We have been asked already many times why did we choose to volunteer and the answer is that it wakes up the senses and the heart swells because one understand that it isn't that easy... It isn't just another decision, it is right inside your lifeline and in just a moment the right circumstances appeared and...zas! You jumped in.

I got to know about the volunteer program VOLPA through the Jesuits. I was certain that I was called to this, to SERVICE in a wider sense, to SEE in a wider sense and to LIVE in the widest sense of the word. Even so it wasn't an easy decision and certain fears made me recoil, but there was always a force pushing me on...

The reality of the place I live in now is rather difficult and hard. The Totonicapan department heads poverty in Guatemala with an 80% percentage of chronic malnutrition in the rural areas that I am in. I work within a mother-child program with quite good coverage in the area, we work with 720 mothers and nearly 900 children. We address health issues, size and weight control and alimentation in the villages. What I like best is the actual work, the task that is realized is vey humane and the team that I'm lucky to work with is from there, professionals bent on giving service to their people.

In spite of the fact that health services are public, often ignorance or the lack of money for transport make even access to them not possible. Also sometimes, almost always, attention is deficient due to shortages at the health ministry level (medicines, personnel...). The villages are poorly communicated, only by earth roads and periodically there are assaults to buses and carts, which makes people live with fear.

Sometimes one doesn't quite know how to help, I only ask that God gives me the strength, valour and common sense to be a light of hope of the possibility of another world...

And the desire to share how precious the Guatemala mountain views are and the peace and tranquillity that reigns in Santa Maria de Chiquimula. I keep the smiles of the people, the hospitality, the simplicity, the joy of work and all that I have to learn here...