ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY: A Narrative by SCTHP Founder, Mike Connell.

This effort was initiated in 2005 and the original intention was not to create a new organization; my goal was simply to expose my kids — then ages 13, 12, 10 and 8 — to missionary work outside the United States.

Personally, I have been blessed to travel to many other countries on democracy building projects as part of my work. My children had reached the age when I felt that it was important to expose them to other parts of the world and other cultures. It was simply a blessing that I was eager to share this with them.

More importantly, I didn't want my children growing up thinking all the world was like Fairlawn, Ohio — where everything you would ever want or need can be purchased right down the street at the local retail shopping mega mall. I wanted them to see adverse living conditions, real poverty, and the absence of the every day conveniences we take for granted. I wanted them to see how most of the world really lives — in a world without "convenient marts" and instant gratification. I wanted them to meet those truly in need and have the opportunity to serve them.

Frustrating would probably best describe my experience when I attempted to identify a Catholic short-term mission trip that would provide my family with a one or two week itinerary. If I wanted to do a trip with an evangelical or non-denominational group, there were options galore. Whereas I have the greatest respect for groups like Samaritan's Purse and Strategy World Initiative, that was not what I wanted for my children.

At first I was puzzled as to why it was so difficult to find short-term Catholic mission trips. But as my search continued, it began to dawn on me that the Catholic Church has relied upon the religious men and women to carry out its missionary work for the past 2000 years. Historically, mission trip length in the Catholic Church was measured in years, not months or weeks. So what was available to Catholic laity who wanted to give a week or two?

I shared my concern with Fr. John King, who at that time had just been assigned associate pastor of St. Hilary's in Fairlawn after returning from nine years in El Salvador. At his suggestion, we agreed that we'd organize our own mission trip to address the needs of the poor of El Salvador.

Mizata Housing Project 2005

In five short weeks plans came together and in August 2005, we took fifteen individuals — including me, three of my kids, Fr. King and St. Mary's seminarian student Chris Trenta to El Salvador. Together with this group — predominately of St. Hilary parishners, — we went down to Mizata in the La Libertad region.

Santa Maria Mizata is a seaside community in El Salvador located within the area served by the Cleveland Diocese Missions since the mid-1960's. Although all rural areas of El Salvador are poor, Mizata is very poor; due primarily to the fact that it greatly lacks potential sources of income aside from some fishing and agriculture. There is a tight cycle of poverty in this predominantly Catholic community; lack of food, poor diets, super sub-standard homes, sanitation problems, and teenage pregnancy.

This first trip was coordinated with the diocesan mission team through Fr. John's successor in El Salvador, Fr. Mark Reilly. The greatest challenge of this first trip was coordinating our activities on the ground in El Salvador in advance of the trip. It immediately became evident how over tasked Fr. Mark Reilly and the other diocesan priests down there truly are. We overcame this challenge by working through Sisters Maribel and Guadalupe in Mizata, who served as liaisons with the local community/church leaders and laborers.

Working with the sisters in advance of the trip, it was determined that we would build houses for some of that small community's poorest families. Selection of the home recipients was determined by the nuns on the basis of a number of criteria including: socioeconomic status, active participation in the faith community, and need.

Prior to our trip, many had questioned what this small band of gringos knew about Salvadorian house construction. None of us were from the housing industry, so what did we know about developing houses that would meet the needs of our recipients, as well as withstand the tropical elements and survive in this earthquake prone region.

But leveraging Fr. John's connections, we contracted with local laborers — active Catholic men who had the requisite skills and welcomed the work which was well-compensated by Salvadorian standards. A simple and uniform "blueprint" for a two room house was agreed upon. Measuring approximately four meters by five meters, these houses had poured concrete foundations, brick walls and roofs of special material that was designed to resist the elements without radiating heat from the beating sun. Supporting the roof was a rebar frame within poured cement and each house was finished with pre-fabricated window covers and doors.

When we arrived, each cement foundation had already been poured. Our task was to work along side the local laborers at the direction of a Salvadoran site foreman to brick up the four exterior walls and one internal wall that divided the house into two rooms. A variety of tasks included hauling bricks and water, soaking bricks, sifting sand, mixing mortar, laying bricks, and finishing work; the extended family of each recipient worked along side us, as well as neighbors and other community members. Within one week, we had to build up all sixteen courses.

