We continue focus support on Consolacion, a small mountain village just west of Lepaera in the Department of Lempira in Honduras. In November, 2022 we celebrated the completion of a community-wide water system that serves both Consolacion and a neighboring community.
Our goal for 2023 is developing a "workshop" to house community education and specifically education and income-producing activities tied to the sewing machines we shipped earlier in the year.
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:
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.