By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer

COMAYAGUA, HONDURAS—Teens on a Jubilee mission trip to Honduras June 29-July 8 saw the crying mestizo face of poverty and contributed to a Kansas-born priest’s mission there to dry those tears and educate youth spiritually and academically.

“(Missionaries) come here, they reach out and they really get their hands dirty doing something productive. They meet the face of poverty,” said Father Emil Cook, OFM Conv., who founded a Catholic school system in Honduras.

Matthew Robaszkiewicz, director of the archdiocesan Office of Youth Ministry, led 21 teens from four churches and nine adults involved in youth ministry, including spiritual director Father Mike Sloboda, MM, of Florida, on the second annual trip to Flores, Comayagua. Their mission was to serve the nonprofit Asociación de Pueblos Franciscanos de Muchachos, or APUFRAM, to which they donated about $4,500 along with collected goods.

Father Cook left the United States in 1970 to begin the ministry that has grown to include eight schools, including boarding facilities for orphans and others, trade schools and university housing servicing over 1,000 students.

APUFRAM was established in 1986 by the school’s first university graduates to carry on Father Cook’s work while Mission Honduras, a Catholic nonprofit organization open to all denominations, is the U.S. support arm.

These schools are essential in the Spanish-speaking nation on the knee of Central America where, according to APUFRAM, 90 percent of children quit school after the sixth grade and 80 percent of homes lack running water and even more lack electricity. Its goal is to provide Catholic education to free youth from the prison of poverty and beggar mentality and to become self-sufficient.

The missionaries work out of simple white buildings at the Guadalupe Center for Girls, an orphanage and school in El Conejo with 52 girls ages 5-12 who learn a trade, like sewing or cooking, and perform chores. Director Belkis Ventura, a psychologist, also offers therapy as many arrive with behavioral problems, are unmotivated or homesick. She said that as they have trouble initially sticking to schedules and are impulsive, she helps them learn to control their emotions and become motivated.

Guadalupe also has a home for abandoned women and their children which provides them with food, medical supplies, education and clothing, helping them develop skills and become better mothers while increasing their self-esteem.

One girl, whose demeanor has changed since being away from her mother who beat her and had sex in front of her, was Keidy, a loud, rambunctious girl with short black hair and bright eyes. Initially hitting classmates and spewing vulgarities, she is slowly beginning to change her speech and does well in school.

For missionary Daved Brosche, who plans to study photography in college, Keidy and other Latino children made the trip picture-perfect. He took many pictures of the children such as one of Keidy wrestling playfully with a teen and another of a shy girl who always ran away from him but on his birthday gave him a note. “It’s a big part of what made me want to come back this year—just something special about these kids—they’re always giving you their full, undivided attention.”

Missionaries rose by 5 a.m. to a cock-crowing chorus and the sound of girls handwashing their clothes, reciting the rosary by a Guadalupe statue and preparing for school. For their work projects, some sorted donated goods in the “bodega” warehouse later to be sold at a discount store there. Beyond a chicken slaughterhouse, some dug a long ditch to create a stone wall to separate the facility from the highway. Other workers joined with long-term Atlanta volunteers from St. Jude the Apostle Church, Atlanta, and Cincinnati filling a foundation for a larger volunteer house.

Meanwhile, first-graders up the hill packed into a small class eagerly shouting numbers after the teacher and sixth-graders tackled division of fractions, practiced filling out job applications and listened to their teacher talk about job discrimination.

Bringing their textbook Spanish to life, teens spent free afternoons with the children, many barefoot, doing things like playing “Duck, duck, ‘Ganso,’” painting toenails and singing “Shout to the Lord “ in Spanish. In Honduras’ winter, participants experienced moderate heat and humidity in a hunting zone for hungry mosquitoes.

For second-time missionary Stephen Clayton, an 18-year-old from St. Lawrence Church, Lawrenceville, the most rewarding aspect of the trip was giving hands-on help to a God-centered organization. “They embrace God and his teachings so much that after you (students) do get out in the real world you don’t have a selfish attitude. They give back to the community. Like Father Emil was saying, if you educate one person you help 15 more.”

For Ashley Scardasis, a parishioner at St. James Church, McDonough, her first mission and Third World trip opened the eyes of her heart. She recalled how the children lit up at their Fourth of July fireworks show. She recalled having her young “amigas” kiss her on the cheek, and write her notes. “It made me feel like I touched somebody and somebody touched me and made an impact on my life,” she said.

