By Jessica Savage

Guatemala Mission, May 10, 2007 – Day 2

The sun rises early here, and with it comes the sounds of daily life in Santo Tomas. By five o’clock the morning market is underway; people, cars, trucks, horns, engines, roosters and children can be heard from the mission. While the dense foliage all around the mission makes us feel as though we are separate from the town, the sounds carried to our bunks at this early hour remind us that we are not.

While yesterday was filled with the rush of travel and the excitement of our arrival, today is the first day we will have a look around.

We spend the morning touring the Clinic (Clinica Maxeña) and medicinal herb garden. It is amazing that Father Hazelton, the sisters and Sheila can do so much here at the clinic with so little to work with. It is almost impossible to believe that the modest supplies and bare rooms at the clinic are more efficient and effective than the care someone would receive at the national hospital. The local men and women who work for the clinic are so passionate and dedicated to this project, you can clearly see what the clinic’s presence has meant to these people.

Father Hazelton (Hazy) is to celebrate Mass today in the village of Pasaquijuyup (pah-sa-kee-jai-youp), and we will accompany him up the mountains to this tiny village. It is the rainy season – and because the dirt roads are rough and rugged on a dry day, they become impassable once the rains come. We leave early in the day – bettering our odds for safe passage. Piled into two pickup trucks and two jeeps our caravan travels up for 8 miles – bringing us to an elevation of 9,000 feet, a journey Hazy once made by foot. All the while as we wind up the mountain, native people, mostly children, greet us as we pass, waving and smiling.

Pasaquijuyup is nestled high in the mountains, and the thick fog that had followed us up the mountain was now blocking much of the village from sight. (Was there even more beyond it?) We were led along a winding path through the village – small low homes were constructed mostly of corrugated metal, but some had bits of wood or some cinder blocks. We attracted quite the crowd as we wove through the homes to the modest, low-slung church.

Hazy said the Mass in K’iche – the native language. There is lots of singing and music throughout the service; I can see that the accordion we brought with us will go to good use. The small church is very crowded and as the Mass continues the dense fog settles over us and pours in the open doorway to the church – blanketing us with a very real sense of isolation.

After Mass, we are served dinner by the people of the village. It is humbling to be served by people who we would say have so little. Yet this gesture is so strong – that the people of this village want to care for us, to feed us and share with us what they have. While this may have been a little uncomfortable at first for many of us at the table, it has become for me a moment that truly captures the importance of our relationship with the people here. That we are welcomed so genuinely and have so clearly influenced these people in ways we will never fully know.

It is easy to see why Father Hazy, the sisters and Sheila feel called to this place. The people are so gracious and kind, and while the mission’s work is so important to their lives, I think, in the end, I will learn more from the people who call these tiny mountain villages home, than I could ever hope to share with them. It’s hard to believe this has just been our first 24 hours, and the long winding ride back down the mountain leaves me time to appreciate all that we have seen.


Jessica Savage was among the Carroll College pilgrimage group that visited the mission in May 2007. She is an assistant director of admission at Carroll College.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 24, No. 1, January 18, 2008.