By BOB FUSELIER
Los Alamos
Editor’s note: This is the first of a three-part series about the NPH’s work in Latin America.
It’s a rare event when I cross paths with someone who I hadn’t seen or spoken with in 35 or so years. Such was the case when Marlon Velasquez recently visited IHM Catholic Church. I hadn’t seen Marlon since the time Susie and I, along with our two children at the time (Jenny and Mike), were volunteering in the late 80’s at an orphanage known as Ranch Santa Fe or “the Ranch”. The home was set on a large piece of land in the mountains outside Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Marlon was then a pequeño (meaning “little one” in Spanish) and a resident of the orphanage, which was the second of what are now nine homes scattered across Latin America that are a part of the family many of you know as Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (NPH) or Our Little Brothers and Sisters (OLBS). I guess the name orphanage is a bit of an understatement since the home where the children stay is just one part of the family of services that NPH provides to the communities they serve.
In the mid 90’s, I convinced Fr. Charlie Brown (no typo!), then the pastor at IHM, to visit NPH Honduras with me with the hope of adopting the orphanage as a “Sister Parish”. I had always felt that I received so much more from my work with the kids then I gave. My time in Honduras was an awakening for me, a realization that my view of impoverished countries and the people living in them was skewed by the limits that my experiences living in the US provided. I had known that material things and social status did not make a person or bring true happiness. But it was in Honduras with the children (and the volunteers who came from the US, Latin America and Europe) that I began to understand that truth. I wanted others, especially young adults, to have a chance at that experience
Needless to say, Fr. Charlie was amazed at what he saw during our visit, and the relationship between IHM and NPH Honduras began. He was in agreement that the relationship we had with the kids in Honduras wouldn’t just be donating money; we would offer parishioners the opportunity to visit, volunteer, and get to know those they sponsored.
Not only have the people of Los Alamos lent their financial support over the past 25 plus years, a hundred or so (mostly teenagers) have taken the long journey, complete with a roller-coaster descent into the airport of Tegucigalpa, to visit and volunteer at El Rancho. The task of organizing these visits were shared in the earlier years by Peggy Vigil and later by Cheryl Wampler, who had helped make Marlon’s visit possible.
The change in the teenagers from their visits was best exemplified by the change in their perspectives that occurred from the time they had to write an essay describing why they wanted to go and the time they spoke of their experiences with the other members of the parish. Almost all of the essays written prior to going included how the students wanted to let the orphans know they were loved. Almost all of their descriptions of their experience was a humble recognition that they, our teenagers, were the ones who were changed, that the children at the orphanage, who possessed, at most, only what they could store in a standard school locker, showed them that happiness has nothing to do with all the things, material and nonmaterial, that they had come to believe were necessary for happiness here in Los Alamos.
The National Director of NPH Honduras has visited Los Alamos twice during the past 25 or so years of the relationship between IHM and NPH. Marlon’s visit was the second. Marlon was NPH Honduras’ first Honduran director. All previous directors were either from the US or Europe.
Visiting along with Marlon were Belinda Roda and Jennifer Turner, who, working out of the NPH office in Phoenix, help with fundraising, connecting donors with the children of the various countries, and keeping us updated on what’s happening at the homes.
When Belinda told Marlon about coming to Los Alamos, she asked him if he had remembered me as a volunteer in the late 80’s. He replied, “Bob… beard, sandals, and cowboy hat?” Yep, he remembered, although my hat was more Indiana Jones then cowboy.
Marlon and I caught up before and after his talk on Saturday of his visit, remembering and sharing news about some of the orphans and volunteers from the past. Marlon, as one of his responsibilities during his early years as an elder pequeño, had worked with me ensuring that the potable and non-potable water, often a scarce resource there as it is here, was constantly available for what had become a small town that included three separate homes (girls, boys, and babies), a large farm, a kitchen and dining facilities that could accommodate hundreds of people for each meal, an elementary and middle school, a trades school, and a medical clinic that would later become a major hospital.
Testing his memory, I asked Marlon if he remembered where the water purification system came from. “They were British,” he replied, “We could never get the spare parts.” Just one of many lessons I learned back then that nothing comes without potential problems, not even a free water purification system.
The next day, Marlon, Belinda, Jennifer, Cheryl and her husband Francisco joined Susie and I for some of Susie’s south Louisiana cooking. After dinner, Marlon agreed to sit down with me to answer a few questions for a story I was to do for the Los Alamos Daily Post. I had in my mind a clear idea of the what, why, and how that I would include in this story about an organization that, for almost three quarters of a century, has been caring for and empowering the abandoned youth of many Latin American countries to change their lives and their communities for the better.
That, however, all changed in the middle of Marlon’s answer to my question: How have the values that Fr. Wasson established 70 years ago affected you and your relationship with NPH? When his long answer, what could be described as an honest and heartfelt story of his life, arrived at a point that I had recognized in my own life story, I realized that this wouldn’t be just a story of volunteers working against many odds to help children who had experienced the worst in societies where, for so many, daily life was about the struggle to survive.
But there was a problem. His answer involved his faith in God and, more specifically, his faith in love, the type of love that many religions refer to as Grace. His answer was also a modern day version of a story written two thousand years ago in the text know as the Gospel. Whether or not we believe in a Divine presence, we have all (hopefully) lived the story to some degree. It’s the story called “The Road to Emmaus.”
I realize that bringing the topic of the Divine and a story from the Gospels into a news article carries the risk of alienating not just those who don’t believe in a Divine being, but also those who are disenchanted by the notion of anything to do with a religion. But I hope all will read the following two articles with a patient and open heart and mind.
Next, some history of how NPH came to be.
For more information about the NPH’s work in Latin America, please visit: nphusa.org
