News Stories
Priests' Donations Build A Home For Family In El Salvador
Article by Kevin Kelly, appearing in The Catholic Key on January 24, 2014.
KANSAS CITY — “Miracle” might be one way to explain it. That’s the fall-back word when something wonderful happens that defies human explanation.
Irma wouldn’t argue. A month ago, she and her eight children were living in a shack, pieced together from scraps of tin, wood and whatever else they could find.
Four days before Christmas, she and her family moved into a new concrete block home in the village of Chlitiupan, El Salvador — hardly a mansion by U.S. standards, but three times larger than the shack.
Priests Honor Miller Family with Donations to Homes from the Heart
Article by Kevin Kelly, appearing in The Catholic Key on September 19, 2013.
Before this year’s Priests and Seminarians Appreciation Day, the two priests wrote letters to all the priests in both dioceses, asking for donations to Homes for the Heart.
By the time the banquet began, they had raised more than $2,600, almost enough to build a home.
Sean Miller was overwhelmed.
“I got eight checks in the mail the first day, and they keep coming in,” Miller said. “Each one had a letter telling us how much Dad meant to them.”
The Need is Great
Article by Beth Alston, appearing in the Americus-Times Recorder on January 7, 2012.
“Haiti has been forgotten basically,” he says, “around the world. There are no longer any TV cameras on Haiti. There is no business moving into Haiti to open up and employ the people. There is devastating poverty and sometimes you feel there is just no hope.”
Ever the optimist, Battle adds, “But there is hope. God is present in Haiti and He says not to give up. We have to continue to trust that the world well open their eyes and the churches ... will see the great need and respond to it.”
Sometimes Just Showing Up Is Enough
Article by Ronnie McBrayer, appearing in The Cedar Springs Post on April 15, 2011.
After a week with him in Central America mixing concrete and building houses I asked him what his work there needed, outside of money, to keep building homes. He flicked ashes into a coconut ash tray and replied, “People in the church feel like they need permission to do anything good, or they feel they need to be experts. But you don’t have to know anything about anything to change the world. The people who just show up are the game changers. That’s what we need: People ready and willing to serve, who will just show up.”
