Highlight of Maria’s return from Honduras

Maria V., a former Heart’s Home vol­un­teer, came back to the United States in October 2009, fol­low­ing her 12-mon­th mis­sion in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She gave an in­ter­view to The Arlington Catholic Herald who pub­lished a one-page sto­ry in January 2010 about her mis­sion. Her tes­ti­mony was al­so record­ed in four short movies avail­able on-line.

The fol­low­ing are ex­cerpts from an ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled “A Ministry of Friendship” by Katie Bahr, print­ed in the January 2010 is­sue of the Arlington Catholic Herald.

"Some kids want to be doc­tors or nurs­es when they grow up. Others might aspire to be teach­ers or vet­eri­nar­i­ans. Then there are peo­ple like Maria Verry.

“When I was lit­tle, I want­ed to be Mother Teresa when I grew up,” she said. […]

She left in October 2008 and spent the next year work­ing at the Heart’s Home mis­sion­ary house in Trinidad, a vil­lage in the capi­tol Honduras. She spent her days serv­ing as a com­pan­ion and friend to the poor, lone­ly and dis­tressed. […]

“There’s the joy of re­al­ly feel­ing like, even though it’s hard, I’m right where I’m sup­posed to be,” she said. “There were mo­ments of frus­tra­tion be­cause we were do­ing some­thing so chal­leng­ing, but I al­ways felt a kind of peace like, this is okay be­cause it’s where God is call­ing me to be.”[…]

“When you’re liv­ing over­seas, with the pover­ty that I’ve seen — peo­ple liv­ing a dozen in a tiny room that re­sem­bles a garage with a wa­ter faucet and that’s it, re­al­ly rough con­di­tions — there’s this thing like, the stuff doesn’t mat­ter, the peo­ple mat­ter and it’s all in God’s hands,” she said. “Coming home, I’ve kind of kept with that. It’ll all work out, it’s all in God’s hands, and he’s not go­ing to drop me now.”