By Father Al Utzig, SSC
Late last year Yolanda Aguirre got a call from Sister Lili, a Colombian Daughter of Our Lady of Mercy. They had met in Costa Rica three years ago when Yolanda and her husband, Roberto, who are members of Fontana St. Mary parish’s the “Misioneros amor y fe” (Missionaries of love and faith) and some other members of the ministry had gone there to bring some simple aid after a hurricane.
Sr. Lili is now in Guatemala working as a pharmacist at a parish in the town of Livingston. Sr. Lili, along with two other religious sisters, Sister Blanca and Sister Rosa, are the backbones of the parish outreach programs. That area of Guatemala is on the coast with a very mixed population of mestizos, Garifunas, and Quechi-i indigenous people.
Yolanda and Roberto approached me to see if our ministry at St. Mary’s would be able to give them some help.
I replied, yes, I think we can do something.
So, we asked our parishioners if they would help, not knowing much about Livingston. We had some fundraisers selling enchiladas, and tacos, received donations for children’s blankets through our Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Rice Bowls, and finally asking at all the Masses for donations on the way out the door.
The response was overwhelming. We collected over $15,000 in a month. Our Misioneros amor y fe connected with a store owner and ordered $12,000 worth of rice, beans, sugar, flour, cooking oil, powdered milk and other staples.
Paying our own travel expenses, we flew from Los Angeles on a Sunday, drove eight hours to the coast, made final arrangements to have the supplies all delivered to the church, met the sisters and then slept. It was about 90 degrees and 90% humidity.
The next day at the church the seven of us from St. Mary, including Deacon Abel Zamora, Arturo Gonzalez, Lucy Reyes, and Estella Maldonado, had a lot of volunteers recruited by the sisters to help us. The local volunteers included Garifuna women, indigenous women, and some children. We had to fill 800 bags with food to feed 400 families at four different locations. It was a lot of very sweaty work until three in the afternoon.
Early Wednesday morning we went back to the church and lined up 360 bags outside where hundreds of grandmothers and grandfathers and women with children were waiting. They were enrolled in Sr. Blanca’s various programs of education and hygiene.
I celebrated Mass with Father Rudy, the pastor at the Livingston church. He has over 30 Quechi-i villages, with no roads in or out, to care for. Everyone came into the church for Mass. The choir was Garifuna. These are the descendants of African slaves who formed communities along the Caribbean coast in the 1600’s and speak the language of their ancestors mixed with local languages. They were very lively with drums and African harmony. Many of the others were indigenous who don’t speak Spanish. After Mass we went out and distributed food to those who needed help.
Then we loaded a small boat and crossed the bay to a dock where some local folks were waiting for us. We unloaded our food and many from that village carried it about a mile through the forest to their village. We met them, talked a while, distributed our food, ate a special soup made with rooster and tortillas from corn they grow, all from “slash and burn” agriculture – small scale, corn stalks widely spaced.
The next day, we loaded our boat again and crossed the bay, then up a small river to a place to land. Again, we were met by friends of the sisters who helped carry our supplies to the village. We explained that we were from St. Mary parish in Fontana and we know they don’t really need what we bring, but we recognize that all of us are members of the same family, one body in Jesus Christ, and we didn’t want to come empty handed. After singing a song we ate rooster soup, very tasty broth with some tough legs. In the afternoon we visited our fourth village, way up a river, where we ate more soup and had a walk through their fields. It was very hot and difficult walking up and down.
Coming back, the tide had gone out and our boat got stuck at the mouth of the river. So, the pilot jumped out into hip-deep muck, floated a ways in front of us with a rope and pulled us 100 feet. Then he went another 100 feet and pulled, and another 100 feet and pulled. We finally got into the bay and slowly made our way home, tired and content.
I wouldn’t say those people are “poor” because they don’t have roads or electricity or running water. They just have a simple lifestyle.
Some thoughts that stay with me from this experience: How did the earliest missionaries share their faith with people speaking such different languages? They must have been amazingly strong and with great perseverance to find and travel to these villages. The priests and sisters and lay people who serve them these days must have a great faith and strength too. And how different are the cultures in the Catholic Church! Everyone should certainly be encouraged to celebrate their faith in their own ways. Blessed are those who can speak several languages, so we communicate with each other. But at least our presence was a sign that we recognize that we are all one, respecting each other, caring about each other. What we took with us was not much, but what I experienced was a great blessing. And experience is the root of wisdom. May all of us Catholics have many experiences of differences. God is so much bigger than we are.
Father Al Utzig served as pastor of St. Mary Parish in Fontana from 2012 to May 31 this year, when he received a new assignment from his religious community, the Society of the Holy Cross.