Volunteers for the 2024 Diocese of Dallas Medical Mission Trip display a diocesan banner while in Bonito Oriental, Honduras on Feb. 29.
By Michael Gresham
The Texas Catholic
Eight-year-old Lizzy Orlen couldn’t keep from smiling as she exited a volunteer-run medical clinic in Bonito Oriental, Honduras on Feb. 27.
“Thank you,” Orlen said. “Thank you for the food and for the medicine.”
Orlen was one of more than 1,000 people who visited the clinic, which was set up as part of an historic Diocese of Dallas medical mission trip to Honduras.
“I have been stunned by what we have been able to do here,” said Juan Rendon, D.Min., director of the Diocese of Dallas Office of Catholic Social Ministry, which spearheads the annual medical mission trip. “The quality of care and service provided by the volunteers has been amazing. The people here have been so hospitable and so welcoming. It’s just been a real blessing to be a part of this.”
On Feb. 24, volunteers for the Diocese of Dallas medical mission trip departed for the Diocese of Trujillo, Honduras, where they would spend several days offering medical services and evangelization opportunities for people in need.
The diocese’s volunteer group included a combination of medical professionals, such as nurses, nurse practitioners, a doctor, a certified medical assistant, a dentist, and a pharmacist, as well as a religous sister, three deacons, and four laypersons. From Feb. 26 to March 1, they volunteered out of the base camp in Bonito Oriental, Honduras, where they offered basic medical care as well as pharmaceutical, dental, and eye care services to 1,021 people, a record for the medical mission trip.
Crystal Fuentes, a registered nurse with CHRISTUS Children’s Hospital in San Antonio and the longest-serving volunteer on this year’s mission trip, said each year the goal is to serve more and reach more people in need.
“It was phenomenal,” Fuentes said. “There’s always a goal…If you could just help one more — if you could just save one more — then that’s our goal.”
Fuentes said she felt blessed to be able to participate in the mission trip for a third time, noting that seeing the grateful faces of patients made each trip worthwhile.
“They are so appreciative of anything and everything that we do for them,” she said. “We’re here to help them in body, mind, and spirit. We obviously do this with medical care and medications, but we’re also helping them to grow in their faith, giving them rosaries, and teaching them how to pray.”
Medical care aside, Fuentes said volunteers also spend time praying with patients and listening to their stories.
“All of that just brings so much more,” she said. “We think that we have come to help them, but they also help us realize all the issues that they are having. It gives you a different perspective.”
For Dr. Robert Nieto, a neurologist and parishioner at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Duncanville, this year’s medical mission trip to Honduras marked his second in as many years. He initially learned of the opportunity by reading an article in The Texas Catholic.
“I decided I wanted to be a part of that, so I came for the first time in 2023,” Dr. Nieto recalled. “It was a fantastic experience. It was very much a learning experience, but it was also a beautiful experience.”
The clinic the medical mission trip volunteers operate is set up in centralized location in the Diocese of Trujillo. Patients then travel — sometimes lengthy distances — to the clinic to receive services and treatment.
“It’s a big commitment for the patients, but they were able to spend a day with us and get the care they needed,” Dr. Nieto explained, adding that the people he met were both “very welcoming” and “very grateful.”
Dr. Nieto said he was inspired to answer the call to be a part of the medical mission trip because he felt such efforts have deep roots in the Catholic Church.
“The Church has always had a very rich tradition of building hospitals and schools in Latin America…it’s a tradition that has been going on for centuries,” he said. “And I think of myself as a sort of 21st century mission — going to another place, in this case Honduras, and trying to create something that is still a work in progress. Building Catholic schools. Setting up a clinic.
Giving people medical care. All of this is so important for their community.”
For Carlos Irula, director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul pharmacy in Dallas, participating in the medical mission trip gave him an opportunity to give back to his family’s native country.
“This gives me the ability to come back and be able to not only provide medications but also spiritually be able to touch people in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to,” said Irula, who learned of the mission trip from Drs. Jeff and Mayra Thompson. “There are so many things I am going to take away from this experience. There is so much poverty here that it gives you a perspective of what we do on a day-to-day basis, and it provides clarity to what is really important about what we are doing here in Honduras.”
This year’s medical mission trip marked 24 years of collaboration between the dioceses of Dallas and Trujillo. For its milestone 25th year, Dr. Nieto called on more medical professionals from the Dallas diocese to get involved.
