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What is love? Miriam Webster defines it as “a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.”
Many times we connect a “heart felt” sensation to “love” and describe how our heart responded to situations or people, relating a sensation that had true meaning to us. While our Lord doesn’t ever actually define love, he tells us about how to love. Several times we are reminded to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Love is a pure sacrifice. That is what Jesus did for us and when we truly love from the heart we are offering up ourselves to make a difference to all those we meet everyday in our walk of life.
A single trip to Medjugorje, left many of us very humbled and with an overwhelming “heart felt” sensation to do something to assist this group of people who are so thankful for all they have. And what they have is so much less than what we take for granted every day.
Our Pilgrimage leader, Gail Boos, makes an effort on each pilgrimage to get any new or first-time pilgrims an opportunity to deliver wood and/or food to the homes outside the village. Wood is not a plentiful commodity, needing to be trucked in from a number of miles away.
During the war (1992-1995), many of the industries that provided jobs for the young people of the area were destroyed. Many of those facilities never reopened. Young people now leave the area for careers and educational opportunities away from the area never to return, leaving the desolate elderly population alone to fend for themselves.
We had prayerful consideration to discuss how to proceed. With much to ponder, we set about in prayer trying to define what and how we would specify our ministry. We remembered many quotes and found ourselves very connected to St. Theresa of Avila. St. Theresa of Avila was quoted as saying: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes with which Christ looks out his compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.”
Our solution was to form a 501c3, entitled, “Our Lady’s Children.” This would permit us to raise funds for two specific goals specific for Medjugorje:
#1) to send priests and seminarians to Medjugorje to have their hearts forever touched by the grace of Our Lady of Medjugorje.
#2) to help those less fortunate in Medjugorje to meet basic needs, because those people helped change our hearts forever.
Within the first year of the 501c3 being organized, we were able to raise and send over $25,000 to established Medjugorje relief operations with documented successes, which include:
* Mother's Village
* Mary's Hands
* Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Home We look forward to making an even bigger impact to assist them in the future. To join us in this effort “to be God’s eyes, hands, and feet” as we care for those in need in Medjugorje, please click the "Contact" button in menu.