INNISFAIL – There is special mission about to begin for five Innisfailians.
It is being said the mission will be “life-changing.”
And many gathered to ensure its success on Jan. 11 at Innisfail’s Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church.
About 60 citizens from across the region and as far away as Edmonton and St. Albert paid $100 each to attend a Nicaraguan Christmas Gala, which was held on a date within the Roman Catholic Christmas season.
The event was held to financially support a 19-member Nicaragua 2025 Missions Team going to the Central America country on Feb. 14 for a special mission of hope, specifically to build a home and latrines.
The mission is being sponsored by the St. Albert-based Roots of Change Foundation, a non-profit Catholic organization founded in 2005 and inspired by the missionary work of the late Father Denis Hébert.
The foundation works in partnership with its sister Nicaraguan-based organization, FUNDACCO, to help Nicaraguans and their communities in need, and to empower them with resources and opportunities that help them out of an environment of poverty.
David Fréchette is the president of the Roots of Change Foundation. He attended Innisfail’s Nicaraguan Christmas Gala.
“This mission is very important for the people receiving but also for those contributing,” said Fréchette. “The trip they're doing is really life changing.”
Angela Spiller, a member of Innisfail’s Catholic church, is also the delegations director for Roots of Change and she made the arrangements for the upcoming Nicaraguan project mission.
Part of the group will be in Nicaragua for nine days while the rest will stay an extra week.
There are five members of Innisfail’s Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church who will be going, including church pastor Father Curtis Berube.
“As Christians we are called to serve as Christ served,” said Berube. “That's my hope with this trip is that we can grow in our love and charity for everyone that we meet, and be able to serve in whatever ways we can.”
The other participants include citizens from Olds, Sylvan Lake, Edmonton and St. Alberta.
They are heading to the village of El Zapote, a community of about 50 homes and 300 citizens located in the mountainous region of central Nicaragua.
Innisfailian Pat Spiller, who is Angela’s husband, is making his fourth trip to Nicaragua.
He said the Innisfail gala was held to raise the “final” monies needed for the trip, which is estimated to have a total cost of about $16,000 U.S.
The goal of the fundraiser is to have enough money to buy the needed materials to build a 20-foot by 22- foot house and 10 latrines.
Funds are also required to pay for transportation in Nicaragua, and an interpreter.
All 19 participants are paying for their own airplane fare to be part of the Nicaraguan mission.
“We live right in the community with the people, so we live in a person's house, and we give them a little per diem for the extra food that we're going to eat during the period we’re there,” said Spiller, who was in Nicaragua last spring with his son Joseph. “It was hot. Between the two of us we dug 13 latrines in two weeks and the latrines were 42 inches wide and 46 inches long, and we dug them to a metre deep.
“After we lined them with cinder blocks the Nicaraguans dug them down to 10 feet deep, and then we put the platform on top of them with the shelter, so that they'd have a latrine or outhouse.”
Spiller is confident the house can be built in 16 days.
As for the 10 latrines the preparatory work can also be completed but because mortar work for each latrine needs time to be adequately cured only a few will be totally finished, leaving the rest to be completed by local Nicaraguans.
St. Albert’s Phil Schmidt is heading to Nicaragua for the second time next month. Last year he and his wife Marie went to another community to paint the inside and outside of a church.
“We're going back because we enjoyed it so much,” said Phil, who was at the Innisfail fundraiser. “The beautiful people that we met there don’t have anything, even a basic tool.
“We are gifted with so much as a country. Gifts are to be shared, not to be kept,” he added. “And so we give our time because of the love we have of our God and for his people, and he gives an abundance, and we share that with others.”
