Local
teens see fruits
of loving labor
By Lou Baldwin
Special to The CS&T
BIJAGUAL, Nicaragua — Many of life’s lessons can’t really
be learned in a classroom, but have to be experienced first-hand.
Four area Catholic high school students were among a group of 10 teens
and 14 adults who visited Nicaragua last week to see the new Food for
the Poor housing dedicated to the memory of Father Charles Pfeffer, a
former director of the archdiocesan Office for Youth and Young Adults
(OYYA).
“To see the end result is just amazing,” said Rose Puntel,
a junior at Archbishop Carroll High School and a member of St. Genevieve
Parish in Flourtown. “We started last March — and there is
a whole village completed, another on the way and maybe another after
that.”
It was Puntel’s third trip south since the house-building project
was conceived by Msgr. Francis X. Schmidt, also a former OYYA director
and good friend of the late Father Pfeffer.
“I think this is going to continue to grow and continue to aid poor
people in Nicaragua in ways they need it the most,” Puntel said.
“I’m just part of the crew, but I’ve never done anything
so grand before,” she said. “I don’t know my future,
but I’d like to do things that impact people’s lives like
we are doing in Nicaragua.”
Puntel joined the project because her family has been friends with Msgr.
Schmidt since her father’s student days with the Community Service
Corps (CSC). She, in turn, talked her friend Emily Miller into coming
along. Miller, who is also a Carroll junior, is a member of Sacred Heart
Parish, Royersford.
Now Miller also wants to share the experience: “You kind of wish
everybody could come on something like this because it is so hard to explain.
People never realize when they see things like this on television —
these are whole countries, where the difference between the rich and the
poor is so unfair. … This has definitely impacted my life.”
Pat Kelly, a senior at St. Joseph’s Preparatory School and member
of Holy Cross Parish in Mount Airy, also came because of family ties to
Msgr. Schmidt, who is known by his cadre of followers as “G.L.”
— short for glorious leader. His mother, Barbara Brown, who went
along on the trip, was also a CSC kid. Kelly is a member of the CSC leadership
team at the Prep, and last year he and other Prep boys went to the Dominican
Republic to help build a school.
The recent Nicaragua trip was a good chance to see how poverty is alleviated
by groups such as Food for the Poor and its partner, the American Nicaraguan
Foundation.
The group visited the new housing, another area where crude shacks are
set to be replaced, a girls’ orphanage and a dump where men, women
and children scavenge and work under horrific conditions.
For Kelly, the project’s greatest gift to the people is hope.
That hope has also inspired his fellow CSC officer Chris Lally, a member
of Our Mother of Consolation Parish in Chestnut Hill. “We want to
raise money to help G.L. with this work,” he said.
Lou Baldwin is a member of St. Leo parish and a freelance writer.