Visit from Sacred Heart parishioners

Fifteen parishioners of Sacred Heart Parish in Auburn, NY visited from Wednesday, July 28th through the following Tuesday, August 3rd. While here in the DR, the group worked on and painted three new chapels.
Wednesday, the day of arrival, we visited a free trade zone and the company of Mustard that makes fishing hooks and sells them throughout the world.
Their facility in the DR is their distribution center. In my opinion, this is one of the better free trade zones.
Front view of the chapel at Los Lanos before repair work
You can see the results of their work on Thursday in the newly rebuilt chapel in Los Lanos. The visitors also put on a meal for the people of Los Lanos.

parishioners in Los Lanos and paint crew
Friday was painting in L'Elmo and doing crafts with the children there in the morning and crafts with the children in our school in Don Juan.
The craft project of the day was making bracelets for the children that say in Spanish, “Jesus loves you”, “Jesus te ama”.
The old chapel in L'Elmo
The Community Center in L'Elmo was the work and gift of the Sigma Chi Fraternity of the University of Rochester.
Community Center in L'Elmo
On Saturday the group moved onto the new Chapel in Peluda. Sr.Chris' Franciscan Congregation, the parishes of Sacred Heart in Auburn, and Saint Ann in Owasco had given the money to build the Chapel in Peluda as well as funding for the rebuilding of the Chapel in Los Lanos.
Chapel in Peluda
By now you will have noticed that we used the same color scheme in these three projects, economy of paint.

The El Portal de Belén Foundation meeting

June 25th P. Gregorio Santana (no relation to Maria) arrived in the USA to be present for the foundation meeting on the 6th of July. P. Gregorio is a young Dominican priest whom I am preparing for the future of the foundation when I no longer will be present. Sometime in the distant future, I hope, but death comes to all of us at one time or another.

Needless to say, P. Gregorio is a great baseball buff so we went to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Pictures of him and the DR display and Juan Marichal, first DR baseball player initiated in the Hall of Fame are also posted now.

The 6th of July I met earlier with the four-member committee that is working on redesigning our water system at the school and convent in Don Juan. The water in our well is drinkable but when it reaches the faucets it is polluted. We are trying to solve that problem with the hope that in the future we can develop a project to sell drinkable water cheaply to the people in the village of Don Juan. Right now a five-gallon jug of water costs 45 pesos or $1.23. We hope to reduce that cost by more than half. Included are pictures of the four men on this committee. We have set November 9th as the target date to accomplish the first phase of making the water drinkable on demand, as well as available on demand. With electricity off half the time, most often during the day, we must set up our own power supply, a goal for which a plan is in process. First picture is of Ed Hinchey, my cousin, Jim Gascon who has been raising the money for this project.
The second picture is Dave Kobernuss and Jim Ryders.
Also we have included a picture of most of the members of the foundation's board. In the photo of the foundation are Sally True, Tony Eisenhut, Stephen Younger, P. Gregorio, Juan Arroyo and Mike Schafer, not pictured are Peter Koch, Cathryn Obern and Greg Galvin.

Sr. Maria Minerva Santana

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, on my way home from Argentina, my camera was stolen in JFK Airport. Recently I received a few pictures of now Sr. Maria Minerva Santana, the young woman from my parish in DR who made her first vows as a nun on the 12 of June, and the reason I went to Argentina.
This is a picture of Sr. Mariar and Sr. Areleida, who also made her first vows this year.

Our parish of 12,000 is proud to be doing so well vocation wise, better than most dioceses.

