Paul decides to ‘try another year’ as a missionary in Belize – Detroit Catholic

STERLING HEIGHTS — A year ago in June, Paul Manuszak, an all-state lacrosse player at Warren De La Salle and all-conference at the University of Detroit Mercy, was inducted into the Catholic High School League Hall of Fame.

He shared the news that he was putting his career as a chemist on hold to explore an idea that had been nagging at him for some time: to do “something that is like missionary work, but on faith.”

The job description of a volunteer missionary—to leave home for a time, to explore a unique and different culture, to live in community with others who also want to make a radical gift of their lives—was the answer to Paul’s quest “to help me realize what God wants for the rest of my life.”

Paul has been committed for a year to the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT), a missionary community of priests, ordained nuns, brothers and lay volunteers who carry out missions in the United States, Central America, Mexico and the Asia-Pacific region.

His adventure began two months later after an eight-hour flight to Belize, with 442,000 people the most sparsely populated country in Central America, and a bumpy two-hour, 130-kilometer drive to SOLT’s mission in Benque Viejo del Carmen, a town of about 6,500 people on the border with Guatemala.

Paul was one of 30 volunteer missionaries. Twenty were assigned to Our Lady of Mount Carmel High School with 450 students, Paul and the others to the faculty of 41 students at John Paul The Great College, originally founded in 2013 as Pope John Paul II Junior College.

Paul taught Greek and Roman history up to the rise of Christianity, art appreciation in the first semester, geometry and astronomy in the second semester. His largest class consisted of 18 students, the smallest of two.

He coached volleyball and track. There are only 12 colleges in Belize. Due to lack of funding, it is not yet possible to have regular seasons. For each college sport in Belize, there is only one tournament per year. “In fact,” Paul said, “athletes train for a year to compete in their sport one day a year.”

Paul’s typical Monday through Friday schedule started at 7:30 a.m. You didn’t want to miss the 8:30 bus for the 15-minute ride up the hill to campus. “I walked it a couple of times,” Paul said. “It took me half an hour and in 95-degree heat, 100 percent humidity, I was soaked.”

Classes end at 3:45 p.m., with a mass in Spanish at 6 p.m., followed by dinner at 7 p.m. Lights out is usually around 11:30 p.m. “There’s nothing typical of a missionary in Belize,” Paul cautioned. “There are more days that don’t follow this schedule than days that do.”

He was also involved in organizing events for the university, making home visits, spending time with students, and actively participating in community events.

The primary language of Belize is English. Paul taught his classes in English. However, almost everyone in Benque Viejo also speaks Spanish, especially the older generation.

“I had a strong foundation after taking two years of intensive Spanish in high school (at De La Salle). But that was seven years ago,” Paul said. “At the end of the second semester, I traveled 10 hours by bus to Antigua, Guatemala, for three weeks of one-on-one Spanish classes. I feel like I can communicate with people in Spanish in a variety of conversations.”

“I was overwhelmed,” said Paul, “by the participation of the entire city during the processions and events of Holy Week. Catholic tradition is deeply rooted in the culture, yet there is still a lack of understanding and/or acceptance of Catholic teachings in daily life for many outside of Holy Week.”

The transition was “tough,” Paul said, from living in a comfortable home in Metro Detroit to moving into a house in Bengue with seven other men. “There was no air conditioning, no hot water, bad plumbing, unreliable electricity and an unreliable washing machine — and it was crawling with tarantulas, spiders, cockroaches and dengue-carrying mosquitoes.”

Paul and other volunteers are asked to raise $2,500 to cover the cost of lunch, dinner and housing. They will each receive a weekly stipend of $22.

“But I think this is the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” Paul said. “I’ve completely changed my outlook on life.”

Still, when January came around and the question of a second-year commitment came up, Paul said, “I was almost 100 percent sure I wasn’t going to come back. I was a little homesick and tired of living in poverty. But then several things happened during the month that brought me back into the interest, to give it a shot and see if it’s God’s will that He wants me to come back.

“It happened on the feast day of St. Paul, January 25, his conversion, a change of heart,” he said. “I felt an inner shift that day. I prayed about it and realized that I was indeed called to give it another year. This year went by very quickly, I got to know the people and the students. It felt like ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye.’ With this experience, another year will allow me to do more diverse things with the students. I want to expand more and do more evangelization in the surrounding small villages.

“I have been thinking about what God wants from me,” Paul said, “to feel that sense of calm and joy, but I am still discerning the religious life, especially the Jesuits, and I am also discerning the path of marriage and the return to technology.”

Paul has been home for five weeks. He will return to Belize on July 28. In the fall semester, Paul will return to teaching humanities, but he will also be responsible for organizing all events for the university and continuing to coordinate athletics and social media.

Contact Don Horkey at (email protected).