St. Stephen Parishioners Prepare for Biannual Panama Mission Trip

Spending two days in the scorching sun cleaning out and polishing cars was a labor of love for members of the Blessed Trinity Mission.

The mission members from St. Stephen Catholic Church in Valrico, with the help of Car Wash on the Greens owners Carole and Al Kleinotas, raised $3,400.

They will use those funds to purchase handmade crucifixes created by Panamanian artisans to adorn the chapels of Santisima Trinidad (Holy Trinity) in Calobre, Panama, as part of their mission trip to the country July 20.

“On our last trip to Panama in January, we asked Father Narciso (the Rev. Narciso Rodriguez, who heads the parish in Panama) what he’d like us to do for the parish,” said mission leader Tina Mytych. “He said he’d like crucifixes for the chapels. It’s hard to believe but none of their chapels have crucifixes.”

So, once they arrive in Panama, St. Stephen parishioners will commission a local family to create the crucifixes for the chapels. In the meantime, the 20 members of St. Stephen will spend the week painting and sprucing up the chapels, working in the farm fields picking tomatoes, yucca and pineapple, and hosting a retreat with the children and teens of Santisima Trinidad.

The relationship with the people of Santisima Trinidad has been forged over the past two years when the Rev. Bill Swengros, pastor of St. Stephen, first journeyed to Panama with a team from his parish in January 2009 in the hopes of developing a “twinning” program with the people of Santisima Trinidad. Twinning is the pairing of a parish in the United States with a needy parish in another country.

There, Swengros met Father Narciso who oversees the 12,000 people who attend the parish’s 11 chapels. Calobre sits at the base of a mountain range and the parish serves villages throughout the mountains, a three- to five-hour trip by truck.

Swengros said he instantly fell in love with the people of Santisima Trinidad, who promptly pulled out the welcome mats of their humble homes to the St. Stephen parishioners.

He said the people of Santisima Trinidad have very little. But, what they do have, they’re always willing to share.

Their simple cement-block homes have no indoor bathrooms or cooking facilities.

Instead, they bathe outdoors in makeshift showers fashioned from garden hoses. Their toilets are little more than holes in the ground. And all their cooking is done on outdoor wood stoves where insects compete with the children for bites of food.

“It’s amazing. They go without food so we can eat. They give up their beds for us,” said Swengros.

St. Stephen parishioners now visit Calobre twice each year, each time with a specific mission in mind.

On one visit, they were accompanied by a team of dentists and dental hygienists from the parish, who offered the people of Calobre free dental care. The dentists cared for 300 people over a four-day period.

“People walked three or four hours barefoot carrying infants in their arms,” said Mytych. “It amazed me how they would patiently wait for hours to be seen.”

On another trip, doctors accompanied the group to provide for basic health needs.

“Each time we go, we try and make a difference in their lives as they do for us,” said Pam Stamey, who has taken the trip a number of times. “

On Stamey’s third trip, there was a little girl who’d been bitten by a snake. It took her parents three days to get her to Calobre.

“The doctor didn’t think she’d make it,” said Stamey. “I could see how troubled he was. I asked him, ‘How can we help?’ He said, ‘I need a rescue vehicle, one with four-wheel drive that is outfitted to take patients out of these mountains. So we raised $24,000  for a rescue vehicle.”

The little girl with the snake bite survived but doctors were forced to amputate her leg, said Stamey.

“The hard part is knowing that it didn’t have to happen,” she said..

Mytych went to Calobre for the first time in January and is now heading the mission team.

“I just loved it,” said Mytych. “The people down there are so selfless. They don’t have a lot but, what they have, they’re willing to share with us. When they asked me to head the mission, I didn’t hesitate. I felt I could really make a difference. I wish everyone could experience this life-changing event.”

Tracy Sleyzak, 23, will visit Calobre for the second time. She and her sister, Anna, 21, made the trip last summer.

“I came back with a whole new perspective on life,” said Sleyzak. “That was my first experience with poverty. They have so little, yet they are so thankful for the littlest things. They are the happiest people I’ve ever met. It made me realize how much I have and to appreciate it.”

“I just loved all the kids,” said Anna Sleyzak. “I kind of got attached to one little girl, and I’m anxious to see her again. I didn’t even miss all the comforts. I liked being away from the cell phone.”

On this visit, the sisters will be accompanied by their father, Ed, who said he was amazed at the difference in his daughters when they returned from their first trip.

“They had an entirely different outlook on life when they came home,” he said. “I think they realized that there are people who have it worse than them, yet they are still happy.”

Stephen Gaeta, 21, who is making his second trip to Calobre, said his first trip was eye-opening.

“I expected them to be poor, but I didn’t realize how poor until I got there,” he said. “There are people who walk 20 miles to attend Mass every Sunday, while most of us can’t get our butts out of bed to attend Mass. Yet, none of them ever complained. They were so grateful for whatever they had.”

During the trip, the mission team will spend an evening sharing the Divine Mercy Chaplet with the people of Calobre. This is a Roman Catholic devotion based on the visions of Jesus reported by St. Mary Faustina Kowalska, a Polish sister who lived from 1905 to 1938.

The parishioners of St. Stephen have been singing the Divine Mercy Chaplet each Wednesday evening at the church for a number of years. However, the people of Calobre had never experienced the chaplet until St. Stephen parishioners introduced it to them on their last trip.

For Marki Tauceda, that was the most inspiring part of their visit.

“Sharing the Divine Mercy with the people just meant so much to me,” she said. “The people were so open to it.”

This is Tauceda’s third visit to Panama. The last time her 19-year-old son, Anthony, accompanied her. This time she will be joined by her 21-year-old daughter, Christina.

“It’s a wonderful bonding experience for me and the kids,” she said. “I think the kids need to realize there is so much more to the world than their little corner of it. The people of Santisima Trinidad have so little but are so generous with what they have. You get so much more than you give.”

 “The idea is not to save or rescue these people,” said Swengros. “Our goal is to listen, learn and grow. They have many gifts to share with us. We want to develop a covenant, a relationship and grow together in Christ.”

Anyone who would like to contribute to the mission in Panama can contact St. Stephen Catholic Church at (813) 689-4500.