The Last of Several...a Success Over All

Verso l´alto!

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Hello everyone! I apologize that this last post has taken me so long to get to. Unfortunately, it will also be the last one. Thank you for all of your prayers this past summer! I haven't been able to write because I went straight from Honduras to Retreat to Home to Vacation to a very tech light house new House of Seminary Studies (the OLPH Seminary House) ...all within the span of 3 weeks. I pray for you continuously, and hope that you would please continue to pray for myself and all of my brother seminarians. A lot has happened since the summer ended officially, but I felt it important to give you all a summary of the last two weeks or so that I had in the beautiful country of Honduras. Additionally, since some pretty crazy things happened in those last two weeks, I wish to write this for the sake of my own processing and prayer.

Our last mission trip ended officially on Sunday, the 23rd of July. It was a beautiful mission, through and through. Those of you who know how it ended might be a bit surprised that I say this. However, I stand by what I said: it was blessed through and through. 

I think it's best to begin with the beginning, and not with the end. 

On Sunday the 16th we all drove to a community called Santa Anna for group mass. There were about 50 or 60 of us in all, making about 7 mission teams of roughly 6 or 7 each in 10 communities total. 

My team was made up of myself as Co-Leader, an internal missioner originally from Nicaragua as our Leader, a seminarian from Dallas (his family is originally from Nigeria), a seminarian from Houston (who was born in raised in Nigeria, and moved to the states and is in formation for the diocese of Houston), two college women from North Dakota, and a young Focus Missionary woman who was stationed at the same university (the name of the university is escapes me…my teammates who read this can feel free to correct me in the comments). 

We were sent to mission to two different communities: the first was called Llano Gande (which basically means "Big Field"), and the second was called San Antonio. 

We had an amazing time in the first community. We stayed there from Sunday night to Wednesday morning. This community really struggled with two things: Alcoholism and Domestic Abuse caused by alcoholism, a common loop in Honduras, unfortunately. On Monday, I think we visited a total of 16-17 houses in this community.

If I haven't already explained how we did house visits, it kind of works like this: we go in, introduce ourselves, why we are in the community, let them know about any programs that we have going on, and basically attempt to have a normal conversation for a bit. At an opportune time, we usually share the gospel for that day. We will then ask the people in the house if they want to share anything that struck them from the gospel, we will share thoughts and reflections as well, and after that we'll talk for a bit longer. Finally, we'll ask them if they have any prayer intentions, and then we'll pray for them right there.

In summary, it’s basically a ministry of presence. Obviously, it's never the same, and there were many times where we diverged from the plan into good and bad territory: but that's ok, because we're human, and we did the best we could. 

After a full day of house visits on Monday, we had a full day of programs on Tuesday. These basically consisted of talks, icebreakers (which are even funnier in Spanish than in English at times), and testimonies. We had the kids in the morning, the teens in the afternoon, holy hour, and then a program for adults. 

During the holy hour, I had the chance to speak with a man who, well, let's just say he needs some serious prayers: seriously, please pray for a man named Carlos, and his son Carlito. I had the chance to chat with him for a while and concluded that there was absolutely nothing I could do but bring him to Jesus and leave him there. So, I did. I said (obviously not in English) "look, Jesus is going to be here in the Eucharist for a while longer. We're going to have a program, but you can just pray here until Jesus leaves. Tell Him everything you just told me." Honestly, there's not much more I could do than that, because I found out later that his barrel of problems is about 30 years old: there's almost nothing I can do in the face of that much habit, accept maybe smack him down with the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ for an hour plus. Honestly, if there was a bumper sticker that said, “when in doubt, et Jesus knock him out,” I’d buy it in bulk.

Unfortunately, that time that I spent talking with Carlos I had originally planned to use to prep my testimony…which I had to give in Spanish…which I had never done before. Thankfully, we had about 15 minutes between the teens and the adults where the blessed sacrament was exposed in adoration again (a good move on the part of our leader). I asked the Holy Spirit for some kind of inspiration, and he gave it to me, thankfully. Carol came around a little after that, and I ran the idea by her. She tweaked it a bit, I looked up a verse from Matthew in Spanish, and then I was ready. It was awesome. It kind of felt like the Holy Spirit was speaking through me like fire. It was incredible, and it was one of the first times that I spoke completely in Spanish to a group of people and was completely understood. 

Afterwards, that evening, our team had a time of sharing about the day. One of the people in our group had just finished talking about how the Lord had almost literally "moved mountains" in her life that day (I cannot and will not share specifics) when the crest of the hill that we were sitting on began to shake. It was like the ground was being vibrated and sifted at the same time, like a gold panner using a massage gun. All of us had very different reactions, but one of the other seminarians very wisely re-centered us after by pointing out that it was a gift from God. We prayed in thanksgiving afterwards.

It turns out that on that particular day, throughout Central America, there was a class 3 earthquake. One of our group had a phone and looked it up not long after it happened. It was amazing, and it was a grace for all of us. 

I should also just mention that, throughout all of this, our team bonded incredibly well. The videos in the google photo link (which you can find here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/bNBjGaygA1JsuXfS6) just show how absolutely goofy we were at times. It was incredible.

The next day we left Llano Grande for San Antonio. In San Antonio, the women stayed in the school that was right next to the communities’ chapel, or Ermita. The men stayed in the Ermita. We did a mixture of house visits and programs. We didn't get to visit as many houses, but we got to go to mass twice instead, which, both for us and the people (but especially for the people) was a massive blessing. They were super hospitable; they might have been too hospitable at times, actually. The kind of cheese that they serve in Honduras is a bit hard to get used to for alot of Americans, just because of its texture. Unfortunately, I was one of the only people in my group who wasn't either lactose intolerant or completely unused to it...which meant that I had about five 2-inch blocks of it almost every meal until our leader quietly asked our hosts to stop serving it. Muchas gracias mi hermana en Christo!

