
able to.
I have no idea how much money I’m going
to need for
the rest of the year. It will cost a
couple hundred to
change my plane ticket,
I knew that, and a couple
hundred to leave the country at the six
month point
which is coming up here in June-July.
But I am either
running through money at the speed of
light or not
spending anything. So I will try to
track my finances
for the next month and then do an
estimate. I´m
thinking that maybe....maybe...I would
like to do this
again? next
year? it´s possible? For
which I would
want to put off writing another round of
letters for
that and try to make what I have
stretch.
It was great to hear about Julie Quigléy´s wedding.
She´s a sister
in the spanish too.
I am still happy and fabulous here in Toyos.
I prayed that I would speak Spanish more
and interact
more with Hondurans a while back. As
always, be
careful what you ask for. This has
definably forced me
to do that. Which is
good really. I’ve been to some of
my students’ houses,
my Spanish is improving even
faster. Because I just do my own thing
now and don’t
spend all my time with Erica and Tara.
Today, I
actually tried teaching a lesson plan to
my class for
the first time instead of just giving
them a page
number in a book. It was a disaster
really, children
everywhere, they were totally lost and I
ended up just
giving up and saying we will continue on
Monday. They
also surprised me in that we were trying
to compare
Christianity to other religions like
Islam, Buddhism,
etc. And they knew nothing about
Judaism; they knew
nothing about the WWII concentration
camps, or the
Nazis. They have such a deep
understanding of their
own faith that for some reason I thought
they would
know a little about other faiths.
But nonetheless, I was actually up there
trying to
lecture to them in Spanish. That in and of itself is
an accomplishment.
Love and kisses
garina
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gareth Lindwall" <streamorchid@yahoo.com>
To: "FORREST LINDWALL" <fclmrl@msn.com>
Sent:
Subject: Re: Easter
Happy Easter to all!
For Easter Vacation I am going to visit some of the
internados who live around Le Ceiba
and Tela. I hope
to go to the beach with them and meet their families.
It should be really interesting and really fun. The
second part of the week I return to Conejo to
celebrate Easter with the rest of the long-termers
the place to be in all of
Easter...lucky me.
I’m sorry I haven’t written much lately. I’ve spent
most of the last week staying with one of my kids in
the hospital. It all started the first weekend of
school, I was dropping you off at the Teguc airport,
he stepped on a Pepsi bottle playing soccer and it
broke under his foot and he got a really deep gash. He
probably should’ve had stitches, but
and he just brought
to do either. The gash on his foot got infected really
badly over the next three weeks or so. At one point,
the bottom of his heel was swollen to the size of a
baseball. I was considering cutting it open to drain
out the pus but didn’t feel like I knew what I was
doing enough.
college from the
lecturer to look at it. She immediately put the kid,
Ever Nunez, on a five-day course of penicillin. He got
a shot in his butt and his shoulder each day. That
seemed to clear up the infection in his foot, but the
gash was still healing slowly. At about the six-week
point, he was still walking on crutches because it
hurt to much to walk on his heel, three random nurses
came to the college, also as guest lecturers.
asked them to look at Ever’s foot. They said he was
fine but that he should stop using the crutches. So
Ever began walking either on the very toes of his foot
or the heel. For about a week he did that, and then
two Saturday’s ago he fell while he was walking on his
heel. Unfortunately, there were no adults in Toyos at
that time. Tara, Erica and I were all traveling for
the weekend, as was Professor Marvin who lives in the
big house. Unbeknownst to us, Norman was also gone for
the weekend, until the following Tuesday actually,
because Cartegenia, the big boss of APUFRAM had shown
up unannounced on Friday and said they both needed to
go to another site called Salama. So anyway, this kid
falls down Saturday afternoon, messes up his knee
really bad, he takes to using his crutches again, and
goes about his business and is fully prepared to wait
until Tuesday when Norman comes back to do anything
about it. Why? Because he’s Honduran, and that’s waht
you do.
So Monday is the first time I see Ever and I notice
that he has crutches but he’s got his school pants on,
and the muchachos tell me he fell and that’s why he’s
using the crutches again, but not to worry, they tell
me, because his foot is fine. So I don’t think
anything of it until that night when I go to check on
him in his room and his knee is actually the size of a
large grapefruit, bright bright red, and burning hot
to the touch. There is no key to the truck that we can
find, which worked out well becuase I guess the
brakes
were sitting on the desk in
grab Marvin Borjas, one of the twins and go wondering
and praying about Toyos looking for someone who will
give us a ride to the Hospital after dark. Thank god
we have spent thousands of limpera at the hardware
store, they got up out of bed to take us. The hospital
gave him a prescription for penicillin and told him to
come back in the morning for x-rays. It took all day
the next day to get him x-rayed, I can’t read an x-ray
for a fracture, but his kneecap was literally at a
50- or 60-degree angle from his leg. No bullshit. In
the afternoon they admitted him as a patient saying
that the infection he had in his foot had traveled to
his knee. In the end, the hospital staff didn’t know
if it was a fracture or an infection, his official
diagnosis was Septic Arthritis. He was given a ten day
course of 500mg of AMIKIN or amilkin or.. twice a day.
Yikes. I still wonder if he just hyper extended the
damn thing, and then went walking around on it for
three days.
