Honduras Mission

The following e-letter was submitted by Sr. Larraine Lauter, who is heading up the current Mission to Honduras. She gives a link to many more recent pictures from the visit.

Greetings to all our family, friends and supporters! Finally, a few photos, which you can access through this link: Honduras August 2011.

We had a great day yesterday, with many adventurous challenges. The home construction is the most difficult we've ever attempted, but progress is being made in spite of tight space, steep elevations, and long distances to carry the materials. Our first round of water training (30 women) went very well, and those team members who are planning to start water programs (Haiti, Sudan) are gaining a lot of experience. I lost track of how many children, but we have a great team of child entertainers!

Please pray for our visitation team and the Divine Mercy community as we deepen our relationship through shared prayer, reflection and service.

Our service includes water filtration program, children’s enrichment activities, home construction. We’ll also be checking in with the micro-enterprise and scholarship recipients. Along with frequent prayer and liturgy, we will conclude next Saturday with a shared retreat day.

The next visitation dates will be March 9-18, 2012, to coincide with college spring breaks.

We’re still in need of a pediatric nurse to do well-child checkups and help collect supporting data for the water purification project. Other skills are welcome as well—Spanish ability is not necessary—and the cost might be lower than you think! Please contact Sister Larraine if you are interested.

Needed for Honduras: children’s craft items, non-prescription reading and sun glasses, rosaries and other small religious items, children’s books (bilingual, Spanish or English, soft cover preferred), Epiphany t-shirts (purchase to send), new makeup or lotion samples, toothbrushes/toothpaste.

Please call Sister Larraine or Kathy Thistleton (339-1137) if you can help, or label items and leave them on the back porch.

The Honduras Solidarity Team meets on Monday, April 18, 2011, 7:00 PM in the Library. We’ll begin with special time in Holy Week prayer with our friends in Honduras, and do some project planning—new ideas in the works! Our friends have asked us to help them learn container gardening as a way to supplement their diet with fresh produce, and to build "rocket stoves": high-efficiency wood burning stoves that will improve their use of wood for cooking. We are also working with friends to offer our water program to mission teams throughout the world. The needs of the scholarship families and the after school program have an exciting possibility: some of our youth plan to raise funds as they climb Kilimanjaro in June. We have pictures to share of the home construction progress, and a great report on the first steps in the micro-credit organization. All in all, it should be an interesting meeting!

This letter was received from Sr. Larraine upon her arrival in Honduras.

Mike Fitzgerald and I arrived on Saturday to join the Methodist medical clinic team. We aren't the only Catholics--there is a sizable contingent from the Frankfort area. There are 30 of us, working at the Methodist Church that is a few blocks higher in the neighborhood than our Divine Mercy Catholic Church. Today we saw 340 patients--a record for our team. The economy has worsened considerably here, especially affecting the price of food. At this level of poverty, folks chose between medical care and food--so the demand for (almost) free medical care has increased nearly 50% from our previous patient load. The crowd waiting at the gate was far more desperate and difficult to control than I've ever seen.