Posted on 06/30/2012 8:56:52 AM PDT by marshmallow
Piura, Peru, Jun 26, 2012 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- It's not every day that children in Piura, Peru, learn to play American football from the coach of a National Football League team.
Jim Harbaugh, the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, told CNA that impromptu lessons with the kids during a recent eight-day trip to the town brought him joy.
Harbaugh was one of several U.S. volunteers who traveled in June to Piura – a small town nearly 600 miles north of Lima – to help the Most Blessed Sacrament Parish with its daily ministries to the poor.
The parish's outreach includes a women’s shelter, an orphanage, a drug rehabilitation center, a hospice facility and, most recently, tuition-free Catholic school for kindergarten through eleventh graders.
“It’s incredible the amount of work they do and they joy that they do it with,” Harbaugh said, noting that more than 60 percent of Piura’s population live in poverty and over 20 percent in extreme poverty.
The coach said he first learned about the mission trip through friends at St. Raymond's, his parish in Menlo Park, Calif.
Now, four years and three trips later, Harbaugh said he has seen Most Blessed Sacrament become a “very vibrant and growing parish.”
“I’ve always been struck by the attendance and the joy they have for Mass,” Harbaugh said, adding that the pews are filled with faithful at daily evening Masses. “You can only describe that as the fruit of the Holy Spirit.”
Harbaugh also credits the growth of the parish and community to the support of volunteers and the leadership of Father Joe Uhen, a native of Milwaulkee who has been pastor of the parish since 1993.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
Under Obama's exceedingly narrow definition of religion, none of these are properly religious works.
Drug rehab? Thought they were too poor to buy drugs.
Perhaps an occupational hazard.
In Peru they don't need to buy drugs, they grow their own.
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