My name is John Donaghy, Juancito to the people I work with
in the Honduran parish of Dulce Nombre de María, the sister parish of St.
Thomas.
I have been in Honduras since 2007 and was ordained a deacon
in 2016. It is opportune that I am with you here in October, the extraordinary month
of mission.
This Sunday fifty parishioners will be going on a week-long mission
to another parish in the diocese, without money and without cell phone, which Is
probably harder. I am on mission to you, but without the austerity of my fellow
parishioners.
I bring you greetings from our parish and, like the
Samaritan leper, I want to share our thanks for your continuing prayers and
solidarity.
We live in the second poorest country in the Americas, with
68% poverty, and 44% extreme poverty – “a land beaten down by corruption,
impunity, drug-trafficking, and intense poverty,” as our pastor, Padre German
Navarro, writes.
The parish has a strong sense of mission – with more than
forty rural villages, which our pastor, visits at least once every two months.
Much of the parish’s pastoral work is done by the people. Every
weekend Padre German has at least five Masses, but the other communities have
celebrations of the Word, led by delegates of the Word. Where these is a
Communion minister they have Communion. There are 28 in the parish.
Several villages have youth groups, but almost all have
religious education, led by catechists from their village. In August we celebrated
almost 200 confirmations in three different locations in the parish.
Your generosity helps us subsidize the costs of forming
these leaders.
The area is poor without easy access to education and decent
health care. The partial scholarships provided for about 100 middle and high
school students helps, but the needs are great. This year one initiative has
been an English class for 19 grade school kids in the village where I live –
with your help.
The pickup bought with your donation helps us provide lower
cost transportation for medical patients and emergencies. A Kansas-city based
project brings medical brigades twice a year (and I try to accompany them).
We have our share of other social ills – farmers who get
little for their crops, corruption and misuse of funds, rising costs of living,
clinics without medicine, heat and drought, deforestation and contamination of
water sources, among others. The coffee project which STA helped start is
growing stronger. (Drink more El Zapote coffee!)
In the parish our village-based social ministry seeks to
respond, by visiting the sick, collecting aid for the sick, the poor, and medical
emergencies. About sixteen villages also participated this past month in
planting trees around the communities’ water sources.
There is much more to share with you in terms of the pastoral
work of our parishioners, as well as their needs. STA has helped in some very
generous ways to help our formation of leaders, as well as to respond to needs.
Thank you.
If you want to know more, I will be sharing here at STA at 7
pm on Monday night. But I also want to share our pastor’s invitation for you to
come and see, “a land soaked with sorrow and tears, but also with tenacious
sweat; marked by the footprints of death but also with the firm footsteps of Christ
crucified and risen,” I can assure you that you will find a people who will welcome
you with the love that casts out fear.
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