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Sophomore Lyndsay McLaurin with friends in the Guatemalan village of San Lucas Toliman. McLaurin and 10 other USF students volunteered there over spring break.
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Guatemala Trip Gives Students Sense of Simplicity
A week spent clearing rocks, sanding walls, or hauling sacks of compost is not what most people would call a vacation. But the strenuous labor was exactly the respite they needed, said USF students who traveled to Guatemala during spring break to help a peasant farming community.
It was the fourth year in a row USF students have participated in the University Ministry-sponsored immersion trip which sends students as volunteer workers to the coffee-growing Catholic parish of San Lucas Toliman. “We did backbreaking work for three straight days and it was the best time,” said sophomore Lyndsay McLaurin, a sociology major and one of 11 students who went this year. “It was more than helping (the Guatemalans), it was what we learned from them.”
Among those lessons, McLaurin said, was the sense of close community in the town and a simple way of life. Most people in the parish are subsistence farmers who live on what they grow.
“You had a task every day and it felt really good,” said sophomore nursing student Jules Radkins. “Living simply was refreshing.”
Each day the USF group, which included two USF resident ministers and Stephen Corder, S.J., a spiritual adviser in University Life, joined about 100 other American volunteers over breakfast before heading out to do various jobs. Students helped build bathroom facilities, cleared land for a park, and hauled coffee pulp, among other tasks.
Reflection sessions were held in the evenings and some students accompanied Fr. Corder to outlying towns where he presided over Mass. Since there are not enough priests for the parish, most of the small towns hold a Mass only once a month.
“At one Mass I conducted 40 first communions and three weddings,” Fr. Corder said. “I was a priest who spoke Spanish so they put me to work.”
To go on the trip, students had to submit an application and be interviewed. To finance their expenses, last fall the students sold 500 small bags of San Lucas Toliman coffee. The enterprise was so successful the group was able to contribute a sum to the parish.
“Even though they work to survive every day, the people there are very happy,” said Kique Bazan, one of the resident ministers on the trip. “We reflected a lot on the differences between their lives and our lives in the U.S.”
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