We continue focus support on Consolacion, a small mountain village just west of Lepaera in the Department of Lempira in Honduras.  The devastation from the November 2020 hurricanes, however, has caused us to branch out and support other communities with disaster relief.  This year we hope to:

• Finalize design and build community-wide water system in Consolacion (in partnership with Worldvision and the municipality of Lepaera)
• Continue support of the school in Consolacion.
• Aid local coffee producers, strengthening their association and building out infrastructure and marketing plans for their product.
• Build homes for the now homeless in the Baracoa region Northeast of San Pedro Sula.

While visiting Consolación on March 18th 2019, Dr. Rene messaged the team:  “Todo la Gloria sea para Dios, que hace possible, esta unión de amor desinteresado” (All the Glory be to God, who makes possible, this union of selfless love). 

Our Mission to Honduras had been wrestling with capturing our identity in a name until we received this message.  “Unión de Amor” expresses several important themes that reflect the reality of our mission.  
The name begins as a reflection of where our lives as Catholics begin, in Baptism.  We are born into our spiritual lives, becomming children of God and brothers and sisters in our Lord, through Baptism.  Here we are immersed into the very life of the Trinity, literally becoming a new creation "in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". This gift of "union" demands gratitude and a missionary response.  The following comments complete a brief reflection on why we chose this name:

• The Love of Christ (Amor) is the center of all we do – it is our motivation, our reward , and flows through everything we do.
• Love is a noun AND a verb.  We seek to be love in the world (a noun), to be light where there is darkness.  Love also presumes action (a verb); that is, participating in a constant and unstoppable flowing of the love of God into His creation.
• Unity, realized through a recognition of our universal and shared dignity, is desired in all we do.  We are all children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, members of His one body.
• Unión symbolizes an identity that removes any hint of the idea that one serves and one receives, as is the case of a name that includes “team” or a “mission”.  As a “unión”, all come to share of themselves and each receives.  There is a mutuality of giving and receiving, human and divine. 

We respond to God’s invitation and “set out” (LK 1:39) from our routine, work-a-day lives and we enter an exchange of giving and receiving with others; especially those communities that lack in the basic necessities of a dignified life with whom we can share.  We gather each other into a loving union that enriches and evangelizes us all and gives glory to God. 

Un Unión de Amor.