“We definitely can use your help and your expertise. It doesn’t matter what your specialty is or where your area of knowledge is… As a physician, there’s plenty of work and plenty of consultation that we can provide patients,” he said. “Twenty-five years…it’s a good start. We have a good foundation here in the community. Certainly, however, there’s plenty of room to grow, and you can be part of that growth.”
Faith and healing
In addition to medical services, Rendon and Juan Carlos Moreno, diocesan director of the Office of Evangelization, Catechesis, and Family Life, conducted workshop sessions with delegates of the Servants of the Word, who do Liturgy of the Word services on Sundays in remote areas of the Diocese of Trujillo.
“I provided training for them but also offered a listening session so that I could hear from them to understand what needs they have,” said Rendon, who explained that he had 56 participants in his workshop session while Moreno had an equal number at a second session. “We wanted to listen to these needs and begin to look at different options to grow in the catechetical component of the hermanamiento.”
A hermanamiento, or twinning in English, refers to a program which allows Catholic parishes or dioceses within the United States to develop and maintain relationships with counterparts in underdeveloped countries.
In addition to the workshop sessions, Rendon and Moreno also held catechetical liturgical sessions at the Diocese of Trujillo retreat house.
“Also, as part of our evangelization efforts, we went to a remote village on Feb. 28 with the bishop to get to know a community of young adults who are also very much in need of evangelization, education, and catechesis,” said Rendon, referring to Msgr. Jenry Orlando Ruiz Mora, who serves as bishop of the Diocese of Trujillo.
Rendon said providing both medical and spiritual aid to those in Honduras were goals of the medical mission trip and vital components of the Diocese of Dallas’ ongoing Catholic social ministry efforts.
“I think it makes us more human. It makes us grow in our faith,” Rendon said. “It helps us to see ourselves as brothers and sisters, and this is just one of the ways in which we work together and walk together as brothers and sisters in the Lord.”
‘God bless them’
Ellen Ramirez Soriano, 19, learned that the diocesan volunteers would be offering medical help from her church. She came to the clinic to see a doctor something she said would normally be “very difficult” because of her financial situation.
“This opportunity is very good. It helps us a lot and gives us access to good medicines,” Ramirez said. “God sometimes put challenges in our road to test us and make us stronger. All the people here deserve our thanks for making this possible for people in my community who don’t have access to medicine or can’t afford going to the hospital.”
A resident of the community of La Orera in the municipality of Bonito Oriental, 51-year-old Mario Molina struggles with insomnia as well as eye issues that make reading difficult. He said he comes each time the Dallas diocesan medical mission visit Honduras.
“I brought both my parents today. My father has some memory issues,” Molina said. “It is very hard to find medical care here because of the cost and also the distance we need to cover to find medical care.”
For their visit to the clinic on Feb. 26, Molina said he and his parents drove three hours from where they live. A trip that is made even more difficult during the rainy season as the family must cross a river. Molina, however, said the trek is worth it for the medical care.
“We are grateful for your help and support,” Molina said. “We always wait for you.”
Maria Julia Rivas, 53, a resident of the community of Matadines, said she first learned of the medical mission during a recent Sunday Mass at her parish where she was provided a ticket to participate.
“I wouldn’t have been able to see a doctor if it wasn’t for this opportunity because you need money for that,” said Rivas, adding that her husband is diabetic, and she struggles to care for him. “I have been sick, too, and it is hard to see a doctor. I have waited long for this opportunity and thank God that I was able to have this chance to see a doctor.”
Like other Hondurans attending the clinic, Rivas said she was grateful that it was the Catholic Church, and the Diocese of Dallas in particular, that was making this all possible.
“My spiritual health is more important than physical health because it is the one that will last for eternity,” Rivas said. “We are truly grateful.”
A friend paid for 75-year-old Matilde Mendez Duarte’s trip to receive medical help from the diocesan missionaries. Mendez came because she battles high blood pressure and elevated blood sugar counts.
“Thanks to this visit , I will be able to receive medicines,” Mendez said. “I will be able to go back to where I live with enough medicines to last me for a long time.”
Echoing sentiments the missionaries heard all week, Mendez said she was “very happy and thankful” for all those who made the diocesan medical mission a reality.
“I pray for them,” she said. “God bless them.”
Rocio Flores of the Diocese of Dallas Office of Communications contributed to this story.
