What is up?

Two years ago Saturday, I arrived in Santa Rosa de Copán. It’s been a good two years – filled with joys and challenges and lots of new experiences.

The bishop originally wanted me to spend most of my time in campus ministry at the local campus of the Catholic University of Honduras. I have done a lot trying to connect with the university but it’s a very difficult situation. The local campus is part of a national Catholic University of Honduras system with campuses throughout the country and administration in Tegucigalpa. Here there are now about 900 students, most of whom live here in Santa Rosa, though they come from all over western Honduras. There is now a person who coordinates campus ministry part-time as well as a priest who serves as chaplain. When I arrived there was no one hired to do campus ministry and the chaplain at that time was not very involved.

I found it very hard to enter into the university system, though the local campus director has been very welcoming. Partly I think because the local university has the feel of a community college. Many students work; some are older students; though there are classes all day, you find most of the students on campus between 2 and 8 pm.

I am still helping a little, mostly with a talk on retreats and I have helped get some students to help with a lunch program fro kids as part of their service learning class. I will be talking with folks there later this week or next to see how I can still be of service.

But it was at the university, at their feast day Mass in June 2007, that I first ran into Father Efraín Romero. He invite me to visit his nearby parish of Dulce Nombre de Mariá. After a few visits, I talked with him, the parish council, and the bishop and decided that it would be good for me to help there.

A lot of my work is accompanying the parish visiting villages and taking part in parish meetings. I also have done a lot of education and formation work with catechists and pastoral workers. I have to give three presentations at a workshop for catechists this Friday. I also have been a bit involved in projects that have been proposed by Father Efraín and that St. Thomas Aquinas in Ames has been helping. I hope that I can get more involved in some of these projects – especially the family gardens.

One of the joys of this relationship has been trying to connect St. Thomas in Ames with the diocese and especially with Dulce Nombre. Two spring break groups have helped in rural villages of the parish and there have been some sharing of greetings between children in religious ed in St. Thomas and children in the village of Plan Grande. St. Thomas has also aided some projects in the Dulce Nombre parish. This sharing and solidarity, I believe, opens a lot of possibilities for future connections.

I have also been helping a bit, especially since last September, with a lunch program for poor kid in the diocesan offices. The program has had its ups and downs, especially when the couple in charge dropped out and didn’t tell anyone. But by that time I had helped get some things in place – including a system of control of funds and paying the cook. I had also managed to get groups from the Catholic university to help. Next week some of us involved will be meeting to see what we can do to make the program more effective. It is providing lunch for between 24 and 35 children between 3 and 12. Some of the kids are really quite a handful, but the need is there.

Since January I have also been helping in the local office of Caritas, which is the social action outreach of the diocese. The new director is Father Efraín, whom I’ve been working with in Ducle Nombre, and I’m named the “associate director” – “sub-director” in Spanish. I’m still trying to feel my way in this and have been a little frustrated with the office stuff. (I find more fulfillment in direct work with the poor than office work.) But I’m working on writing up some funding proposals (in both English and Spanish) and also I have been going out with some of the program staff as they visit and work in rural villages. There are so many possibilities that I hope I can really get involved more directly in a few of the programs – especially a major training of leaders in Catholic Social Thought and some pilot programs in sustainable agriculture – if and when we get funding.

That’s what I am up to these days. There are other things, including occasional visits to a kindergarten in a poor neighborhood here in Santa Rosa and to a home for malnourished kids under 5. I am also welcoming visitors. An Iowa State grad who was active at St. Thomas and is now a Spanish teacher in Houston is coming for a month and I’m arranging a number of opportunities for her time here. I also hope to welcome a young priest who also was active at STA and is now studying Spanish in Guatemala.

That’s a bit of what I’m doing. I’ll leave to another blog a reflection of what I’ve learned and how I’m growing, as well as some thoughts on the current political situation here (which is quite a mess.)

In the meantime, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.