Travels

Saturday June the 12th I was in Argentina to receive the first vows as a nun of Maria Minerva Santana Castro. She and her family are members of the parish of San Juan Bautista in the Dominican Republic. All went well and it was a very fine celebration and mass.
Unfortunately, during my return flight to the US someone stole my camera as I was in JFK Airport waiting for my connecting flight to Rochester, so I have no pictures yet of the event.
I have emailed one of the nuns who was at the ceremony and asked that she send me some pictures. When I receive them I will post them.
On Saturday the 19th of June I baptized my grand niece, Gabrielle Elizabeth Gaesser, in Church of the Assumption in Fairport, NY. Gabrielle is the newest member of the Gaesser clan. My brother and his wife, as you can see, are both ill and in wheelchairs. Amy is for the fourth time fighting for her life against breast and now bone cancer, and my brother Allan is trying to recover from multiple surgeries and a two-month stay in the hospital. Your prayers for both much appreciated.

Mother's Day in the DR

The last Sunday of May is always Mother's Day in the Dominican Republic. Mothers are the backbone of the family in the DR, so Mother's Day is a really big event. This, however, does not address the resulting difficulties of single parenthood. Unfortunately there are 1,400,000 single moms out of a total population of nine million people. I have no ready answers here. Our school in Don Juan has a fiesta on the preceding Friday to honor the moms of our school children. One photo is of the gathering and the other of children doing a folk dance.
The last Saturday of May we celebrated the closing of the Year of the Priesthood in the DR with a large mass in the Palace of Sports in Santo Domingo. All the nation's bishops, the Cardinal, and many priests, myself included, came together for this event which also involved nine ordinations from different dioceses of the DR.

Brother Lucianno and a new chapel in Los Lanos

April 17th saw a member of our parish, Brother Lucianno Rivera Perez, make his final vows as a Carmelite, he will be ordained a priest in the next few months. This will make three ordinations from our humble parish in five years.

St. Theresa of Jesus in Santiago
People often ask me what I do during my time here. I like to point out it sometimes takes a lot to get a little done. To explain what I mean: The above ceremony was first scheduled at 10am on the 17th. This meant that in order to arrive at the church, St. Theresa of Jesus in the city of Santiago, we would have to wake at 6am and depart at 7am on the three-hour drive from Don Juan. Word came that the time had been changed to 8am, meaning rising at 4am to get there on time, which we did.
We arrived at the church on Latin time and it was completely empty. Yes, the ceremony was at 10am.

Last week some of the sisters and I went to pay our respects to a deceased member of the parish in the community of La Haina, which is outside Santo Domingo.
On route we were discussing how to get to the home in question, it turned out that none of us knew the address! Thankfully, we were able to find our way after a few cell phone calls.
If you are an A type person, which I tend to be, life can get to you if you let. My advice is to relax and let the sunshine in.

We recently began construction of a new chapel in Los Lanos. The image below is of the wreckage from the previous chapel.
Los Lanos is an extremely poor, distant, and hard to get to community.

Construction of the new chapel is possible due to the help of Sacred Heart parish in Auburn, New York.

The people of Los Lanos are so grateful to now have a decent home to worship in. We lack money for windows, doors, and pews, which will cost about $2000.

Outdoor mass during reconstruction of chapel in Los Lanos.

Holy Thursday and St Catherine of Siena Parish Youth Group

After indulging myself in my annual pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Snows in Vail, Colorado I am back on line in the Dominican Republic.

The DR has suffered a very intense drought since the earthquake in Haiti on January 12 until this week, leaving many areas that were formerly green, a parched dull brown. Many communities have been left without water. As a result, the rains this past week were very welcomed by all.

Holy Thursday saw the first use of the new center in L'Elmo, a gift principally of the Sigma Chi Fraternity of the University of Rochester. Click here or scroll back to a previous post to see this wonderful group of young men working on the site. They raised most of the money for the construction of the center. We still lack windows and the doors, the estimated cost of which would be $1100.

Pictures of the washing of the feet and mass, Holy Thursday as well as the old chapel.


Some members of the youth group of St Catherine of Siena Parish were here during Easter Week to paint the center.






before painting

after painting

youth group members with children


I baptized some of the youth group members when they were infants, some 16 years ago.

It was a great experience for them as well as quite nostalgic for me as their former pastor.