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Laura Hershberger
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27 Years After the Calabozo Massacre |
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Friday, 28 August 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with the SHARE Foundation, where she is part of the Grassroots Team. Laura previously volunteered for fifteen months with CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador - an organization in El Salvador.
 The road from Amatina Arriba to Amatitan Abajo was muddy and hard to see in the dark, but never the less, over a hundred people, primarily teenagers, walked the muddy road holding signs that read, “A people never forgets its martyrs” and “Que viva los martires del Calabozo”. When they arrived in Amatitan Abajo, the cultural and commemorative activities of the Friday night vigil commenced. A few of the survivors shared some words and then the youth took over with songs, reflections, a small documentary they had made about the massacre and a short play they had written.
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A Tale of Two Hospitals |
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Tuesday, 28 July 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with the SHARE Foundation, where she is part of the Grassroots Team. Laura previously volunteered for fifteen months with CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador - an organization in El Salvador.
 This is a reflection about my visit to the private hospital and then the public hospital of El Salvador, all in the same day with students on our delegation from Eastern Michigan University.
If you only went to the Hospital Diagnostico, you might not be able to believe that a hospital like Rosales existed in the country and vice versa.
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Back Pain |
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Thursday, 16 July 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with the SHARE Foundation, where she is part of the Grassroots Team. Laura previously volunteered for fifteen months with CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador - an organization in El Salvador.
This is a reflection on the week in June that I spent as a medical interpreter at the clinic at Maria Madre de los Pobres Catholic Church in La Chacra, San Salvador. The medical professionals who I interpreted for come to El Salvador every year on a SHARE delegation from Visitation Parish in Kansas City.
She was a street vendor who walked around carrying a giant tub of juice cans. The pain in her heals was unbearable.
He threw his back out six years ago. He still has horrible pain. He thought it was cancer. But really it was the fact that he lifted tires everyday and put more and more strain on his back.
She lost her arm during the war. Her husband just had a stroke and is paralyzed. She now does everything for him and works to support them. She can't sleep from back pain.
She was hit by a motorcycle two years ago. She and her daughter and grandson received death threats until the boy fled the community. They cried when they talked about being afraid. They both have knee and back pain.
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Welcome to SHARE! |
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Tuesday, 19 May 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with the SHARE Foundation, where she is part of the Grassroots Team. Laura previously volunteered for fifteen months with CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador - an organization in El Salvador.
I realize that it is time for me to do an update on my life as there have been some very significant changes since the last time I blogged. First being that I finished my fifteen month committment with CRISPAZ at the end of March. This means I will no longer be working at CFO with the youth, though I fully plan on visiting them on a regular basis. Looking back on my experience there I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity to work with CFO. I loved my co-workers and learned a lot about youth in El Salvador and about myself as a youth worker. Though I can honestly say that when the time was up there I was ready to move on. The organization went through a lot of changes, one of them being the opening of a new youth house at the end of February in a fairly remote and violent part of the city. Knowing that I would be leaving, I chose not to get too involved with the new house and so by the time I left, my big responsibility was teaching English and continuing to visit the Community Raul Rivas with one of my other co-workers.
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Teaching English |
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Wednesday, 18 February 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with an organization called CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador.
 Last year when we opened the Centro de Alcance youth house, my friend and coordinator of the CdA asked if I could teach the English class. I agreed, even though I had never taught English, and began to plan out my lessons. It started out with me pretty much just sitting in front of the computer a few hours before each class and asking myself what topic I could teach. Numbers? Foods? Feelings? Weather? Luckily my students didn’t seem to have a really high standard for their teacher and we got along just fine. My theory was this: the kids spend all morning (school is half-day here) in class and teachers mostly just write stuff on the board that they have to copy down; in my class instead of too much copying or me lecturing, we would be more interactive using games, songs, and different activities. My first few months was a learning process, but I can say that we all had fun and I think most of them learned at least something.
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Bloom Where You Are Planted |
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Friday, 16 January 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with an organization called CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador.
About a month and a half ago, a friend gave my roommates and I three little tomato plants as a Christmas present. I was incredibly excited because after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal Vegetable Miracle”, I have fantasized about growing my own vegetables to eat. We put the plants outside our front door to receive sunlight and everyday I watered them until they were too big for the yogurt containers that they were planted in. At that point I started wondering what the best thing for the plants was. Should I plant them in the ground even though I will only be in this apartment for a few more months? Should they be potted? Should we put them in black plastic bags to absorb moisture? Plastic crates? In the end we decided on potting them because we happened to have three extra plantless pots. So this morning with a little garden shovel and a kitchen knife (for breaking up dirt) Cesar and I moved the tomato plants to their new home. As we packed in the dirt, Cesar noted that they already smelled liked tomatoes. We finished repotting them and added water and looked at each and realized that all we have to do now is wait and see if they take root and blossom.
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December in El Salvador |
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Monday, 05 January 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with an organization called CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador.
Happy New Year’s, everyone! I sit here on my last night of vacation going through my photos and I realize how much has gone on in the past few weeks! I came back to El Salvador with only two weeks left until vacation, and during that time I taught two English intensive classes at the Centro de Alcance, and was able to participate in the Participacion Juvenil end-of-the-year evaluation. Once on vacation, I traveled to the beach, the Lower Lempa region (a nature reserve in Nicaragua), and Cesar's town, Tepecoyo.
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Food in El Salvador |
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Wednesday, 03 December 2008 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with an organization called CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador.
About two months ago I got inspired by my brother's Argentina blog and decided I was going to write a blog about food in El Salvador. This is me actually getting around to doing that. So here it goes … food in El Salvador. There are some things about the food here that I absolutely loved from the start, then there are some things that took me awhile to come around to. There are also those things about Salvadoran food that I really don't like. Seeing as I can't possibly touch on all of it, I will try to hit the highlights.
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Life on the Salvadoran Bus |
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Thursday, 26 June 2008 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with an organization called CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador.
I take the bus to get to most places in El Salvador. Sometimes I am lucky to get a ride from someone with a car or in the CRISPAZ or CFO truck. But mostly, I bus it, or I walk. I feel like you are faced with a lot of reality on the bus in El Salvador.
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Working for the CFO in El Salvador |
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Wednesday, 28 May 2008 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with an organization called CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador.
 Well, I’ve been working for three months!! Though I’m not where I originally thought I would be. During the process of choosing an organization, Ramon and I had narrowed it down to two organizations, ACISAM and CFO. I chose ACISAM because of the focus on mental health. We visited them and it seemed like they did wonderful work. The problem was that they were in a process of transition and restructuring and I got tired of waiting to start with them. So, I met with Ramon and Antonio and we decided to contact CFO about working with them. The following afternoon I showed up for an orientation and ended up staying all afternoon, meeting lots of people and attending a group session with youth that live in a community called Raul Rivas. It was a very action packed yet exciting afternoon. I also returned for another group session with kids from another neighborhood. I’m very happy to now have a more structured work plan laid out for me.
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Archdiocese of St. Louis: Mission Office
20 Archbishop May Drive, Saint Louis, MO 63119 • missions@archstl.org
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