Newsletter – Web

September 2022 – Executive Director’s Reflections & News from El Salvador

Watercolor original by: Marie Spaeder Haas

Healing Body and Soul Welcome to all who learned about COAR this summer through one of our (50!) mission appeals in Catholic Churches around North America. For all our supporters, old and new, healing body and soul is what COAR is all about. Healing the body requires good food, good education, and safety. Healing the […]

The Living Stations of the Cross

A Tradition Throughout Latin America Celebrated at COAR with Vitality! Below left, Carlos Alberto at the Good Friday meditation display. Below right, with sister Karla Liliana at Raúl’s 40-day remembrance Mass. The “empty tomb” at the end of the Easter celebration, “He is not here, He is risen.” These traditions heal and give hope.

St. Romero Day, March 24th

Celebrated at COAR’s Prayer Service and at the COAR Children’s Village Fr. Dragga (left), pastor at Church of the Resurrection, Solon, OH, presides over our prayer service while our pastor, Fr. Vladimir Rosales (right), presides over the mass in Zaragoza, El Salvador. Fr. Steve Vellenga, Director of the Cleveland Latin American Mission Team, who served […]

June 2022 – Executive Director’s Reflections & News from El Salvador

Watercolor original by: Marie Spaeder Haas

The House That Generosity Built Time, Talent, and Treasure I am surrounded by generosity. From our honorees this year it was generosity of spirit to lend us their names and faces as representatives of all the many volunteers that help connect the COAR children to you. For our hundreds of volunteers, it is generosity of […]

March 2022 – Executive Director’s Reflections & News from El Salvador

Watercolor original by: Marie Spaeder Haas

The Last Shall Be First – Remembering Raul, continued (<==Continued from the main obituary and pictures.) This was an email that I sent to a donor just after I learned of Raul’s death. It is my message to all of you, too: He was rushed to the hospital on December 30th with chest pains but […]

Your Gifts are a Living Posada

Providing our Children Room at the Inn A “posada” is a traditional procession during the nine days before Christmas in Latin America. (The COAR children staged it in November when we visited.) A couple, playing Mary and Joseph, knock on doors asking for a room. The “innkeepers” behind the room refuse them entry. (Sometimes the […]