Preparations Continue

Greetings to all our readers. Special greetings to all 2012 team members, parents, relatives, and friends. Special greetings as well to last years team members from Springfield Catholic High, Heelan, Gehlen, and St. Thomas More and to all previous mission team members.                                                           

We continue our preparations for four mission trips this spring. A medical team in early March, Bishop Heelan Mission Honduras, Gehlen Catholic Mission Honduras, and St. Thomas More Mission Honduras. I encourage all students to show your parents, grandparents and friends how to use this blog and how to respond by making a 'comment.'  For the three student teams the goal is to blog from Honduras each night - then your parents, family members and friends can 'comment' back to you and the entire group. We might even get a blog or two out of the medical brigade. If that does happen I will post it. The three student teams last year generated a little over 35,000 hits on this blog during the time when they were in Honduras. So student missioners, please educate your families on how to do this.

As many of you know, over the years we have sent many medical brigades into Honduras. This year will be no different other than it does have quite an intriguing structure. It will be a combination of doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and translators from the Sioux City area. They will team up with a group of eleven nutrition students and a professor from South Dakota State University in Brookings. Together these groups will meet up with the medical brigade from Joint Task Force Bravo from Soto Cano, Honduras. Coupled with members from the Ministry of Health in Honduras they will all travel to Montana de la Flor and conduct a nutrition study of the Tolupan children along with a major medical clinic. This is our second straight year of working closely with all these groups to bring much needed medical attention and nutrition education to one of the poorest ethnic groups in all of Honduras. It should be an eye opening experience for all involved. Please visit www.missionhonduraslemars.org and on the right hand side click on 'Feature Story.' That will bring up the entire mission from last January 2011 - lots of pictures as well.

Bishop Heelan in Sioux City will be the first student team into Honduras this year. The program, headed up by Fr. Cosgrove will take 23 students and adults into Honduras.  Their mission will be the construction of one or two homes in the New Capital area. They will also work closely with one of Mother Teresa's Children's homes in Tegucigalpa (Don de Maria's). The plan also has the Heelan students working in the school setting of St. Terese of Jesus - one of Fr. Patricio's special schools he runs for the poorest of the poor. At St. Terese of Jesus there are 1,000 students in the morning and 1,000 students in the afternoon. I am sure the Heelan students will will be changed forever.

Gehlen Catholic becomes the second student team into Honduras followed closely by the team from St. Thomas More. Both will work from our base in Esquias, Honduras and travel each day to the small mountain village of Picacho, where they will construct a new water system for the village. The Gehlen team will be headed by long time veterans Carolyn Bickford and Linda Reichle and the St. Thomas More team will be headed by Mary Casey and Barb Honeycutt - both are also veterans of this program. Gehlen will take in 25 team members and St. Thomas More 22. Is there anything more precious than clean, drinkable water? These young people will find out  just how precious it is throughout their respective mission days. Like the Heelan students above I would imagine that all of them will come home with a totally different attitude about a great many things.

To get a look at last years mission trip please go to this same website: www.gehlenmissionhonduras.org and click on 2011. You will love it. Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom and see all the special features available: photo album, video, and powerpoint flash movie.

To all 2012 team members: if you have not done so yet please get your passport photocopy to me and make your respective payments. We are nearing the time when we will purchase the tickets. Then it is a 'go' and Mission Honduras 2012 begins. I am sure I will be in touch with all of you by regular email and this blog many more times. Keep watching and Take Care,
Richard Seivert