Due in part to the length of our trip, but also due to the lack of hand tools and building equipment, the projects were completed (by design) by local laborers after our departure. The agreed upon fee for each house — about $3200 USD each — included the materials and local labor. The fee had been discounted to provide for the gringo labor.

In what was to become an annual tradition, we had a planned day of cultural activities, including visiting Divina Providencia — the place where Archbishop Romero lived and died in 1980 — and Universaidad Centro Americana — the site of the massacre of six Jesuits in 1989. Amongst other stops was the gallery of renown Salvadorian artist Fernando Llort and COAR, the orphanage and school started by Fr. Ken Meyers (Cleveland) during the Salvadoran civil war.

On this first trip we lost another day due to a weather phenomenon called an "el temporal," which provided a much needed break. (Not only were many roads impassable, but it was simply raining too much to mix mortar.) In spite of this, we were able to depart El Salvador with four houses completely walled up.

One member of our group was a woodworker who had made a beautiful cross for each home. Occasionally, I look back at the photos from this first trip to see the beaming faces of each family receiving a home. Upon translation, the letters they had sent us were heart-warming. Many reflected sentiments of deep gratitude by people for whom home ownership had been but a far-away dream.

The trip was far from perfect and there were plenty of lessons learned, but by the Grace of God it all came together.

We returned to St. Hilary energized from our experience and received great fanfare from within the parish community. I honestly do not recall ever discussing if we would do another mission trip, the question immediately became "when?"

Those who participated in the El Salvador Mission saw that there was an on-going need to build houses, provide food for the hungry, address health and sanitation issues, and provide educational activities for the El Salvadorian people. It was also obvious that the need and potential was much larger than St. Hilary Parish alone. The group decided to form a non-profit organization, Serving Christ Through His Poor, that would provide on-going housing, hunger, health, sanitation and educational assistance for the people of El Salvador.

Cacho de Oro Water Project 2006

Even as we had prepared for the 2005 mission trip, we had heard of the plight of Cacho de Oro, but had dismissed it as a project option at that time for numerous reasons. As we began to evaluate the project options for the next summer's trip, Cacho de Oro again entered into our discussions.

Cacho de Oro is a beautiful agricultural community that has a small school and a one-room church to serve the 150 people who live there. With no electricity and no businesses, this mountain-top community overlooking the Pacific Ocean is home to 30 families, and many of the villagers are children.

Prior to the earthquake in 2001, this village was spring fed with ample fresh, clean water. The earthquake shifted the water table, cutting off all but a trickle of water to this community. To get water, it was a one hour hike over rugged terrain to get to a stream.

A well had been drilled at the direction of a local politician who had run for office with the promise of bringing water to Cacho de Oro, but progress halted after he failed to pay the engineering company that had drilled the well.

The village still needed a system to bring the water up, out of the well and distributed it. This required a well pump, pump control systems, storage tanks, and a system of water pipes to distribute the water to the school and communal distribution points.

The project sounded aggressive and certainly beyond the expertise we possessed. The problem was that every other option for this community had failed to pan out. We literally were this village's last hope.

After discernment and much deliberation, we agreed to embrace the project.

We retained the services of the unpaid Salvadoran engineering firm, and set about planning a water system for a village none of us except Fr. King had ever visited. Being a mountain top community without electricity, this posed two immediate problems: the first was that on many days, the dirt road is challenging for any vehicle without four wheel drive. On other days, the torrential rains of the rainy season had the potential to make the road simply impassible. We either had to plan to have enough missionaries with the stamina to make the one-hour hike up the mountain and still have enough energy left to work 7+ hours before hiking back down at the end of the day — OR — secure enough 4x4 trucks to get our workers to the site on the days it was passable.

The second issue was electricity. After considering importing solar and/or wind-powered pumping options, it was determined that we would need to bear the cost of running power to this village. At a cost of $14,000, this had to be completed prior to our arrival so that pump would work. Also in preparation for our arrival, a level concrete slab for the water holding tanks had to be poured and the holding tank need to be delivered (which meant finding the right day that the road would permit a large flatbed truck to come up the mountain). Additionally, this tank needed to be installed at the direction of the engineering firm from San Salvador and the initial 300 ft. long ditch for piping between the well and the holding tanks had to be dug.

