Catholic mission in San Lucas Toliman, Guatemala

I'm on a mission trip to Guatemala with the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging, a Kansas City, Kan.,-based charitable organization founded in 1981 by a group of Catholic laypeople. Its focus is sponsoring children and young adults to get them school educations and job training.

Associating missionary work with Latin American countries like Guatemala is not unusual. What is a bit unorthodox is where they get their missionaries in the area where I’m staying: the highlands around Lake Atitlan. San Lucas Toliman has a Catholic mission that has been operating under the auspices of the New Ulm, Minn., diocese since 1962.

Its pastor, Msgr. Greg Schaeffer, has been here since 1963.

While it is officially a mission of the parish in the United States, San Lucas mission operates financially separate from the parish. It receives its funding through individual donations.

The mission concentrates on building infrastructure and helping locals fend for themselves. It has purchased land for them to farm, is running community water and forestation projects and runs an elementary school. At the school is a library dedicated to Daniel Mauser, one of the victims of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton. His family sponsored a child through CFCA and requested donations to the organization in his name. CFCA was then able to get the school library built and had one more built at the school of the sponsored child.

The mission also has a coffee plantation that produces coffee for sale locally and in some places in the United States. The mission lets coffee suppliers determine what they need for the price, which is double what the regular market will dictate. It’s a curious economic principle, but it seems to work.

The parish sells goods produced by locals, with the proceeds going to widows. Volunteers from mostly the United States and Canada come to the mission to work for nearly a year. Chris Cottle, from Basalt, graduated the University of Colorado last May and came to work in the mission from September until June. He said it was tough work at times but very rewarding, though he misses all the snow we’ve been getting in the Centennial State.

Two brothers are instrumental in running the mission. Andres Chajil, who has been working with the mission 34 years, runs the water project.

Toribio Chajil is in charge of the forestation project. To say the brothers are passionate about their work would be an understatement. When I talked with each about his role in the mission, his eyes lit up as he explained that the work they did was necessary to provide a better future for their country.

Said Andres: “Guatemala has the best coffee in the world, but the best coffee in Guatemala is here in San Lucas.” After tasting the local coffee every day, it’s hard to argue with that assessment.

Their first language is Kaqchiquel, a Mayan dialect, but they also are fluent in Spanish.

Toribio is definitely a tree hugger (“My friends are the people here, everyone who comes from the United States to help and, of course, the trees. People would call me crazy,” he said.) His philosophy is that without the trees you have no food, no animals and no air. His project helps plant Cypress trees, which grow to maturity in six or seven years.

You get the point. The mission is another example of Catholics doing great work in the area. They don’t make any grandiose promises that they’re going to solve all of the residents’ problems, but they help them acquire the knowledge and tools to work their own land and improve their lot in life.