Looking back and forward

Last week I hosted two staff members from St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center in Ames, Iowa, where I had served until June 2007. They came to learn about the ministries here and to investigate ways to deepen relationships between St. Thomas and Honduras. It was a chance for me to look again at the areas where I am ministering.

It was a full week with visits with the bishop and the pastor of the parish of Dulce Nombre. We spent the evening of November 22 in the village of Plan Grande where Kathy White, the Religious Education Director of St. Thomas, did an activity with the children on creation. I had interviewed some children from Plan Grande which were shared with the St. Thomas Vacation Bible School last summer. Also Plan Grande had sent cards to St. Thomas in October and Kathy brought cards from a fifth grade class at St. Thomas.

When we stepped off the bus in Plan Grande on Saturday, we were greeted by Jorleny, a nine year old girl, who had been one of the children I interviewed. She, her sister, and a few friends accompanied us to Gloria’s house near the church. Later we met with other children as well as with some folks in the evening. It was a great chance for Kathy and Shari White, St. Thomas’s director of campus ministry, to meet the children they had only heard of before.

The next day was the feast of Christ the King and there was a single parish Mass in the nearby village of Candelario. More than 1000 showed up for the Mass and Kathy and Shari had the chance to meet more people, including some of the catechists. Before and after Mass, music groups from the various villages sang for the crowd. One group, La Gran Familia, from Plan Grande, sang after Mass (as they had sung for us the night before); three of them wore St. Thomas Aquinas buttons that the spring break group had given them. Solidarity!

We spent a few days in Santa Rosa where Kathy and Shari had the chance to visit the home for malnourished kids, the kindergarten where I help once a week, as well as the nearby group home for kids and Colonia Divina Providencia, a very poor neighborhood.

For a change we spent Thanksgiving in Copán Ruinas, the Mayan ruins, more than three hours away in bus.

On our way back we stopped at Dulce Nombre for a few hours on Friday to see their evaluation and planning meeting. We noted that they had identified the connection with St. Thomas Aquinas as one of their opportunities for the future.

Shari and Kathy left on Saturday and I went to the final day of the planning session. What they hope to accomplish is quite ambitious, but they’ve done a lot this past year. Besides training for catechists, for celebrators of Sunday celebrations, and for extraordinary monsters of the Eucharist, as well as a number of retreats for the people, the parish will form a Pastoral de la Tierra, a ministry of the land, which will work on a number of projects to help combat hunger through training in sustainable farming, through the silo project, and through other programs to improve the health and nutrition of the people in the parish.

In light of the world economic crisis and the extreme poverty here, these are small but very important steps to help feed the people. In combination with the projects for the spiritual formation of the people, I think the parish is making great steps to being a sign for the people here of God’s love.

May the ministries flourish, with the help of God – and all the people who’ve helped so far, especially the parish of St. Thomas.