ARCHDIOCESE - Venimos, a collaboration between musicians and singers from St. Ignatius Church in Monfort Heights and a recording engineer from St. Anthony Church in Madisonville, is raising $10,000 for a medical clinic serving an impoverished church in Guatemala.

"We had been knocking around the idea to record our music. We needed a good reason to do it," said Frank Sedler, one of the singers from St. Ignatius.

The motivating reason turned out to be gratitude for the medical care his own infant daughter is receiving, Sedler said.

Earlier this year, Sedler and his wife, Juli, were told their daughter, Valerie, has Digeorge Syndrome, a rare, life-threatening condition. Valerie, who will be 12 months old in January, receives high-tech monitoring and regular treatment at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, he said.

"She's holding her own. She's really a fighter," said Jenny Sedler Bates, Frank Sedler's sister and one of the other St. Ignatius performers on Venimos.

Sedler said his daughter would not be alive if it weren't for the care she gets at Children's.

That made him think how helpless and desperate parents at the poor San Jose Parish in the Mixeo area of Guatemala must feel when they cannot afford to provide even basic medical care for their children.

St. Ignatius Church signed a three-year covenant in October 1996 to be a sister parish, building a meaningful, faith-filled relationship with the Guatemalan church in Central America.

"We decided to do the recording for the children of the (San Jose Parish in Guatemala)," Sedler said.

"It just seemed like the right thing to do," said Jenny Sedler Bates.

Left to right are Jenny Sedler Bates, director of one of the St. Ignatius Contemporary Groups, with Michael Burns, back, Frank Sedler and Mary Sedler Massa at St. Ignatius Loyola Parish in Monfort Heights.

Venimos, Spanish for We Come, is the title of the compact disc and cassette tape of religious songs - many of them about children - created by the St. Ignatius performers.

The CD sells for $15; the cassette is $10. Profits from this project will buy medicine and other medical supplies for a clinic overseen by Father Bill Jansen, a Cincinnati native who is a Comboni missionary at the San Jose Parish.

Frank Sedler said he contacted Father Jansen, who was thrilled that the St. Ignatius performers were undertaking this project.

"I think it's just a wonderful way" to continue building the relationship between the two parishes, said Father Tom Bolte, pastor at St. Ignatius.

Venimos was made possible with the help of Jerry Lane, a parishioner at St. Anthony Church in Madisonville and the recording engineer and tour manager of the nationally known group Blessid Union of Souls.

Michael Burns, another parishioner at St. Ignatius, is friends with Frank Sedler and Lane, who works for Cincinnati-based Legend Entertainment. After Burns learned that Sedler and the other musicians hoped to make a recording as a fund-raiser, he contacted Lane.

Lane, who is on tour with Blessid Union of Souls and could not be reached, gave the St. Ignatius performers access to professional-quality recording equipment, Frank Sedler said.

"We got anything any national group would get in their studio," he said.

The final result is a set of beautiful recordings that would make a wonderful Christmas present. "It's really good," he said.

Burns said the ultimate credit for this project goes to God, who brought all these people together to create Venimos.

"People of faith believe in the gift of miracles," he said.