All Saints group works on library garden in Nicaragua

Happy and tired, a team of 11 young people and adults from All Saints Parish returned from a weeklong mission trip to Quezalguaque, Nicaragua, Brookline’s Sister City, on June 30. This was the first international mission project that this Episcopal parish has organized, and by all accounts it was a success in several ways.

Led by Becky Taylor, the parish’s director of children’s, youth and family ministries, the team’s task was to help refurbish the backyard of the Quezalguaque Public Library so that the town’s residents can use the 40-by-40-foot space for outdoor meetings and other activities. The group from All Saints created new flower gardens in the walled-in area. With funding from the parish, they hired a local workman to build two canopied tables and lay a red clay tiled patio and walkway in the yard. As they left Quezalguaque on June 29 to travel to Managua, work on the tables, patio and pathways was well under way.

“The garden project was just a small part of the entire experience,” Taylor noted. “The real reward was becoming friends with the people of Quezalguaque.” Each teen and adult stayed in someone’s home for the week, sharing meals and becoming part of a Nicaraguan household. According to Taylor, “Many of us didn’t speak much, if any, Spanish, so this was a real challenge. But the people were so nice. They extended such wonderful hospitality to us that we felt right at home.”

Members of the mission team included seven Brookline residents. Longtime resident Jean Stringham had been to Quezalguaque before and was happy to take her husband, Peter, who serves on the Health Committee of the Sister City Project, along on this trip. Five of the young people are students at Brookline High School: Zoe Beattie, Russell Foxworthy, Laura McLellan, Will Schnoor and Jeffrey Speyer Besancon. The other teen members of the group included Anna Glavash (Watertown High School) and Hannah Rigg (Boston Latin). Besides Taylor, Linda Foxworthy, a nurse from Grafton, was the other adult.

The group made the decision to go to Quezalguaque last fall and spent the rest of the school year preparing for the trip. In May, the mission team members waited on tables at a gala dinner that was organized by the parish’s Mission and Outreach Committee. That event, plus a couple of other smaller fundraising efforts, raised all the money they needed to get to and from Nicaragua, to fully fund the library project, and to give money to the local Roman Catholic priest who is helping residents of the Sister City install fuel-efficient cooking stoves in their homes.

July 12, 2007