In Naranjo, Guatemala, a jungle town on the Río San Pedro, taverns outnumber churches five to one, truckers keep the prostitutes in business, and traffickers in Salvadorian refugees and wildlife keep the river guides employed. It is Guatemala’s last military outpost before the Mexican border, and no Sunday picnic. “This is a town of loggers and oil companies,” said one resident who preferred not to be named. “They are here to exploit, not build a community.”
Enter Vincent Pescatore, 28, a young man from New Jersey who cut his teeth in ministry helping Manhattan drug addicts and prostitutes as a volunteer with Father Bruce Ritter’s Covenant House. Over two years ago, after a stint at Covenant House’s orphanage in Antigua, Guatemala, Vincent and his 24-year-old Guatemalan bride, Zulena, launched Finca del Niño (Farm of the Child) across the river from Naranjo’s bars. Through the help of a Guatemalan businessman, the farm now provides a home and occupation for 24 abandoned boys and girls, holds school for more than 70 local children, is 70 percent funded by local contributions, and is run, apart from the Pescatores, by nationals. A “missions strategy” as the Pescatores would envision it includes loving needy neighbors abroad in a way that breeds self-respect and independence, that encourages those helped to love themselves and believe, in turn, that God could love them, too.
A Godly, Contagious Vision
Pescatore sits in a local cantina, decorated with posters of rock idol Madonna clad in leopard skin, and Nastassja Kinski in nothing but a boa constrictor. About 5′11″, with delicate features nearly hidden behind a bushy brown beard, Pescatore is looking anything but religious in jeans and an orange T-shirt. He begins to paint a godly vision: “Our goals here,” he says, “were to build the kind of homes that the kids themselves could one day aspire to, teach farmers how to grow crops more valuable than corn without burning down the jungle, and collaborate with Christian churches in providing moral and spiritual preparation.”
First steps toward the goals were halting. In the spring of 1987, the Pescatores spent their honeymoon camping in a cottage on the farm property, where petite Zulena developed an allergic reaction to mosquitoes that persists to this day. But the psychological demons of Naranjo seem to afflict residents even more severely, and make the Pescatores’ daily ministry more difficult and more critical.
One day Zulena returned home to find their next-door neighbor, who regularly mistreated employees and beat his young daughter, kicking the girl in the face because she was late preparing lunch after spending the morning washing clothes in the river. When the girl ran away with an older man, it came as no surprise and confirmed the need for the children’s refuge the Pescatores envisioned.
Ultimately, Vincent and Zulena’s vision was contagious: Within six months, the Guatemalan association of lumber mills donated the lumber for the homes, and the government supplied ten construction workers. The result of their efforts is three mahogany cottages, or “ranchos,” with cement floors and thatched roofs. The farm itself was donated by Guatemalan businessman Rafael Sagastume and consists of large vegetable patches and a dairy. The operation involves children in a wide range of tasks, from sowing seeds to selling produce and milk at the market. The locals also helped the Pescatores build a small Catholic school: three small, thatched-roof huts for classrooms, attended by scores of local children who arrive each morning in dugout canoes.
Constancy And Compassion
Vincent and Zulena have become de facto paramedics for the region. One room of their rancho is filled with an examining table, scales, shelves of pharmaceuticals, and medical volumes and journals. “We often walk around explaining hygiene to mothers,” says Vincent. Sometimes it seems nature itself defies them to make a point. “One day we told [the mothers], as we often have, that their animals, especially their pigs, should not be allowed into their huts, on the same mud floors where their children play. We reiterated that neither the children, nor their animals, should be allowed to defecate in or even near the hut. We said that their children should not pass the day with mud smeared all over their faces and with their dirty fingers stuffed in their mouths. Then a pig walked in and sat on my foot.”
Recently, Wings of Hope, a Saint Louis-based missions-aviation group, helped Vincent procure a small four-passenger plane. With a few days’ instruction, Vincent finessed his Guatemalan pilot’s license and now flies pro bono medical missions, as well as paid charters that supplement the farm’s revenue. Foster-parent couples in each cottage, including the Pescatores’, serve beans and tortillas twice daily. They also serve up rarer commodities: warmth, security, and wholesome fun.
On a balmy summer night, the farm children play “limbo,” arching backward under a raised pole to strains of salsa music. Julio shimmies easily underneath. He is the farm’s 14-year-old boat driver, who came to the Pescatores after soldiers arrived at his home one night and took away his father. Next comes Yam, the 8-year-old son of a prostitute from Belize, who rivets strangers with a drop-dead New York huckster’s smile. Then come the twins, or “kwatchis,” 13-year-old Luis and Rudy, who were passed from neighbor to neighbor, month to month, until they were brought to the farm last year. The kids often have psychological scars as deep as their limbo dips.
“How do you teach a child that he has finally arrived home, where he can—is obligated—to stay permanently?” asks Vincent Pescatore. “How do you respond when he challenges you to prove that you really care about him, when he screams you have no right to, when he constantly says he’s going to leave because he claims you want him to, when he secretly tells people he wants to leave, but you won’t let him?”
There are no easy answers, the Pescatores find—just the challenge to be consistently loving and faithful. “I always had a vision to work with children, but thought I couldn’t afford to” says Zulena. “Now, I see it is an advantage to start with nothing. That’s why Jesus said, ‘Leave everything you have and follow me.’ Then you will never put your faith in a thing—which might let you down.”
By Kate Smith, an officer of Food for the Hungry, an international Christian relief-and-development agency based in Scottsdale, Arizona.
