By Lee Alphen
A New Hampshire Parish helps a Mexican Village
The blogs describing Posada are very enlightening. Thank you so much. We typically travel to the little village we adopted south of
In the late nineties Lucas, his wife Yarezmin, his father Arnulfo and cousin Eleazar came to
Shirley, a wonderful Spanish woman from St Joseph Parish in
A few years later several of us were celebrating in a local restaurant and Lucas invited me to his village to visit his family and his church. Feeling like real missionary, I jumped at the opportunity and made my first trip in October, 2001.
Sitting in his parent’s house conversing with his sisters in my broken Spanish I began to tell them how their father and brother spent so much time at our Chapel. They attended Mass, prayed the Rosary, attended English classes, and our bi-weekly Free Supper. They were so in awe. Then I told them how Lucas, his wife and their Father all received Jesus in Holy Communion. Finally I remembered I had some Spanish booklets on How to Make Your First Holy Communion. Immediately they began to study.
Two months later Lucas brought his sisters to the next county to Christmas
From the beginning I wanted to solve the water problem. The village had no water during the dry season, February – June. It is not possible to build an economy without water. It is not possible to earn even a meager living without water. Crops, animals and even industry require water. Because there is no water, since there is no way to earn a living to support ones family, just about every family in this village has someone here in the states earning money to send home. Some were here legally, most illegally. I was determined to find a better way for these good sisters and brothers.
After several years of negotiations, planning, and fundraising, in August of 2006, Living Water International, a non-profit organization from
Our Pastor, Fr John Michaelowski, SJ is very supportive of our mission. Parishioners Ann Halloran and Peter Klecan help with the fundraising and collect supplies. They even give up family time before Christmas to join me on our annual pilgrimage.
We continue to help the church, one of the local schools and to work at building an economy. This year we raised money for sheep and goats for some of the families and a copy machine for the school. American Airlines gives us permission to bring six 50 pound bags each. Bibles, missalettes, statues, rosary beads, sewing machines, fabric, notions, yarn, knitting needles, personal care items, and soccer balls will excite the people of Colonia Benito Juarez this year.
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It is now February 2008. We had a fantastic trip to our Mexican village in December. The people were most grateful for everything.
One day we were invited to a celebration at the school where the children acted out some traditional Mexican skits and dances. They were fantastic and the costumes they made were superb.
Later the entire village gathered around the well. It was very moving to hear the people thank God for the gift of water. Following an outline suggested by Jack Fagan, everyone had an opportunity to participate in blessing the well with the water. They were all very happy when we hung a crucifix behind the well. Imagine, we hung a crucifix on public property and everyone was happy.
Saturday we visited two chapel where we had never been before. The people gathered to pray with us and insisted on sharing refreshments with us afterwards. Each chapel has a volunteer who coordinates everything. At the 2nd chapel I taught the volunteer to use the misalettes I brought to lead the Liturgy of the Word on the Sundays the Priest does not come. They only have Mass every other month. The entire community returned at 7:00 Sunday morning for a service so the volunteer could practice.
We taught the women to use the sewing machines. One woman had experience with a treadle machine so we put her in charge of the sewing project. They were all delighted with the hundreds of pounds of fabric and sewing notions we brought. The knitting lessons did not go as well and we ran out of time. I guess we will follow up on that next year.
The trip to the sheep farm was fun. Lucas bought two sheep while we were there. He now has 13 and is expecting 6 babies next month.
I spoke with Lucas last week and he said everyone was very happy. The whole village got together and each family contributed one dollar. They gave the money to the Priest and scheduled three Sunday Masses for all of the people here who helped them. Lucas said they wanted to let us know how much they appreciate all we do and they want to be right with God.
