Ashli Mildenberger is shown with students at La Asuncion School, part of the diocesan mission in Guatemala, during a visit in May. A delegation of students and adults representing Missoula’s Christ the King Campus Ministry left Montana on May 16 to visit the mission, and returned on May 27. Ten students went to Guatemala, as did Kirsten Hangas, campus ministry intern at Christ the King Parish in Missoula; Glenda Seipp, Stewardship Services director for the Diocese of Helena; and her husband Michael Seipp, a candidate for deacon ordination in the diocese. They became familiar with Santo Tomas la Union, the diocesan health clinic and school. They also went to the community of Santiago Atitlan, where Father Stanley Rother was shot and killed at a rectory on July 28, 1981, amid escalating political turmoil and violence in Guatemala. The missionary from the Diocese of Oklahoma City-Tulsa was one of 10 priests murdered in Guatemala during 1981. The visit to Guatemala this spring was “an incredible experience, and the gratitude of the people at the clinic and school for what the Diocese of Helena gives them is incredible,” said Ashleigh Buckner, one of the University of Montana students who made the trip.

(Photo provided).


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 27, No. 7, July 15, 2011.