What's been happening in parishes around the diocese?

Through nearly a year of planning, fundraising and preparation, the Silver Lake community supported a group of teenagers planning a mission trip to Guatemala. Twelve teenagers from two of Silver Lake’s churches (Holy Family Catholic Church and Faith Presbyterian Church), as well as eight adult chaperones, made their mission trip to San Lucas, Guatemala. The group enjoyed working with the people while helping with assorted projects. San Lucas left a lasting impression on each member of the mission group and they are anxious to return.

Members of the mission group have also been busy helping out in the community. They have traveled to Minneapolis where they volunteered at Mary Jo Copeland’s Sharing and Caring Hands. The group served meals to the less fortunate and had an opportunity to meet Mary Jo.

Other community projects the group has done range from volunteering in the perennial gardens at Glencoe Regional Health Services Long-term Care; helping with clean-up following last year’s tornado destruction in Buffalo Lake, and showing support for our troops by sending care packages.

Six young girls and a chaperone from the Church of St. Philip in Litchfield had a mission group experience by volunteering their time on an Indian reservation in Martin, SD. As volunteer Jayme Klein scribed in her high school essay she composed for her composition class, "I got a lot more out of the trip than just painting and playing with the kids."

"Our mission for the first day was to set up activities in the park for the Indian children. Driving through the reservation was a culture shock. Even though we were still in the United States it seemed like a totally different country. The houses were all run down with boards and plastic over the windows. There was not a single tree on the whole reservation. You could just tell by the looks of things that these young people, who I knew little about, had a tough life ahead of them, if it wasn’t already tough."

Jayme’s essay continued, "Our goal was to paint two houses. The first house was for an elderly couple who did not live on the reservation. Every day the owners of the house were out thanking us. The wife even went as far as to bake us cookies. It was a great feeling to know that something you did made someone else happy."

Jayme continues, "The last house we painted was on the reservation. The house was missing half of the windows, had graffiti written all over, and much of the paint was either peeling off or gone. It was 110 degrees when we painted this house, but everyone kept a good attitude. Even though we didn’t get to find out whether the homeowner was grateful or not, it didn’t matter. I had helped to make the reservation look a little better. It was a good feeling."

St. Anastasia parish 7th grade religious education class made blankets to be donated for the needy of McLeod County. Each year religious education classes are invited to participate in different service projects and in November of 2003 Ms. Patti Cogley's 6th grade class made about 20 blankets to be donated to a local charity. Students who participated are: Luke Mullenburg, Joe DeMeyer; (Carissa Hahn, Natalie Decker, Lucas Doelger, Brad Hauer, Andy Johnson, Andrew Miner, Mitchell Cannon; Brittany Albrecht, Caleb McClain, Luke Young, Dani Tews, Brittany Storms, Johnna Cummins, and Eric James.