From the DirectorDear Fellow Missionaries, We pick up mid-letter from Fr. Timothy Conlan, OP, who serves in Guatemala. Last month he gave us reports on visiting the worst hit parts of our parish in Guatemala City and some outlying districts. We continue his report, followed by a letter from Bro. Raymond Bertheaux, OP Bro. Raymond tells us more about the parish school in Guatemala City and the work of the community there, including the problems faced by postwar Guatemalans as they pick up the pieces of their suffering lives. Please pray for our brothers and sisters in Guatemala. They depend on us for moral and spiritual support, every bit as much as our contributions help them. God bless you, our fellow missionaries! Warmly, The Devastation of Hurricane Mitch...
Dear Friends, Outside Guatemala City there are many roads that are impassable and people are cut off in their villages by swollen rivers and downed bridges. You probably read about it in the papers, but when you are in the midst of it you can understand how precariously people live, how vulnerable life is here. We read about how people had roped their children to trees in the hope they might be saved in the slides and floods. It was a good feeling to be able to do something concrete. I had planned to save all my gifts for the people up in the mountains, but in the face of a crisis and knowing that I wouldn't get up to the mountains for several more weeks, it seemed this was the place and the time to act. I have some medicine that I brought which I can make available to the clinic across the street from our church. We have an area in the parish also that is built onto cliffs and I am going to look into helping them tomorrow. One of the big problems of course is the possibility of a spread of an epidemic of cholera or typhoid after such a disaster. On a weekly basis we read here of areas that have cases of cholera and somewhere around 400 people died from it this year that are reported. I suspect the number is probably... |
