Trip 20 - Day 4 (6/15/2025)
Our day began with an early morning loading up of our bus with supplies for our work and suitcases filled with what we felt we would need for 12 days in a new place. Each of us was laden with the anticipation, much like the bus ferrying us on the final leg of our journey to San Sebastián Coatán.
As we grow nearer to our mission site, the roads become rougher. The paths become windier. Our pace slows as we navigate through chokepoints from Sunday markets in the roads of rural towns and around potholes and crevices left by rain and wear.
As our pace slows, we have the opportunity to notice details about the people we’ve come to work alongside. Dots along the mountainsides change into houses and hamlets. What was a form of shelter passed along the road becomes a home with children playing outside. A soundless blur of color transforms into a person, peering quizzically into the bus rumbling past.
This process of bringing our surroundings into definition and clarity has been the focus of the first few days of our mission. Its final step was a welcome meeting in which the people we met revealed themselves to us as individuals with names and stories, hopes and struggles.
After being welcomed by the people of San Sebastián Coatán, four young people introduced us to what life was like for them in this distant place that took us so long to reach. Each individual began by sharing their names—those things that carry our antecedents yet define our uniqueness from the day we our born. Each unique person then opened up to us what made them who they are.
A highlight of the presentations was the youngest boy who shared his love of helping his mother in her bakery and his dreams of what he might bake and cook. His story concluded by sharing bags of sweetbreads he had baked himself with all those in our missionary group. That final transformation happened as this special person became our new friend.
Our turn came to open ourselves to our hosts shortly after we snacked on the wonderful gift shared with us. Jeanine Emmanuel, a parishioner from Divine Mercy parish in Schuyler, shared how a mission trip like this has been in her heart for many, many years. As a mother, a wife, a nurse, and a grandmother, she feels that she has been very blessed. She told our hosts how much she looked forward to sharing those blessings and her faith with them.
Our day ended with the unloading of the bus and the unpacking of all the supplies as groups of missionaries and hosts met to plan together the three days of work ahead. While bags were opened and furniture moved to prepare for the tasks to come, it will be the opening of our hearts and the movement of the Spirit that will mark the true success of our time here.
