Last month, a group of students from Columbus Bishop Watterson High School went on a mission trip to Punta Gorda, the southernmost town in Belize, located in Central America. The students were chaperoned by Heather Law, Watterson’s vice principal of academics; Father Paul Noble, a former Watterson chaplain; and Ryan Schwieterman, Watterson’s vice principal of operations, who organized the trip.
“(The idea) was really born out of a random Saturday night Mass at St. Tim’s (Columbus St. Timothy Church),” Schwieterman said. “This guy gets up and talks about people going to Belize and helping the people.”
After Mass, Schwieterman talked with the speaker, who was William Strait, founder of the Mary Elizabeth Foundation. The organization is based out of Newark St. Francis DeSales Church and seeks to serve the people of Belize.
Schwieterman proposed the idea of recruiting Watterson students to travel to Belize for mission work. Strait agreed, offering to travel with the group as a guide given his familiarity with the region.
In total, 10 girls and three boys from Watterson signed up for the trip, determined to build a three-stall carport to shelter trucks that Belizean priests drive from town to town in serving the people. Without a covering over them, the trucks were regularly subject to extreme heat and downpours.
“Basically, each priest has (a pickup truck) and they’re using these to … go out and say Mass, and a lot of those are apparently not paved roads,” Schwieterman said. “So (they’re) kind of off-roading (to) all these different villages, (and) they’re only getting to these places like once a month for Mass.”
With so few priests serving such a vast territory, Catholics in Belize depend on the priests’ trucks being protected and functional, so they can drive to celebrate Mass and administer the sacraments. Watterson students helping Belizean workers build a protective covering for the trucks proved beneficial.
However, the work was not easy.
In addition to being unfamiliar with building and construction tasks, the students were working in approximately 105-degree heat and no shade.
“That got a little brutal,” Schwieterman said. “Boys and girls – everybody was mixing concrete, carrying concrete, buckets, (using) power tools. We got … the holes dug, the concrete pillars formed, and then, the construction crew that they had working alongside us, … they finished it basically within the week after we left.”
“The (Belizean) workers there could have rolled their eyes or scoffed or made fun of us in (their language) Creole, because obviously we have no idea what they’re talking about. They didn’t. They made sure everything they said to us and each other was in English so that we could understand everything that was going on,” Watterson sophomore Lina Kaleta said.
Kaleta was struck most by the welcoming nature of the Belizean people and their eagerness to share their lives with the students.
“Everyone was so genuine and authentic,” she said. “When we were at the market, we wouldn’t know what something was and they would show it to us and tell us how they grew it and give us the whole background. They were just so excited to share with us their lifestyle and culture.”
Schwieterman, similarly, was touched by the interactions between his students and the Belizean people. “There is no barrier,” he said.
When it was arranged for the Watterson group to visit students at a nearby school currently in session, they became accustomed to one another easily. “We don’t know who they are (or) what they believe, and boom, they’re playing games – they’re playing football, soccer, little hand clap games … within seconds,” Schwieterman said. “(They were not) reserved or guarded.”
As for fellowship among the Watterson students, Kaleta said the experience of being in a foreign country together without many comforts of home, such as air conditioning, helped them bond. “These (students), I would trust with my life and my mom’s,” she said, urging others, “Come to Belize. It’s hot; you get used to it. There’s no air conditioning; you get used to it. It’s so worth it.
“You’re sweaty. You’re dripping with mud. You are the least clean you’ve ever been and ever will be, but it’s all so worth it. And you are part of their culture, and it’s so beautiful.”
For more information on the Mary Elizabeth Foundation and its work in Belize, visit www.maryelizabethfoundation.org.
