By Susan Gallagher

Scan the list of recent visitors to the diocesan mission in Guatemala and you will find eye surgeons, a dentist, a nuclear engineer and Carroll College students, among others. They have restored sight in blind villagers, worked on teeth never brushed, improved primitive plumbing and studied how to upgrade water for the mission school that enrolls about 600 children.

The 2009-10 visitation schedule reflects an array of skills, backgrounds and interests among the 100 or so people who have gone to the Guatemala mission during the past 15 months, or are set to go yet this year. While some share their professional expertise, others visit largely to experience the culture and see the Diocese of Helena’s outreach close up.

“The more we here participate in the lives of people there, the more we build solidarity,” says mission manager Mark Frei, who works at the Diocese of Helena Chancery and goes yearly to the mission at Santo Tomas la Union, in Guatemala’s western highlands. Visitors typically return home with new thoughts about what really matters in life, says Frei, whose most recent trip was in January as part of a delegation led by Bishop George Leo Thomas.

“As Americans we complain about everything and we’re not grateful for very much,” says Aislinn Daley-Mast, who accompanied her dentist husband, Dr. Christopher Mast of Helena, to the mission in February, the couple’s third trip. Being there is “tremendously humbling,” says Daley-Mast. She and her husband learned about the mission through Bishop Thomas, whom they met while seated near him on an airplane six years ago.

Nuclear engineer Monte Giles and his wife, Tracy, first visited the mission in 1990 and have gone an average of every other year. He tackles electrical and plumbing projects. She helps with mission work such as food distributions, retreats and sales of weavings that Guatemalan villagers produce by hand, generating some cash for their families.

“We look for what we are called to do,” says Giles, who lives in Richland, Wash., and first got involved with the mission when he lived in Hamilton, where he was a member of St. Francis of Assisi Parish.

“The calls keep coming and we say, `This is what we are called to do.’ We enjoy being there, we enjoy the people we are with and we think we are doing some good.”

Students and mentors affiliated with the Carroll College student chapter of the humanitarian group Engineers Without Borders-USA have been assessing community infrastructure needs in the mission area, most recently in May, and plan another trip to put plans into action.

Improving water for the school, water at risk of contamination, is a high priority. “The students have a desire to improve the lives of people and they are so enthused about being able to do this work,” says Willis Wetstein, who is a water-resources engineering specialist with the firm Morrison Maierle Inc. and had a key role in establishing engineering as an academic program at Carroll. Wetstein recently met with mission manager Frei to discuss Engineers Without Borders’ work at the mission, as did John Scharf of the Carroll engineering faculty. Scharf summarizes mission involvement as “a great way to educate students and a great way to benefit people.”

Upcoming visitors include Dr. Martin Fishman of Los Gatos, Calif., scheduled to be at the mission next month. The trip will be the sixth for the ophthalmologist, who goes as part of a team usually consisting of three eye doctors and three nurses. Over the course of five days they evaluate about 300 people at the mission’s clinic and perform 40 to 50 eye surgeries, mostly cataract removal. Reaching Clinica Maxena on foot and by bus, patients receive eye care that few could obtain if not for the visiting teams.

The U.S. doctors and nurses who make the journey do so “because they know they can help people who really need help,” Dr. Fishman said in a phone interview. There is a teaching element, as well. A Guatemalan doctor in medical residency makes the three-hour road trip from Guatemala City to the clinic, learns by seeing the mission team at work, then stays for a period of time and gives patients post-operative checkups after the visiting doctors and nurses have left.

The visitation schedule for 2011 includes a March trip by Carroll students, guided by Associate Professor of Chemistry Kyle Strode. The group plans to teach in-home water purification to rural Guatemalans. In May, University of Montana students accompanied by Father Jeff Fleming of Christ the King Parish in Missoula plan a cultural immersion visit.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 8, August 20, 2010.