Amongst the numerous challenges facing us, one of the greatest was that we were not experts in water system implementation, trying to design a system for a village that all but one had never even visited. It was determined that a site visit was in order. So on Memorial Day Weekend, my wife and I, Heather, conducted an advance trip to Cacho de Oro. We were accompanied by Corey Westover, who had taken the point on coordinating the project and her husband who was an architect (hence, ideally suited to help us novices design a water system, right?)

Immediately upon arrival at the foot of the mountain, it became very clear that Fr. John had not exaggerated about the conditions of the "road" up to Cacho. Our next eye-opening experience was discovering that this was a sprawling mountain top village. (Somehow, in my mind's eye, I had mistakenly assumed that this was a nice, compact housing formation.) Beyond the church and school, homes were in small clusters of two or three scattered all across the mountain top. Water to each home was clearly out of the question, just to dig the 18" deep trenches and lay the pipes to communal water distribution points would require hours of physically intense trench digging through the rocky soil in the tropical heat.

Even prior to our advance trip (and the video we shot to share with others and build interest), there was incredible interest and enthusiasm for the ES mission project, not just in St. Hilary's but in neighboring parishes as well. The number of people interested in actually going far exceeded the number of spots that logic dictated we could coordinate in only our second trip. Originally we had capped the number of participants at thirty because we felt that any more would be unwieldy as we planned our second mission trip.

But the site advance of Cacho de Oro was eye opening. It was obvious that we needed as many able-bodied workers as possible to help dig trenches. Upon our return, the mission trip cap was immediately lifted and our missionary ranks promptly grew to 43.

Mizata Housing Project 2006

The site inspection also confirmed our suspicion that the physical requirements of the Cacho de Oro project (regardless if we hiked or drove up the mountain) would be too great for some of those previously signed to the trip. In spite of the fact that we had to raise over $40,000 for the well project, fundraising had exceeded our expectations and goals, so it was determined that we would build two more houses for the poor of Mizata, which would provide a project for those not ideally suited for the water project.

San Pedro Latrine Project 2006

One the projects we had considered, but initially dismissed as "too extreme" involved hiking well over an hour into the village of San Pedro to build latrines in this remote area that had no provisions for sanitation. One of the challenges was that the trip into San Pedro could not be made daily, so this project would require that participants take tents and camp at the work site for a week.

However, there was a small faction of about six participants that felt strongly about this project, and in this year in which we were experimenting with three very different projects, we determined that it made sense to send a small contingency into the brush to work with the people of San Pedro to build eight (8) latrines. The end result was the third major project of this already overly-ambitious 2006 mission trip, which quickly became dubbed "extreme latrine."

In July of 2006, the group of forty three missionaries arrived in El Salvador. The well project was as challenging as had been envisioned, and we encountered set backs almost daily. For instance, we had contracted with a local foreman with water project experience to oversee our operations; he failed to show up that week.

In spite of all this, on the last day we were finally ready to test the watering system. We turned on the pump, filled the holding tank and opened the spigots and the system worked. By nothing short of the Grace of God, there was not one leak! This was quite fortuitous since we barely had enough time to fill in our trenches before returning to the United States.

Mizata Housing Project 2007

In September of 2006, Fr. John King abruptly announced he would be leaving St. Hilary's. It was a devastating blow to our parish community and many wondered out loud it this would be the end of the El Salvador trip. We had resolved to continue, but I wondered myself what impact this would have on our fundraising without Fr. King promoting our missions from the pulpit each week before a trip.

It was collectively decided that in 2007, we would stick to what we knew: we knew how to build houses, we knew skilled laborers and material suppliers, we knew Sisters Maribel and Guadalupe, and we knew Mizata.

We wanted to keep the group size manageable, so we agreed to take a group of twenty to Mizata in July 2007 for the purpose of building five more houses. We blessed to be joined by Sister Sheila Marie Tobbe, who had spent a number of years in El Salvador with the Cleveland Mission Team. The final number of participants ended up being 23.

