Walking With the Poor - Notes From the Field

Mission awareness trip to Guatemala during Holy Week 2005

I write this in the vehicle as we travel toward the Mayan ruins of Iximche on Easter Sunday morning, the final day of our MAT of Semana Santa, 2005. With 43 mission awareness trip participants plus CFCA staff, we have had a full house and a meaningful week together.  

Sponsors were able to participate in a great deal of the Holy Week prayers and traditions of San Lucas Toliman. On the days the sponsored children and their families came in, we fed and slept roughly 400. I want to express the gratitude of our CFCA family to CFCA Kansas City staff members Mary Raple and Emily Haney and to everyone who helped to get our MAT groups prepared to travel. It was great having Emily here with us on her first CFCA overseas adventure.

CFCA lives and breathes human dignity and personal outreach.  We gladly embrace the attention to detail that the true "personal outreach" requires. I will include a few encouraging examples of sponsors who accompanied me on this trip.

Sponsors Larry and Karen of Arizona, are petitioning to sponsor Maria Raquel, the little sister of their sponsored child, Juan Jose of Project Hermano Pedro. Later during the trip they also met two little girls from Project Atitlan who they will be sponsoring.

Sponsors Allen and Pauline have 14 children of their own back in Maine. Their children financed their trip to Guatemala. Allen and Pauline have offered to sponsor the younger sibling of their sponsored child, Marcos, of Project Hermano Pedro.

Next MAT trips: COSTA RICA and MERIDA

I wish you every blessing our of Our Risen Lord.

Bob Hentzen

Easter Sunday, 2005