Jesus in the Rainforest

- Past Projects - Success Stories

By Millie Hennemann / Coopevega, Costa Rica / August 2020

Our family arrived at our mission post in Coopevega, Costa Rica in 2019. We spent the first year getting to know the local people, learning the language, visiting people in their homes, providing job opportunities, helping Nicaraguans with immigration documents, managing small construction projects, giving out food bags, and bringing sick people to the doctor. In other words, we spent our first year responding to the needs presented to us by our daily visitors.

Here, two priests are responsible for serving 42 communities. Three religious sisters, one other missionary family and our family help with 17 of those communities. Four of the communities have a tabernacle and a regular weekend Mass. The other 14 have small chapels that are normally dark and locked up, opening for occasional communion services or Mass - sometimes only once every three months.

My husband, Nick, and I drove one and a half hours up and down muddy hills, dodging potholes, to arrive at Chorreras, a town in the rainforest right on the border with Nicaragua. Chorreras is unique because of its active, young community, and it's located in a place where one can easily cross the river from Nicaragua into Costa Rica. We offered a communion service in Spanish in the local school to the Catholic community. Imagine our surprise when after the service, the three catechist leaders presented a dozen children prepared for First Holy Communion, and half a dozen ready for Confirmation. We all applauded. They were awaiting a priest to come give them the sacraments. Some people then lined up to speak to us, wanting to share their troubles. One woman’s son took some medicine from an unknown doctor and now is having mental imbalance – could we help? Another woman was recently abandoned by her husband and can’t put food on the table for her three children – could we help her? It became clear that we were their link to the outside Church.

The other 14 [communities] have small chapels that are normally dark and locked up, opening for occasional communion services or Mass-sometimes only once every three months.

A few months later, Mario, owner of the restaurant and rustic hotel in Chorreras, drove to our town for a visit. He laid out a request on behalf of the people of Chorreras: please, build us a chapel. Fr. Jason had already approved it. Mario and his family would donate the land and sell one of their own cows to contribute to the cost. People from the town also committed to donating the labor and much of the lumber from their own land.

“Please, build us a chapel. Fr. Jason had already approved it. Mario and his family would donate the land and sell one of their own cows to contribute to the cost.”
It did not take long before we were ready to help with the chapel construction. When we returned to Oregon for a visit, we raised funds for the building of the chapel. With the generous support from so many, including a blueprint for a beautiful chapel from an architect friend, we set about the project of building the St. John Paul II Chapel, a beacon of hope for those fleeing the violence, devastating poverty, and persecution in Nicaragua, and looking for hope in Costa Rica.

First, Nick arranged for a local man to flatten the hillside plot of land. Then, Nick arranged for four dump trucks to deliver sand and rock to the recently flattened building site, as Mario and friends looked on, grinning from ear to ear. Then, God completely changed our course and did an amazing thing.

A few days after dumping the sand, Nick and I sent a letter to the bishop, explaining that on behalf of generous friends in the U.S., we were happy to inform him that we were donating a new chapel to his diocese in the town of Chorreras. He responded immediately, telling us that it was illegal to build that close to the border, and we would need to stop the project. He encouraged us to look for another town that needed a chapel. Feeling very crestfallen, we were also confused. The people in the towns insisted that the government never enforced the border rule. Still, we knew that we couldn't go against the bishop's wishes.

[The bishop] responded immediately, telling us that it was illegal to build that close to the border, and we would need to stop the project.
After licking our wounds for a few days, we started asking which other villages needed chapels. None of them did. However, it dawned on us that if we could find a way to put tabernacles in more chapels, and if someone in each community could be a trained Eucharistic minister, then they could have their own communion services without having to wait for missionaries to come.

Fr. Jason and the other missionaries in our town, John and Penny Geerling, were fully behind the idea. Fr. Jason laid out instructions for the first step, which was to secure the chapels. John and Penny volunteered to identify potential leaders and train them to become Eucharistic ministers.

We all got to work. Nick and John traveled around, identifying communities that had both a chapel that could be secured, and a potential leader willing to be trained. Over the next few months, we hired local men to build fences, install bars on windows, and strengthen locks. We hired the local carpenter to build tables for the tabernacles. John and Penny committed to four weekend classes, training up leaders. With John and Penny also working with us on the project, one year later, seven chapels were renovated so that they could each have the constant presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

The Lord in His goodness, took our plan for one chapel and multiplied it into seven chapels.
In the meantime, the people of Chorreras decided to go ahead with the chapel anyway. It's a simpler chapel than we originally planned, but they are building it themselves, little by little. In fact, they sent us a photo of the first Mass celebrated at the St. John Paul II Chapel, before the walls were even raised. That makes 12 communities with active chapels.

The Lord in His goodness, took our plan for one chapel multiplied it into seven chapels.

He now dwells among the people in the remote rainforests of northern Costa Rica in a special way, and the richness that He wishes to bring into their lives will no doubt make many more stories.