Ecuador mission continues to help, poverty remains

Seven years ago the Diocese of Corpus Christi helped begin the Medical Mission annual commitment to the parish of San Pablo in Ecuador. Throughout the last seven years, the diocese has continued to support San Pablo, a parish of 12,000 people in one of the poorest areas of Ecuador. 

San Pablo's pastor Father Desmond Dalton says that while some of the people live in poverty a majority live in misery.

The formation of a medical team to go to Ecuador was the brainchild of Father Hugh Cullen, who previously worked in Ecuador and is currently in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. Having formed a good team in Houston, he reached out to Father Joseph López, now Chancellor of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, for his help in putting together a Spanish-speaking team of doctors, dentists and other medical personnel to help with the mission. 

Father López enlisted the help of Dr. Arnold Villarreal who put together a medical team. The diocese has been supportive of the endeavor ever since.

This year's team included Dr. Noe Lira, Dr. Ernesto Lira, Dr. Noe Soza and Dr. Henry Casillas, a local dentist. Several nurses and medical technicians formed part of the group. 

Baldemar García, a local pharmacist, set up a small pharmacy with the help of his wife Gloria and volunteers Gloria Hicks and Valerie Washburne. 

The 2011 mission took place from June 9–18. There were 54 members of the team, including 23 from Corpus Christi. 

To those who have been part of the team for the past six years, two things were obvious: a lot of work still has to be done to lift the people of San Pablo out of their condition of poverty, and on the positive side, a lot has been done and the progress is very obvious.

The parish of San Pablo is blessed with a relatively new clinic built by friends of the parish from New Jersey. An operating room was added thanks to the generosity of Father Bob Dunn and the people of Most Precious Blood Parish in Corpus Christi. 

It was from this location that the Texas team operated. On the first day, the clinic opened at 8 a.m. but people had been lining up hours before. 

While the principal focus at the center was medical help, priests were available to lead prayer services, do counseling and hear confessions. The priests accompanying the team this year were Father Cullen from Houston, Father Dunn and Msgr. Tom Mc Gettrick from Corpus Christi. 

In the week the mission team spent in San Pablo, they saw more than 2,000 people. The dentists extracted more than 100 teeth daily, and the group of doctors, who represented many areas of medicine, treated a non-stop flow of patients. 

The most dramatic area was perhaps the removal of cataracts, giving people who had been blind for years the ability to see, and important surgeries on women who had been suffering for years.

In a place like San Pablo the health of the people is being addressed. Support from cooperating parishes in both Houston and Corpus Christi enables the parish to employ an Ecuadorian doctor, from a neighboring town, on a full-time basis. 

The parish is also able to help families go to good hospitals in Guayaquil, the largest city in the area. Programs on hygiene and health care are administered on a regular basis.

In addition to the increased level of medical care, the most obvious improvement is in the area of education. The parish is doing everything possible to educate every child. 

A child can be educated for $75 a year and in the two schools visited by the mission team this year, the happiness on the faces of the children was obvious. The children now feel they have a future. Much of the success in schools is due to the work of Marcia Curtis and Beth Korasch. 

In addition to all the medical good and educational progress, improvement can be seen all around. The people, especially the children, look healthier; their clothes look cleaner and newer; and with the help of the church, many houses that were built of cane and cardboard are now being rebuilt with concrete block. 

Two of the Corpus Christi team this year, John Pezzi and Héctor Méndez, helped to replace a shack for a family of seven with a concrete block home with two bedrooms, a kitchen-living room and an outdoor toilet.

For those on the mission team for the first time, San Pablo still looks very poor; for those who have been part of the team for several years, an improvement is noticeable.

San Pablo is located on the Pacific Ocean. Fishing provides the local people with the town's only source of income. The rest of the countryside is like a desert. No one can remember when it last rained; it was many years ago. 

The people's faith is also obvious to a visitor to San Pablo. In a real way, the church is the center of their lives. They fill the church for Mass and treasure the gift of rosaries sent to them from various parishes in Houston and Corpus Christi. 

One man probably summed up the feeling of all when he said "La iglesia es mi madre (the church is my mother)."