There are millions of opportunities to go to 3rd world countries and help the poor. Do a search on Yahoo or Google and you can put what country you want to go to, and they will tell you exactly what the needs are and how you can help. Depending on the country, it might even cost less than this. THIS IS NOT THAT KIND OF OPPORTUNITY. While you will do some occasional work projects, the focus of this trip is not painting houses, building rooves or feeding poor children.
There are also lots of Spanish schools, where you go to a different country and take Spanish classes. THIS IS NOT JUST A SPANISH IMMERSION SCHOOL EITHER.
The Escuela del Maestro is a tremendous experience of HUMILITY, DOCILITY TO THE LORD, and OPENNESS.
Not to serve, but to be served. Not to teach, but to learn. Not only to help, but to collaborate.
It is difficult sometimes for us to admit that we don't know everything, and trust that God will teach us through his Hispanic people.
If God has called you to dedicate yourself to ministry, mission work, or Christian business practices, you need to be ready. The only way to do that is to put yourself in God's hands and learn from, and collaborate with, the people you will be ministering to.
There is a TREMENDOUS need for ministers who truly understand the Hispanic people, can be understood BY them, and God is calling to reach out to them. We believe that the only way to truly accomplish this is by being prepared: being immersed in Hispanic language and culture, and the reality of the Hispanic Church, and preparing to serve God's people in their own language. This is why God has called us to offer this program.
Hispanic Ministry in the US |
Foreign Missions |
HISPANICS ARE THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH: There are more Hispanic Catholics under the age of 10 than White Catholics of that age range. Percentage of US Catholics who are Hispanic: 40% Number of US Parishes with Hispanic ministry (or that need it) 4,000 Percentage of US parishes with majority Hispanics: 25% |
NEARLY HALF of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics live in Latin America... but the Catholic Church is losing ground, due to a lack of evangelization. Pentecostal churches are enjoying explosive growth, promising divine intervention to lift parishioners from lives of misery in a region where the divide between rich and poor is among the worst on the planet. More than 275 million people in 19 countries speak Spanish. Besides Spain, Spanish is spoken in virtualy all of Latin America, and also the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, communities in the United States of America, and parts of the west coast of Africa. A variation of the Spanish language, called Ladino, is also spoken in Turkey and Israel. Our Pope, Benedict XVI, in his address on Latin America, urges us to reach out to these people, plagued by threats from globalization, authoritarian governments, market-based economies, secularism, anti-family and anti-life legislative initiatives and proselytizing sects. He urged Catholic bishops guard and nourish the faith in Latin America and call Catholics to “be disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ.” |
octubre, 2007