Counter-clockwise from top, Kathryn Runman-Zimney, associate director of the archdiocesan Center for Mission; School Sister of Notre Dame Irene Dohmen, pastoral associate at St. Margaret Mary in Golden Valley; and Cheryl Peterson of the archdiocesan Office for Social Justice visit children at a school in Nicaragua during a mission trip sponsored by the Center for Mission last June. Julie Carroll / The Catholic Spirit
Since the trip, the pilgrims have been moved by their experiences to make changes both in their own lives and in their parishes.
“People are transformed by these trips. They’re eye-opening,” said Kathryn Runman-Zimney, associate director of the Center for Mission. “I think they really come to understand what mission is and they want to be involved at a different level than they were before. You just can’t forget, and you don’t want to forget.”
Nine months after the trip, The Catholic Spirit checked in with members of the group to find out how they were moved to action.
Experiencing solidarity
Deacon Paul Tatone of Our Lady of Peace in Minneapolis said he chose to go on the trip to learn more about solidarity and to revisit a country he had led a youth mission trip to in 2001.
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After Sunday Masses, the parish sells Fair Trade coffee, tea and chocolate, and provides information about how Fair Trade ensures just wages for farmers and artisans.
He also has begun a program called “Caring for God’s Creation” to make the parish more environmentally friendly. The parish now recycles, uses compact fluorescent light bulbs and biodegradable cups, and has conducted an energy audit.
“Being down there [in Nicaragua] and seeing people get by on nothing, reusing things, and seeing the plastics blowing around, it kind of hit home that we’re not doing a very good job of taking care of the earth,” he said.
Deacon Tatone also drew on his experiences in Nicaragua in facilitating the parish’s JustFaith group, an adult education program that focuses on Catholic social teaching.
In 2010, the parish is planning to organize a similar mission trip focused on solidarity with the poor, Deacon Tatone said.
Nicaraguan fiesta |
‘All are my relatives’
For School Sister of Notre Dame Irene Dohmen, pastoral associate at St. Margaret Mary in Golden Valley, the trip was a chance “to really get into the lives of people, to let them touch my life.”
After the trip, Sister Irene reflected on her experiences: “Solidarity is the ability to hold the pain, the hopes, the dreams and joys and walk with them. . . . Solidarity is remembering that all are my relatives and whatever I can do for them to help them walk with dignity is loving them.”
She said the trip has made her much more aware of how she is connected to sisters in her community who are serving in Third World countries. “They’re very much more a part of my prayer,” she said.
She plans to speak about her Nicaragua experiences at St. Margaret Mary on Sunday, April 19.
Spiritual journey
Erin Sim, office manager at St. Albert the Great in South Minneapolis, decided to go on the trip because of its spiritual focus. And, Fair Trade was something she had been promoting at the parish for a long time, she said.
When Sim returned from the trip, she wrote about her impressions and put together a photo mosaic for the parish bulletin. “I am a richer person for having seen people who are rich while having much less than I do,” she wrote.
In January, Sim gave a presentation on Fair Trade coffee and pottery at the parish. She also spoke about a woman she had met who needed a cement floor for her cinder-block home and a wheelchair for her disabled son.
The woman’s story inspired a 13-year-old parishioner to donate $80 of her own money to help the woman, said Sim, who has been selling homemade greeting cards to raise the remainder of the $750 needed.
“I could see that what seemed like an achievable amount of money to me could make a huge difference in this woman’s life,” she said about her decision to help.
Sim also switched the parish’s coffee to Fair Trade coffee and put posters up in the social hall explaining what it is and how it benefits farmers.
Sim said the trip made the world a little bit smaller for her. “Now it’s much easier for me to imagine behind a news story the lives of the people who are being affected,” she said.
Personal transformation
Lee Moisant, a parishioner at Our Lady of Peace in Minneapolis, decided to go to Nicaragua to expand on what he had learned in the parish’s JustFaith program.
During the trip, Moisant was struck by the hospitality of the people he met and the importance of family in their lives.
He wrote in the group’s communal journal:
“In a setting of family solidarity reminiscent of the North American 19th-century homesteaders, we hear of one poor family’s unhesitating acceptance of an abandoned and seriously ill baby into their home to be raised along with their other six children. . . . .
“These Nicaraguan farmers (some would refer to them as peasants) possess a commitment to life and to a community that I can only weakly aspire to. I will never forget these people.”
After returning to Minnesota, Moisant made two presentations on Fair Trade coffee to his parish and a school. The trip also moved him to make changes in his own life.
Moisant joined the Ignatian Volunteer Corps, which led to his work as a congregational organizer for the Workers Interfaith Network, whose constituents come largely from the immigrant community. “I see it as a part of my spiritual journey as a result of that trip,” he said.
He also buys Fair Trade products whenever possible and has made a commitment to buy produce from a local farm.
“I now have a much more concrete idea of what it really means to be in solidarity with the poor,” Moisant said.
“Having been exposed to the courageous hope expressed by the men, women and children we met, having looked into their eyes, having prayed and danced with them, having touched their hands and embraced them, how can I forget them and their daily struggle?” he said. “They know what they need. They just require our personal support in order to help them achieve it.”
Fair Trade makes a difference
Whenever visitors arrive at the archdiocese’s central offices, first they have to sign in at the front desk, where receptionist Sue Mockenhaupt greets them.
Beside Mockenhaupt’s desk is a display filled with bags of coffee, chocolate bars and beaded earrings for sale. All of it is Fair Trade certified, meaning the proceeds go back to the producers and artisans in developing countries.
After going on the trip to Nicaragua, Mockenhaupt said, she has a new appreciation for the products she sells at her desk and takes every opportunity to tell visitors how their Fair Trade purchases are making a real difference in the lives of people like those she met in Nicaragua.
The trip also gave Mockenhaupt a greater respect for Catholic Relief Services, she said.
“We saw people struggling to survive, yet the people we interacted with are the lucky ones,” she said. “They are being helped by CRS programs. CRS does not give them money; rather, the goal is to enable families to make enough money to survive. The programs make loans, provide water and give people expertise in an area where they can support themselves.”
Changing focus
“I didn’t go looking for this trip. It came looking for me,” said Cheryl Peterson, parish social ministry manager for the archdiocesan Office for Social Justice.
Peterson had never traveled to a Third World country before and didn’t know what to expect. She admitted feeling some trepidation about leaving her comfort zone.
“Since the trip to Nicaragua,” she said, “I’m convinced everyone should take an opportunity to participate in an immersion experience like this. . . . This trip is an opportunity, ever so briefly, to shed a focus on self. It is an opportunity to not just listen, but hear. It is an opportunity to take the blinders off and really see.”
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