SAN ANTONIO • Twenty-six San Antonians, including Auxiliary Bishop Patrick J. Zurek, brought a special gift to the church in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, the Archdiocese of San Antonio’s sister archdiocese and recipient of San Antonio’s annual collection coming up Jan. 21-22. The gift, brought by men from 10 San Antonio parishes, was the bringing of an ACTS retreat to 45 Honduran participants Nov. 7-11.
    ACTS, an acronym for adoration, community, theology and service, was founded in San Antonio in 1987, springing from the Cursillo movement. It is a retreat directed primarily to those within a parish to help them enter into a new or deeper relationship with God and fellow parishioners.

    Lay director of the Honduran retreat was Hermann von Bertrab of St. Matthew Parish, involved in ACTS retreats since 1998, who took on the role at the request of the ACTS Missions office here. The idea itself had been germinating for several years. “There was always the plan to take it to Honduras,” said von Bertrab, “because Bishop Zurek was interested in sharing with Honduras the ACTS retreat.”
    Bishop Zurek, spiritual director for the retreat, has been involved in directing the Archdiocese of San Antonio’s assistance to the church in that Central American country following the devastation there by Hurricane Mitch in 1998. Since then, San Antonio’s collection for the church in Latin America has focused on providing spiritual, social and material help to the people of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

    The multi-purpose Centro San Antonio facility there contains a day care and nutrition center and provides courses to both children and adults in building self-esteem and learning job skills. There are programs for drug and alcohol rehabilitation and an orphanage also requiring support, with an upcoming medical-dental team visit in the works for this spring.
    Co-director of the Honduran ACTS retreat, Guillermo Wolff of St. Luke Parish, noted ACTS retreats conducted in Spanish had been taking place at St. Luke since 2004. Enabling this was the translation of the ACTS director’s manual into Spanish by von Bertrab, with the assistance of Wolff and others.
    Von Bertrab, originally from Mexico, had long dreamed of taking ACTS there, but when the call came to lead a retreat in Honduras, after “prayerful consideration,” he agreed to take the helm.

    Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and von Bertrab related the first person he met after leaving the airport was an 8 or 9-year-old boy begging for food, who had not eaten all day. “Tegucigalpa,” he said, “is not unlike other Latin American cities, only poorer — but with good people everywhere.”
    The retreat took place a one and a half hour drive outside of Tegucigalpa at a retreat center owned by the Catholic University of Honduras, which sponsored the retreat — something a little out of the ordinary. “Traditionally, an ACTS retreat is focused on a particular parish, or rather, a parish is the one that sets it to work,” said Wolff. “But this time it was the university and so there were men from all different parishes throughout the country, mainly around the Tegucigalpa area.”
    “There were businessmen, the president of the university,” said von Bertrab, “but we had also the poorest of the poor. The whole idea was to invite people from the whole spectrum of the Honduran church. ... So it was a beautiful mix and, at the end of the day, there were no differences, we were all brothers.”

    Two other retreats were taking place the same time at the center, one being a retreat for priests from El Salvador, which worked out well. “We needed priests for reconciliation,” said von Bertrab, “and the priests from El Salvador volunteered because they saw what was going on and they were intrigued.”
    Some adaptations to the traditional ACTS retreat were necessary, such as cutting some events short or skipping others that did not fit the unique set-up of the Honduran retreat. This included having to dispense with the candlelight service, due to the great distance of the retreat center from attendees’ families. “I think we did the very best with what we had,” observed Wolff.
    Another change was holding the retreat during the week, rather than the weekend. This was done, von Bertrab related, due to a number of pastors originally planning to attend, not being aware an ACTS retreat is directed towards the laity. As it turned out, only one actually wound up attending, but the mid-week scheduling was also helpful as far as members of the laity who serve the parishes on weekends.
    Many of these, Wolff noted, are “delegados de la palabra” (delegates of the word), who are trained to preach due to the scarcity of priests and the vast area over which parish chapels are scattered. An unexpected bonus was that these “delegados” were extremely well-versed in Scripture, which Wolff described as a blessing and wonderful surprise for the retreat leaders.

    The retreatants, on the other hand, were surprised to find the ACTS team fluent in Spanish, noted Rafael Veraza of Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in New Braunfels, who served on the team along with his 19-year-old son, Jesus Rafael Veraza.
    He observed the retreatants were also impressed by the team’s readiness to serve them, including carrying the retreatants’ bags to their rooms for them, serving their food at mealtimes and even helping the kitchen workers clean the dishes at times. “ACTS is about serving people,” said Veraza, “so it’s a great opportunity for serving the people in any way.”
    Something else new for the retreatants to absorb was the importance of adoration. Latin Americans tend to be big on “singing and talking,” said Veraza, and have always taken seriously the Mass, “but it is something new in our personality to be in silence with the Lord.”

    ACTS retreats are fundamentally generative, so participants in the November retreat will now be able to facilitate later retreats themselves with perhaps minimal assistance the second time around. A women’s retreat is in the works for April. The Hondurans who participated in the first ACTS retreat were so enthusiastic they have already expressed the hope of fulfilling von Bertrab’s original wish of bringing ACTS to Mexico.
    Von Bertrab noted that “the whole retreat was a beautiful experience.” He pointed out that the presence of God and the works of the Holy Spirit are at the center of all ACTS retreats. “We’re all children of God,” he said. “It doesn’t matter — our culture, our nationality, our race. We all feel that presence. And we felt that presence in Honduras.”
    “Those men very quickly got the message and the intent of their retreat,” said Wolff. “And I think they were very, very pleased at looking to carry it into their parishes.”