Another Introduction

Where to start?  My first trip to Haiti, my first entry in my journal dated 2/6/11…”I pray that I see what God wants me to see.  I pray to be little so that God is big.  I pray that I can be present and presence.  God help me”.  Leaving that morning from Roanoke, I thought I was prepared and ready.  I thought I knew what to expect.  Arriving in Port au Prince later that day – it was very obvious – how wrong I was, how very little I knew.  How unprepared I was.

I cry now as I remember waking up the first morning in Port au Prince hearing voices all over the city…voices of people living in tents...singing alleluia as their day began.  Their lives destroyed by an earthquake, but they still sang.  How great was their faith, yet how small was mine.  The trip from PAP to our twin, Ecole Normale in Papaye embedded a thousand such sounds and pictures in my heart!  Ecole Normale is a teacher’s training school and our parish pilgrimage was for the purpose of listening and building relationships….and that takes much more time and effort than taking a hammer and building a house.  So it began. 

This week some things will be different….Even though there is some “computer stuff” to do on this new trip with new people and new destinations, it has the same purpose, listening and building relationships.  Only this time it’s with the BDE (Department of Education) for the Diocese of Hinche.  Many good things are happening in Haitian education.  It’s so exciting!

Haiti changed me.  It made me a better person.  My faith is stronger.  I know we are called to accompany (as partners, not bosses) Haitians as they work to improve their lives.  Haiti has made me worse too.  I can get frustrated, angry and hurt when people here don’t understand what we’ve seen.  Then my faith is smaller.  But that never lasts because Haitians are too full of hope and joy to give up!

Haiti is a paradox in every way, right Irene?  That seemed to be what we discovered on our first trip!  I don’t know what this trip will bring (at least now I know I don’t know!).  But I think Father Joe’s homily last week had two words aimed right for me….Love well.  Pray that we do.  Colleen