We had teen and adult programs on Thursday in the afternoon (house visits in the morning) and the kids' program in the morning the next day. The house visits for part of our group on Thursday were super powerful: alot of healing happened. It was beautiful to see and hear about. 

Friday afternoon we drove back to Santa Anna, which is a fairly large town by Honduran standards, to meet up for mass and Holy Hour with the rest of the teams. That was Friday the 21st of July. I was in the back of a truck owned by one of the families of San Antonio with the two seminarians, our Honduran guide, the delegate of the community, and her daughter. Our leader was in the passenger seat, and the 3 other women from North Dakota were in the back seat. It was a gorgeous day. At one point I looked out at the landscape to our right and was reminded of the words of my formator when I told him how I missed home: he told me to pray for the grace to really enjoy the rest of my time here in Honduras, so, in that moment, I did. And I was happy. 

A few minutes later our driver accelerated over the crest of the hill that led down to Santa Anna and tried to pump the breaks. I heard a loud noise, and we started going down the hill really fast, and we didn't slow down. My mind went numb, and I had the sensation and understanding of being in a roller coaster seat, until I remembered that there were no seat belts in the truck bed. I crouched low and held tight. Then the car turned sharply right and flipped. 

 

I, and everyone else in the bed, flew out left, along with all of our stuff. 

 

The car then proceeded to roll over three or four times down the street.

 

 

I understand that, after such experiences, it is common to ask such things as, “what was going through your head?” or “were you scared?” I will answer the second question first: I wasn’t actually. The way I know that is that my body went limp like a rag doll when I was thrown. It went limp because my mind went limp first. That was why, when I slid to a halt in a sitting position, I was able to get up. I only suffered a cut on the back left of my head (which bled, but only required four stitches—no concussion) and some road rash on my shoulder, arm, and lower back. I have a nice scar in all four places as I write this. And now to the second question.

Until I got into the truck that would take me to the hospital I had only two thoughts: one, take care of everyone else; two, Mary had saved my life. At one point after I got up, I looked down to see that my scapular was broken, but it had never left my body for a second: it had only changed locations from the under to the outside of my shirt, and one string was no longer connected to the square part. That was enough for me. I remember seeing the priest of the village (please pray for Fr. Leon of Santa Anna, by the way: he mobilized the entire community to pray a vigil of adoration for my entire team and myself that day in very little time) and saying to him this same fact, and then I placed my hand on his shoulder and took a few moments to cry. It was unfortunate that he chose that day to wear a white shirt.

Everyone is much recovered by this point. There were no fatalities, and I will not list off how and where everyone was injured, because, frankly, it does not matter. The graces are far more important. For one, the ambulance arrived within 15 minutes…in the mountains of Honduras. I don’t know how many of you can appreciate just how crazy that is: vehicles in Honduras take forever to get places in the city, let alone in the mountains. For another, almost our entire team was already assembled within walking distance of the crash site: there was an entire team who was doing house visits not 150 yards away from us. One of the girls on that team actually shared a very similar grace as me: when she got into the ambulance with some of our team (not all of us could fit) she could feel the presence of Mary palpably, and the fruit of this was that she was completely at peace in the last place you would expect someone to have peace. She told this to me a few hours later while I was getting ex-rayed, and the joy and peace was still evident on her face.

Another grace was how many people came to help us. Before the accident there might have been 10 people from the village in the vicinity. By the time I left, you might have thought the whole village had turned out to help.

Yes, that picture of the truck in the google photo link is the truck from the accident. Another grace is that it landed exactly where it did and no one was caught under it when it rolled: there was a mini-mart not 6 feet away from it on one side and houses not 12 feet away on the other, if memory serves me right.

We were able to get to the hospital and were able to get initially fixed up. The next day, a Saturday, we spent a long time getting re-checked in the clinic in the city of Comayagua. Unfortunately, I would spend several hours Sunday night in the same clinic for a stomach bug that caused me to throw up seven times in the course of 2 hours.

Needless to say, I came back to the U.S. 11 pounds lighter than I was when I left.

Through all of this, I think my favorite grace came from an observation that Carol had when she got to the scene. The adrenaline had hit me hard, and with my asthma I was well aware that, if I stopped to cry and allow my self to slip too much, I would become incapacitated due to a panic attack combined with asthma. In addition, there was that constant thought that I mentioned earlier of, “I have to make sure that everyone is ok.” So, when Carol got there, she saw me with a less than pretty head wound helping one of the seminarians to the car. I didn’t think anything of it, until she told me later that, in me, she had seen the heart of a pastor at work.

There had been many confirmations of my call to be a diocesan priest in the Diocese of Phoenix, but this one was one was both unexpected and welcome.

After all the excitement sort of died down, and most of the college students had returned home in varying states of health, I was blessed with a significant amount of time to process and rest. The videos of the man playing guitar in the Comayagua Plaza are from that time of rest. Before that, I was able to go on retreat at a retreat center of an order that starts with an “M”…but whose exact name escapes me.

I would leave on the 2^nd of August and would arrive exactly at midnight to the gate at Sky Harbor. This is a minor, but very interesting detail: I left Arizona at 10 minutes to midnight and arrived back exactly at midnight.

I have now been back in Seminary for almost three weeks now.

There have been many graces from the summer that I am still processing, but I am so grateful for everything, both good and bad, that happened over the summer. Thank you for all of your many prayers for myself and the other missioners.

Unfortunately, this will be the last post of this blog. I will leave it up obviously, but I do not see myself posting here any longer.

Thank you and know of my prayers for all of you.

Pax in Christi.

David Wilmowski.