So anyway, it took three days to get his parents there
because they live a two hour walk up the side of a
mountain somewhere, but they have a now 26 day old
baby and dad was worried that he wasn’t making any
money, and Ever does have a brother in Toyos who is
also an internado but it’s final exam week, so the
parents asked if I would stay with him and of course i
said yes because the Mother Teresa in me took over in
a moment of weakness.
And can I just say that the hospital in El Progesso is
worth ten pages of email in and of itself. Right now
Ever is fine. His mom made preparations for her
and him to stay with some relatives who live down low
so he doesn’t have to walk up the mountain, and she
will live with them and take care of him. His knee is
still swollen and he can bend it a little, but not
walk on it. Mostly I would have to say he is not is
tremendous amounts of pain anymore. And given that no
one knows what's going on I think the best thing for
him is to be in an environment where his body’s natural
healing process is fostered. Such as living with his
family and not walking on it.
So that’s what’s been up with me. How are you doing?
love andkisses
gareth
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gareth"
To: "dad”
Sent:
Subject: life in Toyos
so this week it rained. let me tell you about rain in
Toyos. the sky opens up and great
rivers of water come
rushing toward the earth at tremendous speeds. The
sound is deafening, I couldn’t hear myself think much
less teach in the classroom. but it only goes on for
15 or 20 minutes, then it gets really bright and hot
for a half hour, then it rains again. all day long for
three days it did this. and none of the Hondurans ever
seem to get wet...
Wednesday night i was sitting in my room when i hear
this tremendous crash, like something collapsing. then
after a minute all the boys are laughing hysterically.
i go outside and learn it was the last soccer goal
ever scored on
caved in. no one was hurt. and the boys just picked it
up without even discussing it, still laughing, neatly
stacked all the pieces against the back of the house
and kept on playing. oh that’s right, they knocked the
rest of it down so it wouldn’t fall down.
were all doing our homework in the dinning hall. all
the boys got up and went outside to great him. i went
to, i asked Carlos it
but then he took my by the arm and dragged me back
inside. i guess i wasn’t supposed to hear that
conversation. but after a little while i could hear
them all chuckling out there.
Then last night one of the boys was doing pull ups on
the soccer goals in the field by the school, and it
collapsed onto little Nicolas. They delivered like 10
new kids while I was dropping you off in Tegus, there
are like 40 now. Nicolas is a new guy, just a little
itty-bitty thing. His back had a huge gouge in it and
his foot was severely warped in an unnatural way. he
said he had pain all up his leg. One of the big boys
just picked him up and put him in the truck, and
night with a set of crutches. That’s the only time
I’ve seen
phases Hondurans.
i heard a bell in school on Friday. The kind you hear
in schools in the states to mark the passing of
classes. All the kids got up and started cheering and
hollering. i couldn’t figure out what was going on. it
turns out. The school has been without electricity
since hurricane Mitch, five years ago! But there’s
been a man working on it this week. and that bell was
the sound that marked the first time the school has
had electricity in five years. no wonder they don’t
have
computer classes!
love and kisses
gaerth
Hello all:
After forwarding Gareth's last e-mail I realized that some background info
might be helpful. Toyos is the Mission Honduras
School that Gareth and her
fellow volunteer Tara Tito (from Arkansas) have committed to until next Nov.
School started during my visit two weeks ago and we overloaded a small pick
up truck for the 3 hr cross country trip to get there. The village is about
30 miles from the Carribean coast in a much more
tropical environment than
the main mission at Flores/Comayagua area.
The school has about 120-7th and 8th grade students (coed) and on site
housing for about 40 boys. Gareth and Tara will be assisting the English
teacher in the classroom every day and then teaching CCD to the resident
boys. Not sure if they will teach CCD in English or Spanish but based on my
experience with these boys they need to brush up on their own theology real
fast. Each evening that I was there the boys led their own prayer service
including the Rosary.
The day at Toyos begins at
the floors in the housing area to keep the areas clean. Breakfast is at
and school starts at
of a siesta the boys spend the afternoon working on the 15 acre grounds
until
field and it's sudden death...1st goal wins and the
losers sit while another
team plays the winner. They rotate about 4 teams with the younger players as
additional substitutes. The fairness displayed is incredible.
he is a young man who the boys respect and admire. And he does make them
work hard but he also joins them in soccer at times. Given that Machetes are
the tool of choice for grounds maintenance
responsibility.
Dinner is served around
prayer time and more homework. TV is rationed to weekends and that is
usually more soccer watching. Also the 3 meals are usually
beans/tortillas/cheese with some scrambled eggs at breakfast occasionally
and black coffee with sugar. Very little variety and no frills yet still a
heck of a lot better than American Airlines pretzels.
The biggest surprise to me in my visit was the community experience. There
was prayer every day led by either the long-term volunteers or the boys at
Toyos. You could not pass by anyone/anywhere without
exchanging a greeting
(buenos dias or olah) and help for any need was always available even
though
the physical resources are so sparse.
If I haven't noted before Gareth's e-mail address is streamorchid@yahoo.com
and she tends to get into the Internet cafe in the nearby town once or twice
a week. Again thanks to all who have been supporting her mission and know
that she is making a significant impact in God's
vineyard..............................dad
( end of letters from Honduras)
2004-06-14