Personally, I had spent most of the 2006 mission trip working in Cacho de Oro. I can tell you it really felt good to be back in Mizata. All those who had previously worked in Mizata in 2005 or 2006 immediately reconnected with the villagers. It was really neat to see how much the children had grown, and they all remembered my children. Friendships were quickly renewed, as if some distant cousin had returned for a visit.

By 2007 my wife, Heather, had progressed from "conscientious objector" in 2005 to present president of SCTHP. At her initiative, we introduced a new aspect to the mission trip which involved community building activities. Initially, I considered these projects to be good "distractions" for the youngsters on the mission trip and those in need of a break from the summer heat. I could not have more greatly underestimated the impact of simple activities like making rosaries and tie-dye tee shirts would have on our relationship with this community.

Yes, these activities were successful at strengthening the bond between our group and the village, but going beyond this, these projects had consequences that went much deeper. First, it helped foster a sense of self-worth within the village children. For those who had been fortunate to travel outside their village, they were often treated as "lowly" and "dirty", to use their terms. We embraced them.

These activities effectively helped dissolved a community divide as well, bridging a gap between the "haves" (those children whose parents could afford the few dollars per week to send them to school) and the "have nots" (those children whose parents could not afford to send them to school).

Like so many good and important things, it began small, but the end result was that the Saint Hilary and Mizata's Virgen de Kandalaria sister church communities, advanced the mission of the church, and took a first step towards decreasing poverty, racism and ignorance.

A second aspect was building out the spirituality. In spite of having a priest with us on the first two trips, the trip seemed to be all about the project and I felt there was a spiritual void. With the guidance of Sister Sheila, we implemented an optional program of morning and evening group prayer, which was based upon The Shorter Christian Prayer, the laity's version of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Another interesting facet of this visit involved Celio Menjivar, who had worked with us since our very first trip. He was a leader within the church community and he was one of the few people of Mizata fortunate to have a vehicle. An enterprising individual, he has a small grocery store in the village and had invested in a microbus so that he could contract work as a driver or tour guide.

He shared with us the vision for a youth center in Mizata.

We were well aware of the fact that gang activity in El Salvador is an incredible problem. A post-war culture of violence coupled with an economy that has faltered has combined to create an environment in which there are few opportunities for young people, even if educated. It has given rise to one of the most pervasive and violent gang cultures in the entire world.

Celio explained to us that small villages like Mizata become targets for these gangs — not just to victimize, but for recruitments. In places like Mizata, the only thing that stands between these gangs and societies most vulnerable is the Catholic Church. This Celio shared with us their vision for a youth center that would give the village of Mizata a venue where the Mizata's youth would be safe. Beyond its faith-base programs, this youth center will also be used to teach important skills like English and computer skills. These skills will help better equip the youth of Mizata to get a good job.

Mizata Youth Center 2008

Without hesitation, it became evident what our 2008 project must be. (On one hand, we felt guilty asking them to wait a year for our return to build their youth center, but at the same time we recognized that we weren't really asking them to wait... without our financial assistance, there simply was not any money to complete the project.)

31 missionaries representing SCTHP will return to Mizata July 9-17 to assist with the construction of this facility, which is bound to become a pillar of this community.

Mizata Community Outreach 2007-2008

Another interesting opportunity presented itself in 2007, Hajna Batizy, a St. Hilary parishner who served as a missionary on the 2005, 2006 and 2007 mission trips, had obtained permission from her school district to take a sabbatical from teaching so that she could spend a year in El Salvador teaching English.

Feeling called to share the gospel of our Lord Christ Jesus in service and example, Hajna is serving as a representative of Serving Christ Through His Poor, the organization that sponsored this ad hoc program as well. Under supervision of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters, Hajna has used her God-given talents to teach English language skills and help the poor of Mizata so that they might be better prepared for success in both the education and business areas. (English is the second most spoken language in El Salvador. Besides computer skills, there are more demands for English communications skills.)

As a witness to friends, family, and Christians in the U.S. and El Salvador, Hajna is sharing Serving Christ Through His Poor's mission experience and raising awareness of the struggles and needs of the poor to encourage responsibility and service leadership to poor communities.