Annual Collection for our Sister Diocese in the Dominican Republic- Oct. 18 & 19

Thanks to your generous support, we collected $35,775 for our Sister Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana in 2024!

This Sister Diocese collection is the only opportunity available to the Mission Office to attend to the needs of our brothers and sisters in the Dominican Republic while at the same time offering to the people of the Diocese of Orlando, a missionary experience that is safe, affordable and above all spiritually engaging.
We believe that what the Mission Office does is still a valuable service to the Diocese of Orlando and an important hand-up for our friends and families in the mountains of the Dominican Republic.

PLEASE DONATE

  • Donate through the Special Collection in our parish the weekend of October 18th & 19th 

  • Click below or go online to: https://www.cfocf.org/missionoffice

    On our Online Giving page, once you log in to your account, you can click on Add Transaction and scroll down to Diocesan Collections. There, you will find a line item for Sister Diocese. You can enter your donation amount and click Continue to save.

  • Or by mailing an envelope with your donation to the Mission Office, P.O. Box 1800, Orlando, FL, 32802.

Your donation is tax-deductible.

For more information, visit: the Diocese of Orlando – Missions Office

Please help us support their efforts.  Thank you for your generous support!

 

The Mission Office encourages the people of the Diocese of Orlando to accept the responsibilities incumbent on all followers of the Gospel to share their time, talent, and treasure, with those who have limited access to the wealth and resources of the earth. We help to inspire people to become the voice of those who have none. Together, with the people we serve, we seek to find creative solutions to the root causes of injustice in our global community.

 

 

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” – Saint Augustine

 

About Our Sister Diocese

Hundreds of lives have been touched in the Dominican Republic and here in the Diocese of Orlando since the late Bishop Thomas Grady of Orlando and the late Bishop Ronald Conners of San Juan de la Maguana initiated a mutually beneficial sister relationship between the two dioceses in 1983.

The Mission Office has helped build a sister relationship based on love, faith, trust, hope, and respect between the Diocese of Orlando in Florida and the Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana in the Dominican Republic. The Mission Office strives not only to empower the people of our sister diocese and improve their lives, but also to educate and encourage the members of the Diocese of Orlando to use their time, talent, and treasure to reach out to those in need.

Where we are located:

 

Some History About the Mission Office

First, we met medical needs, next came the construction of houses in Guayaba land, 57 homes in Vallejuello. Locals and volunteers came together to meet our goal, sustainability.

For the past 20+ years, our work has been high up in the central mountains of the Dominican Republic. When we arrived, most adults could neither read nor write and children were dying before school age. Children left school early (4th grade to help in the fields or in the home). The government schools in the area were pitiful.

A study of the water and the development of a simple water filtration system changed lives. The introduction of a preschool program (similar to Head Start) and adults becoming literate and soon the teachers in the Catholic School, woke up the locals to possibilities in their future. Our school ranked 66th of 5515 schools on the island.

Back in the Orlando Diocese people were sponsoring the water filtration systems, donating peanut butter and shoes so the kids could walk to school and not be hungry having a breakfast of peanut butter and bread each morning. And all year long women and men came on medical, construction, pastoral, and education missions.

SINCE 2012

We have supported over 125 mission trips with about 2500 volunteer missioners in all areas. They and the locals give more than 10,000 hours of time annually.

We currently have 446 students registered in our Catholic School with pre-K through 4th grade in 4 villages and our middle school in Los Frios. Yearly average over 10 years 450 students.

Our Catholic High School Residence Program (in Azua) has 37students. Through scholarships, our teens continue to be formed and grow in their faith in a catholic environment, attending a San Juan Diocese Catholic High School that prepares them academically for university.

Our International Student program brings exceptionally bright DR students to the USA to study and graduate from our 5 Catholic High Schools. All have received university scholarships here or in the DR.

Graduates of our International Student Program and Residence High School Program have returned to the mountains where they grew up and are now teachers, engineers, and school psychologists. They are giving back—changing the lives of the next generation as the previous one did for them.

The Multi Community Water Project is almost complete. —1100 households have direct access to clean water.

Thirty-six homes were built in La Cueva. Folks who slept on the ground next to mud puddles now have a metal roof and a bed to sleep in.

The open-air covered multipurpose court sponsored by a grant from the Ruckstuhl Foundation and Japanese is completed and highly used.

Parishioners, students, and friends donate multiple shipping containers worth of essentials and supplies to keep our programs running. Last year, nearly 700 pairs of sneakers were donated along with 1,516 jars off peanut butter. Used school Uniforms continue to come our way.

All of this is only possible through the love and generosity of missioners like you.