Friday, Jun 20, 2025
Greetings from beautiful and humid El Salvador! This was our first day of visiting Heartland’s village partners.
We started with breakfast at the pastoral house. Then loaded all the food, medical gift bags and people (12 total) including the pastoral team, delegation members and a translator into the Kia truck and headed out at 8:00am. Seeing the fields on the mountainside was incredible.
After a 45 minute drive to Cerna, we were greeted with balloons, a banner and many smiling faces. One of the oldest residents, Cruz, greeted us warmly and posed for a picture with our delegation.
After Kathy greeted them all with a hug, we started a meeting with the whole community at the school building. After introductions from us and nearly every resident present, we listened to the progress they had made in the last six years. They have added some new water tanks and 21 humble lamina (aluminum) homes. The homes were donated from another NGO working in the area. We also heard some of their concerns and hopes for the future. The genuine happiness and gratefulness to God shown through their words and faces,
After a lunch prepared by women from the community and our pastoral team, we headed out to visit individual homes. We visited 15 different homes consisting of families from one to six members. We asked them questions about their farms, health, and children’s education. At one home, the delegation was gifted three live chickens! The request we kept hearing over and over was to come back and visit again soon.
We all hopped into the truck for a quick ride home to beat the rain. Our God moment occurred when we stopped to pick up a woman who was a teacher walking back to Berlin, a two and a half hour walk.
After supper, we finished packing food bags for the families we will visit tomorrow. The timing of the food bags is greatly appreciated, because they have just started planting the new crop and food is scarce.
With these people it is easy to be a good shepherd. – Saint Oscar Romero