2018-2019 Project - Our Lady of Fatima Chapel

2017-2018 Project - Kindergartgen Classroom

Our mission actually began in about 2014 when Dr. Rene Fialos and his wife Marisol Aragon adopted Consolacion, a small mountain village outside Marisol's hometown of Lepaera.  Living in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, Dr. Rene and Marisol have been supporting the children of Consolacion for over 5 years.  Along the way they invited others to this walk with Christ, including a catholic lay person named Diana Sanchez.  Led by the Holy Spirit and compelled to action by the love of our Lord Jesus, Rene, Marisol and Diana reached out to others including a national Catholic lay organization called GEPROCA and eventually Pope St Pius X Church through one of our parishioners, Luisa Becker.

Luisa, who is from Honduras, and her family visited Consolacion in 2017 and felt the same presence and love of Christ that enflamed the others to action.  She brought that light back to Pope St. Pius X and encouraged Deacon Chris to join her and the Honduran team on a trip during the first week of July in 2018 to assess the viability of a long-term mission relationship with the village.  Pope St. Pius X raised money to help build a Kindergarten classroom for their local school and worked with Holy Family Catholic School to collect school supplies to deliver during that initial visit.

Guided by the Holy Spirit and filled with the love of Jesus, the work has continued, with a number of great things happening in Consolacion.  The Kindergarten was completed in 2018 and St. Pius sent an LCD overhead projector and companion lap-top to the school.  The Honduran team facilitated cleft-palate surgery for a couple of the local children and we've secured a vehicle for Diana to continue helping with project management and catechesis.  Diana has visited several times checking on construction and celebrating God's grace, mercy and blessing withe the children.  

In 2019 we renovated their local Chapel and provided liturgical supplies including a beautiful statue of their Patron Saint St. Thomas the Apostle (processed into St. Thomas in Coeur d'Alene, blessed and processed to the chapel in Consolacion) and a Tabernacle.  The Blessed Sacrament is reserved in Consolacion now for adoration and for occassional Liturgies of the Word with Communion.  We held business meetings with coffee producers and community leaders to discuss a water project, making great headway on both projects.  Diana continues to act as the local Project Manager making frequent trips and taking other professionals to the village to assess and take action on the many and varied challenges they face.

In 2020, we continued to support Consolacion through the pandemic, collecting enough to provide about 2 months worth of food for 150 families in Consolacion and neighboring villages.  The design of the water project was finalized and commitments made by Worldvision and the municipality of Lepaera to support the project which was put on hold during the health crisis.  

In November 2020, two hurricanes devastated Honduras within a week of each other.  There was some local damage to infrastructure and crops in Consolacion but other regions were impacted to much more significant degrees.  This included the areas around San Pedro Sula.  Union de Amor is working with a variety of local aid groups within the church to provide emergency support and is committed to helping the community of Baracoa with a housing project for those who have lost their homes.

In November 2022, we completed a water system project for the Community of Consolacion and a neighboring community including a water collection system, two tanks connected via a pump powered by solar power. 

In 2023, the community came together and built a Community WorkCenter to provide community education with classes in sewing, cooking and guitar.  There was an immediate reaction of 135 students signing up, representing 8 of the 10 communities in the area surrounding Consolacion.

Well, here's a short overview of how it was chosen:

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.