My experience in February 2006 during my participation in GATE’s Guatemalan trip, shook my soul, transformed my heart, informed my life and set me on a life path which has lead to greater meaning, gratitude and joy.

Standing at the rim of a massive cannon–like creation that is the garbage dump in Guatemala City, is an experience one never forgets. Trash trucks dumping garbage onto hills of trash used to accidently run over the babies and children, placed carefully aside, as parents spent the day picking what could be found for the family meal. Today, children need to be at least 16 years of age to enter the dump and younger children who look just like any other children, attend the school at the gate of the dump, staffed by volunteers from around the world. In the evening, these children return, with loving parents, to homes of cardboard on the outskirts of the dump. Seeing these loving families and the reality of severe poverty, raises the question in one’s heart, “Wouldn’t I do the same, to feed my family?”

On another day we look into the eyes of mothers whose young adult children were taken, tortured and murdered, because these young people publicly took a stand for just wages and safe working conditions. These mothers do not tell us their stories as if they are victims, but as the courageous and creative woman they are, who have bonded together to uphold the just causes for which their children died.

There is also the caring community which forms among the GATE participants traveling together. Standing around a muddy small pool of water alongside the people from the village who have only this source of water, changes us all. One’s heart begins to ask, “How can they drink that?” “How many children die each year because of this?” “What resources do I have that might be able to some how improve this?” “How could I ever live with so little?” “Do I really need all that I have, or could my life be more simple?” “How is this moment, in this place, with these people, changing me now?”

The sciences and psychologies are now telling us that the deepest longing of the human heart is not for luxury but for the opportunity to make a difference and leave a legacy. To this end, GATE through the years, has offered its thousands of participant’s total immersion within cultures and communities in the countries of Latin America and Eastern Europe.

No one has ever stepped into the first day of a 10 or 12 or 14 day travel experience with GATE and stepped back into their lives, without being transformed. With 25 years of experience in building bridges between the hearts and the stories of people from diverse cultures, GATE is a leader in the field of soul-transforming travel.

I invite you, with your unique history and presence, to join GATE and Rainbow World Fund this July 2008 in Guatemala. I invite you to take a step that would be one of the most courageous, creative, challenging, and caring choices you could make in your life time.

Founded by social worker, Jeff Cotter in 2000 in the San Francisco area, the World Rainbow Fund, as a GLBT humanitarian non-profit organization has a place not just on the West coast, but also on the East coast. It is my vision to spark a community of GLBT aware and conscious people here on the East coast, as supporters and participants in the missions of GATE and of the World Rainbow Fund.

Within our GLBT community live very compassionate, sensitive, caring and generous people. Please join me in a passion to make a difference in the world. Within our own GLBT community are many who have experienced discrimination, injustice, mistreatment, and inequality. Let us reach out, through our hands, hearts, connections, resources, experience, and abundance, to do something join this July in solidarity with the courageous and beautiful people of Guatemala.

May we be blessed, even as we are blessing to others.

Theresa O’Connor, MSN Philadelphia, PA Spiritual Facilitator, for the July ’08 Rainbow World Fund Guatemalan humanitarian trip.

215.673.6591 oconnorassociates.net Theresa@oconnorassociates.net