NUEVA LOLITA

Guatemala​

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​A young parishioner at St. Ignatius Loyola approached the Director of the Tepeyac Mission with a simple picture of a small hut with a capacity for 40 people that was their Church at the village Nueva Lolita in South-Western Guatemala, the region of Retalhuleu. The picture was accompanied by a letter signed by a dozen members of the village, asking to replace the log siding of the little church for bricks. The first response from the director was asking the parishioner, Cesar, to invite other members of his village who lived in the US to start a study of the best help we could provide. Cesar invited some friends, not only from his native country but from other nationalities who would want to help him with the purpose of reconstructing the church. The group invited other members of St. Ignatius Loyola community to a pot-luck dinner, to give some contributions to initiate the project. The first hundreds of dollars were collected.

The Tepeyac Mission later invited  Country Singer Pamela Rose to offer a Christmas Concert at St. Ignatius Loyola. The product of this concert was around $3,000. With this money, the Mission initiated the study of possibilities to help the community at Nueva Lolita. The Mission contacted the priest in charge of serving this village, one of seven villages in this area. The parish was more than one hour away driving through a rough dirt road. He said he had to serve other 20 villages, and if he could gather these seven villages distant 20 minutes walk away from each other, he could celebrate a Mass every Sunday for those seven villages, that in total had close to 1,500 inhabitants, many of them Catholics.

Trusting the Divine providence the Mission started contacting the community, talking with their leaders, with the priest, and with the Bishop of Suchitepeques. They were very excited, but the project of a bigger Church would elevate the cost to over $30,000. By spreading the word in the community, the merciful Father gathered together great parishioners at St. Ignatius Loyola, around Father Edgar Mazariegos, like Tom and Sue Melillo, who contacted some donors, but especially they invited  Siro and Roberta DeGasperis who pledged the total of money to complete the project. Glory be to God! It happened by Holy Week in early April of 2010.

Ricardo Wiswell a civil engineer traveled to the place with Father Mazariegos, a native from Guatemala, to take the first look of the terrain and to assure that the deed was endorsed to the  Diocese of Suchitepequez. With the technical description of the lot, the designing of the church was commended to Deacon George White, an Architect at St. Luke parish. The Director of the Mission then traveled to the village to arrange all the details of the construction. A big commitment and celebration from the villages were held on April 27, 2010. Three years later, the Church was dedicated on January 30, 2013, with a capacity to 450 faithful, and with a final cost around $50,000 including pews, hurricane shutters, public bathrooms, and a lodging for the traveling priest.

The Tepeyac Mission continues supporting the community and we pray that the Good Lord will allow us to initiate a community project that could provide jobs to the members of those villages. In God we trust.