St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Conway will once again sponsor a medical mission trip to Guatemala in April. Organizers said that since its inception six years ago, the mission trip has led to other ways of helping the Mayan people that the local volunteers serve.
The Guatemala mission team, co-chaired by Dee Sanders and Marianne Welch, will host its annual fundraiser — Art, Pray, Love: Teaching Hearts, Changing Lives — from 6:30-9 p.m. Jan. 31 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, 825 Mitchell St., and at The Morgan House, 1926 Prince St., which is directly across Prince Street from the church. The event will feature an art show and silent auction, as well as heavy hors d’oeuvres and live entertainment.
Tickets, at $30 each or $50 per couple, may be purchased in advance at the church office during regular business hours, or at the door.
William Parsons “Bill” Eshelman of Conway will be among the more than 20 artists who will show and sell their art at Art, Pray, Love.
“I’m a painter. I like watercolors best,” Eshelman said.
“I participated in the show for the first time last year. I had just moved here from the Gulf Coast — lower Alabama, near Pensacola, Florida, where I had lived for about 20 years,” he said.
“I was born in Conway and lived here until I was in the first grade, when we moved to Little Rock, where we lived until I was in the ninth grade,” Eshelman said.
He is the son of the late Bill and Alies Eshelman, who both graduated from Arkansas State Teachers College (now known as the University of Central Arkansas) and were teachers, and the grandson of the late A.A. and Mollie Parsons of Conway.
“My wife, Pat, died in 2011, and I decided to move back up here,” Eshelman said. “I still have friends here.”
It was Eshelman’s wife who encouraged him to take art lessons. He is now an accomplished artist and a signature member of the Alabama Watercolorists Society. He recently joined the Conway League of Artists.
Eshelman retired in 1994 as a major general in the U.S. Marine Corps. A 1959 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, he retired as director of the Marine Corps staff at the Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“Art, Love, Pray is our primary source of money for the medical mission that will be held April 11-19,” said Sanders, who will be making her fourth trip with the mission. “We will set up at Chichicastenango and branch out into other smaller remote areas from there. Our people are the only medical personnel these Mayans have ever seen. We will see some of the same faces we have seen in the years past.”
“With every trip, we find that new possibilities open up,” said Welch, who was instrumental, along with the Rev. Teri Daily, vicar of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, in arranging the church’s first mission trip in 2010.
“The following year (2011), we actually became connected to the Western Region of the Episcopal Diocese of Guatemala,” Welch said. “We work under the coordination of Suffragan Bishop Carlos Lainfiesta and the Rev. Roberto Armas, who is a physician. Teri, our vicar, is also a physician; she was a pediatrician before she became a priest.
“That 2011 trip was the beginning of the sister-diocese relationship that still exists,” Welch said. “We have done some construction projects, but find that medical trips are a little easier to manage, due to the extreme difference in construction techniques, equipment, etc.”
Welch said this year’s group going on the mission, with 26 people, is larger than usual.
“We will be able to see more patients,” she said. “The Guatemalan churches schedule the patients, and we are looking at seeing nearly 600 patients over four days.
“Additionally, through the generosity of Dr. Doug Stroud and his connections, we are going to be offering a sinus-dilation procedure to select patients with chronic sinus problems. Upper-respiratory problems are a high percentage of what we treat, and this procedure should allow us to give some measure of permanent relief to certain patients,” Welch said.
Sanders said another possibility that has opened up for the mission team is the development of a Daughters of the King chapter in Guatemala.
“We (Daughters of the King) take on vows of prayer and service,” Sanders said. “Because of our history as a medical mission, we were able to make contact with women down there and establish the first Daughters of the King chapter in Guatemala. We were able to get a $5,000 grant and established the chapter in August 2014.”
Sanders said yet another offshoot of the mission trip has been contact with a women’s prison in Guatemala.
“It is a pitiful situation there,” Sanders said. “Most of the women are in prison for murder. They have killed their husbands or their fathers, who have abused them. They have nothing. We were able to collect enough money to buy ponchos for them so they would have some sort of outer garments to wear. They have to bathe outside in cold showers using rainwater.
“They asked that we pray for their children and their families. They asked nothing for themselves,” she said.
Sanders said Welch recently returned from Guatemala with a group of students from Hendrix College who worked on a construction project.
“That’s another offshoot of our endeavors,” Sanders said.
For more information about Art, Pray, Love, call St. Peter’s Episcopal Church at (501) 329-8174.