Back From Chiloe

I had a great time on the mission trip with the St. George's students. We just got back this morning at around 11:30. When I wrote last, we were in Queilen, a small town east of Castro on the coast of the Gran Isla. The communities we went to were part of the parish of Queilen. Two of our groups served on a smaller island off the coast of the main island. The other two groups went to two different communities along the coast. I was on the main island and served at a little town called Aituy, about 8km away from Queilen. The place was breath-taking and the people were equally warm and inviting. It is easy to fall in love with Chiloe.

Our group was fortunate enough to stay at the rural primary school in the community. We had a spectacular view. I will post two pictures below. But I do encourage all readers to look at the pictures on my Picasa gallery - picasaweb.google.com/brothermattmckenna. There is also a link on the sidebar of the blog.

Since basically the whole community is Catholic, our mission consisted of putting on special programs for the children and the youth of the community, as well as organizing prayer services, Mass and communion services. Parish in Queilen has only one priest and he serves over twenty communities on the main island and on other smaller islands, some of which are only passable during the summer summer months. Thus, the missions serves the communities by making the church a bit more present to them.

Below are two pictures. The first is a picture from the steps of the school, looking out to the sea and the mountains on the other side of the channel. The second is of two fellow missionaries, Nacha and Damien, and the cow that also wanted to be included.