VISION

The San Lucas Parish Visiting Groups come to the community on a short-term basis with University, College, Church, High School, Youth, or other groups of people to learn.  The primary objective, motivation, purpose, and reason for coming is to learn.  We are dedicated to learning from, respecting, growing in solidarity with, and lending gracious support to the people of San Lucas and the Mission’s project of sustainable, integral human development.

Group visitors will humbly yet critically interact with their surroundings, supporting one another in their experience of learning, personal growth, community-forming, and with the exploration of their faith and values.  By the time of their departure, groups will have been informed enough to discuss the place which they have visited (i.e. the Mission philosophy, history, and efforts, and the history and culture of Guatemala), and serve as active representatives for the principles of social justice, wherever their paths may lead them.  Through active accompaniment (i.e. working with Guatemalan people and forming relationships with the San Lucas community at large), through our brief time at the Mission we learn and grow as mature human beings and engage in a mutually beneficial relationship with the Parish.

As is the case with the Parish’s community development efforts, the experience will affect sustainable change in the visitors that influences the way in which they carry themselves and choose to live their lives after leaving San Lucas.  The San Lucas Mission Visiting Group Program is aimed to foster a spirit of service and form men and women for others.  Visitor Alumni, who also make up an important community, will serve as ambassadors for social justice, and will leave San Lucas as more thoughtful, aware, reflective, active, and responsible global citizens. 

As alumni, visiting groups also commit themselves to be involved in fundraising- and awareness-raising activities in their home communities.  Our presence here, as well as being present to the people of San Lucas, involves impacting our own communities (university, church, city, etc.) in a positive, service-oriented way.  The experience of a visiting group does not end at the culmination of one’s time in San Lucas.  Rather, visitors carry with them their knowledge and lessons learned, in turn sharing this with their communities in the US. 

MISSION

The Visiting Group Program is committed to the support of the San Lucas Parish mission, that is, the project of integral human development guided by the expressed-felt need of the Parish community and the people of San Lucas Tolimán, and grounded in the principals of Catholic Social Teaching.

The empowerment of the local community and the sustainability of development projects are possible only through a relationship of equality between Guatemalan and North American counterparts in the effort. The presence of visitors – committed to learning – emphasizes and reinforces the Mission’s efforts to create such a relationship. This relationship represents an attempt to break the cycle of inequality and an historically oppressive role of outsiders. Visiting groups participate in the active accompaniment of the people of San Lucas, and work to form a cross-cultural community based upon solidarity, mutual respect, and the desire to learn.

Through their experience here, visitors set an example of “another way” of involvement of outsiders in developing countries, and learn to more critically examine their own role in the “big picture.” This “other way” is focused on learning and solidarity, rather than direct physical intervention with the goal of “helping” or “doing”. Visitors communicate the Parish philosophy as well as what they have personally learned both to family and friends once they have left San Lucas, serving as ambassadors for the principles of Catholic Social Teaching and, more broadly, social justice.

Therefore, our Mission is to work with and help educate responsible global citizens, and to foster positive cross-cultural exchange in which all parties benefit and are able to learn in a safe environment of respect and mutual understanding.