Maryknoll Lay Missioners - Ted Gutmann-Gonzalez

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Ted Gutmann-Gonzalez

Year Joined MKLM: 1989
Country: Chile
City: Vilches
Focus: Sustainable Development, Healthcare
Project(s): Center for Ecology and Spirituality
People Served: Approximately 1,000
Project Goal(s): Improve the quality of life and the environment through holistic, sustainable approaches to farming and health.

Personal Data
Maruja and Ted joined MKLM in 1989 with their daughters Amanda, who was two years old, and Abigail who was one at the time. Since then they have been living in Chile, where their third daughter, Terra, was born. The three girls, Amanda, Abigail and Terra, are now 22, 21, and 19! Chile is Maruja’s home. She and Ted met there while Ted served as a Holy Cross Associate after graduating from the University of Notre Dame. Maruja graduated from Universidad Católica de Valparaiso in Chile. Before joining MKLM they lived and worked for three years in Hispanic Ministry in Michigan. They are from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati where their local parish, St. Mary’s in Piqua, Ohio, actively supports them in mission.

Current Ministry
currently Maruja and Ted’s primary ministry is at the Vilches Center for Ecology and Spirituality. Vilches is a rural community in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. The people are mostly small farmers who plant wheat, corn and beans. Pressures on the community are increasing, and many families are migrating to the cities. The Center seeks to offer holistic, sustainable approaches to farming and health to improve the quality of life in the community.

Maruja and Ted offer their experience and skills by providing leadership formation and technical advice to peasant farmers in organic farming, beekeeping, income generation, and economic development. There is a growing potential for developing this area as an economically viable region for eco-tourism, small agricultural ventures and local crafts while respecting the history, culture and traditions of the mountain people.

They collaborate with local chapel and community organizations such as: the Middle Vilches Chapel, Confirmation group, Parent-Teachers Organization of El Roble School, Astudillano Canal Association, Middle Vilches Neighborhood Organization, La Biota Environmental Center, and Domodugu Leona Center for Women etc. in achieving community development projects.

Together with local peasant farmers’organizations, they have participated in developing viable alternatives to improve the standard of living of poor farming families. They have worked to bring ten farmers fifty walnut trees each, are teaching them to care for the trees, and have provided them with the resources necessary to irrigate and protect them from diseases.

The Vilches Center also implemented the Lenten Bee Hive Drive which provided 50 new bee hives to local bee keepers. Ted is Treasurer of the Flores de Quillayes Beekeepers Association which has 15 members. He maintains the community bee colony which will provide ongoing new colonies, improve the quality of the genetic material of the bees, and reproduce queen bees for the members of the Beekeepers Association.</p>

One of the deepest yearnings of the Vilches community has been the dream of building a small dam in the mountains to catch winter rains to increase the quantity of water available to the 60 members of the Astudillano Canal Association in Vilches. The objectives of this project are:

• To increase the number of farmers who belong to the Canal Association to 100,
• To provide additional and more dependable summer irrigation of the fields,
• Increase the number of families who have access to potable drinking water,
• As a source of eco-tourism with the construction of the small reservoir,
• and produce electricity from pass-by turbines.

As Secretary of the Astudillano Canal Association in Vilches, Ted has participated in a series of meetings with the Board of Directors of the Canal, the mayor, Regional Agriculture Minister, Director of Water Rights, government agricultural agency and local community presidents to request financing for a feasibility study of the project and seek support among the community for carrying out this improvement for the area. The association is also working with these government organizations to legalize the ownership of the properties and water rights of the small local farmers.

The Vilches Center also worked with Flor Silvestre, a group of seven peasant women who produce homemade jams and jellies, by providing them with local produce for the preserves, teaching business skills and helping to market their products. Flor Silvestre owns their own canning facility on the main road in Vilches near El Roble School in Middle Vilches where they also have a small retail store, bakery and restaurant of typical foods.

The Vilches Center supported the Parent-Teachers Organization of El Roble School in carrying out a government-financed project to build bathrooms and showers and operate a campgrounds called “The Copihue”, leasing 15 acres of church property near the Lircay River which had been used informally for years by campers without any sanitation or control. Maruja and Ted have helped in the building, landscaping and running of the campgrounds which is now in its 3rd season.

Through the Center, Maruja and Ted instructed twenty women from the Domodungu Women’s Center in Talca in the building and planting of a greenhouse to produce vegetables and herbs for sale by the organization the women have formed. Maruja and Ted have also built a greenhouse at the Domodungu La Leona Center in Middle Vilches where they are collaborating with the director of La Leona Center to develop a Retreat Center where poor women from the city can come to get away from the stresses of their daily lives and renew their energies in a mountain environment.

The Vilches Center also collaborated with the Biota Environmental Center in Upper Vilches, run by two biologists, and the park rangers at Altos de Lircay National Park by supporting eco-tourism programs that stimulate the local economy, such as hiking and horse guides in the mountains, the production and sale of arts and crafts, farm tours and traditional cooking and baking.

Through the Center, Maruja and Ted organized a monthly rummage sale of donated goods which benefits the local community and which raises funds for the chapel community. The Confirmation class of 25 youth continued to volunteer their services in cleaning up the chapel grounds, repainting the adobe walls of the church and replacing the roof after a windstorm.

The Center is a joint ecclesial effort of MKLM, the St. Joseph Sisters and the Sisters of the Holy Cross. It provides a space where people can sense the divine spirit alive in the presence of the world through prayer and ritual; it builds upon our relationship with the earth by working with the land and by being present to the life in the native forest and national park nearby; and it creates an awareness of the relationship of our health with the health of the earth.

The Center provides a guesthouse that receives visitors and offers workshops, courses and retreats on ecology and spirituality. Natural healing techniques are offered. A central component to the Center is the 10-acre farm that is leased from the Holy Cross Sisters. The farm has an apple orchard, walnut and chestnut trees, greenhouses, vegetable gardens, and a bee colony. It is a place where people can come to renew their energies and to see viable and appropriate alternatives for farmers.