Nourishing their spirit, they had daily devotions and regularly attended Mass in Guadalupe’s chapel with pale blue walls and wooden benches. On Saturday the group worshipped alongside youth at a Spanish Mass celebrated by Father Cook at the main Mission Honduras office, in nearby Flores. The site, where over 425 children live or attend school, has the Maximilian Kolbe High School, Internado de San Francisco Home for Boys, Santa Ana Home for Girls, plus a furniture and metal workshop, volunteer house and a future medical clinic stocked with donated medicines, which team members organized. The plain cement block exterior of the grounds buildings, constructed by male students and volunteers, were brightened by colorful wooden crosses, a garden with a mural youth had painted depicting biblical stories and a tree-shaded walkway with neatly dressed boys reading. The team spent another afternoon playing soccer with boys from the San Antonio de Padua Center for Boys Orphanage and School in La Villa, home to approximately 50 boys.

The children, who lack the toys showered upon American youth, reminded Brosche that money can’t buy love. “I was impressed how they’re always so happy and how they could find joy out of the simplest things.”

Robaszkiewicz said that the trip taught teens to tap into their spirituality. “Some of the kids had made comments that it’s a lot easier to get in touch with your own spirituality and find God when there aren’t so many distractions, so many people. (They said,) ‘I have no trouble seeing Christ down there in the people.’”

The most important aspects of the trip were just being there and spending time with the children, experiencing another culture and completing the work, he said. And the trip was affirming. “Any time you reach out to anyone, whether in the missions or here, it’s going to be an experience of affirmation and acknowledgement. By opening to a different way of life, not only to a different language but to a different culture, it gives the teenagers a more global perspective because it’s so easy to get so focused on our own lifestyle and way of doing things.” Recognizing the importance of the global church, he said, “we also have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters regardless of who we are because we share the same faith.”

A new seed has been planted for teens that will grow in unique ways for each of them. “The biggest challenge is how to carry this experience in daily life and what difference is it going to make and how am I going to change what I’m doing to be in solidarity with this experience?” he said.

Robaszkiewicz said that Central America is a missionary as well as geographical hot spot and that APUFRAM is very accommodating to volunteers, including many groups from Atlanta.

For youth ministers “the idea is that this is a training trip to give them a first-hand experience, to give them the process of planning it so that they can go back and do it in their own parishes.”

Jane Peterman, youth minister at St. James who experienced her first mission trip along with her teens, said it was fertile training ground to lead her own trip there. “I just have more of a global sense. I’ve never been outside the U.S., at least not that far ... It just changed my whole outlook. I’m a better steward of what I have,” she said.

She said the trip increased her understanding of Georgia’s growing Hispanic presence, adding later that all St. James’ teens gave the trip five stars, even with the unfamiliar poverty they experienced. “They got a bigger picture of the world. What touched them the most was visiting with the children and being part of their lives ... (They got) a better sense of what Christ calls them to and every single one of them wants to go back,” she said.

As she heads back to high school, Scardasis, 16, said she too has a better image of the world’s economic spectrum and, as she just lost her car, before complaining recalls how in Honduras many don’t have cars. Entering Spanish III and with a best friend from Peru, her Spanish is sharper and so are her goals. “I want to be so fluent. I did before, but it’s something I really want to do now because that’s the way you can communicate with everybody else, because there are so many Spanish-speaking people in Atlanta,” she said. “... I think it really helped me just to get out and try to meet people, not judging people (before) you get to know them.”

Peterman said all the teens were blessed to meet Father Cook. She was impressed by the schools’ loving, family environment, commitment to educate every student and highly structured schedules. “To talk to somebody like Father Emil who is making a vision or a dream come true is a really great learning experience. He is a man who is a great role model.”

Cullen LaClair, a St. Lawrence member on his first mission trip, counted his own blessings. “Seeing people down there and how happy they were with how little they had, it showed us the things that we take for granted, that we don’t need all that stuff, that all we really need in our lives to be happy is God,” said LaClair, 18.

Having dropped out of his parish youth ministry, he said the trip revived an interest in the faith community. “I realized how much our church youth group comes together as a family and I want to be a part of that and I definitely want to stay involved in service and spirituality.”

For Clayton, who helped start an outreach program at his parish after last year’s mission, the trip stirred his evangelical spirit. “(The) experience makes you realize how well you have it and makes you want to make everybody else have it, to try to brighten up their day.”

Whether returning to Honduras or helping a poor immigrant in their own backyard, these young missionaries stretched their spirits to more clearly see poverty and, beyond that, to better reach God and neighbors in need.