San Juan de Limay, Nicaragua
Contact: Maureen Daly, 410-235-1627
Coffee and Chocolate sales: Barbara Murphy
San Juan de Limay is a small town in rural Nicaragua in the province of Estile. We have partnered with St. John’s United Methodist Church in supporting Casa Baltimore, their community center. Programs have ranged from a micro-loan fund to a day-care center, and visitors have come and gone both ways over the years, including many of our parishioners.
The 
exchange has given each of us a better appreciation of the life and faith of the other. We have helped them rebuild after Hurricane Mitch, and matched funds they raised to repair their church roof. They have helped us understand what persistence in faith under trial really means. Our direct financial support is supplemented by Fair Exchange coffee and chocolate sales.
Blessed George Matulaitis, Vilnius, Lithuania
Contact: Father Lawrence, 410-962-5078
Bl. George Matulaitis parish in Vilnius, Lithuania is named in honor of the Archbishop of Vilnius from 1918 to 1925 who was beatified by Pope Pius XII. It is a new church in a working class suburb of Vilnius that Fr. Casimir Pugevicius introduced us to. (Fr. Cas used to live here at St. Vincent’s, and used our community as a base for his work as a spymaster, helping to keep the underground church alive during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania.) The parish has the sort of Christians whose priority was to create a hymnal for their congregation while there was as yet no heat in their church. We helped them create it, and it has become a national asset, used in parishes all over their country. We now help them to heat the church, which gets so cold in the winter that the wine freezes if left there overnight. The full collection from Ash Wednesday Masses is directed toward the needs of this sister parish.
