The Ordinary Ones

A big part of our mission in Haiti is that we live in a community at "The John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization." We live in a community of Haitians and Americans, where only two people speak both languages fluently. We eat all of our meals together, pray together, have mass together, work together, and evangelize together. Everything here takes longer, not only because the Haitian culture is slower than America, but also because everything often has to be translated into two languages. Imagine having a three-hour community meeting. Now imagine having a three-hour community meeting three times in two days. Yes, that has really happened. One morning, our morning prayer took an hour, because in an effort to be united, we decided to pray the first psalm in creole. We found the psalm in a creole song book, and proceded to sing the whole thing together. The only problem was that this particular song had eleven verses. Then we proceeded with the rest of morning prayer.

Picture this: seven Haitians teenagers and a white American girl with no rhythm dancing on a stage to the beat of a conga drum (or "tanbou" as they call in Creole). The man playing the drum is named "Ti-roro". He is in his seventies and is also the dance teacher. Yes, he did teach them their dance moves by doing them himself. This was my first of a few experiences dancing with Ti-roro's dance class. Three or four of the girls had grabbed my hands and pulled me onto the stage after asking me to dance with them. I couldn't say no, so I took a dance class for the first time in the 24 years of my life so far. While I have only danced with them a few times, these girls are a part of most of my favorite experiences in Haiti. They often come by after dance class, and even on days when they don't have dance class, just to say hello or hang out with us. One day I was learning Creole from a book, and it was teaching me actions and body parts. As I was readi

"Ave Maria!" Marc-Arther shouted into a microphone attached to a sound system inside of a truck, while the truck was driving down the street. A line of people walking two by two stretched out next to, in front of, and behind the truck. We were walking late in the afternoon, getting sprinkled with rain. "Pa gen anye Bondye pa ka fe!" Everyone shouted back. It means, "There is nothing God can't do!"  I was amazed that Haitians would come out in the rain, even to walk in a procession for God. The day before I had been walking with a few missionaries and a few Haitians, and when it started to sprinkle, the girls we were with all started running. When I told them I wasn't afraid of the rain, they told me that I would catch a fever. Anyway, about fifty Haitian teenagers had met us at our mission base on that Friday afternoon to begin a procession to one of the local churches, St. Anthony of Padua. We walked for two hours, singing songs in Creole

After returning to our mission base, another girl walked in and asked one of the other missionaries, Emily, if we could come and pray with one of her friends. I think she may have heard about us praying with Kimberley because they lived pretty close together. Pretty soon, Emily, myself, and Paola (our nurse) were off to another house. This one was slightly different. Their friend had a cough, but otherwise was fine, so we prayed with her for healing. Soon afterwards, they took us to another house to sit and visit. They cut down coconuts from their tree and we sat around talking in the little Creole that we could understand from each other. Pretty soon they were asking for stuff. "Can I have your bag? Can I have your shoes?" This is a common thing that has happened since we have been here. And in all of us, I think there is a generous part of our hearts that wants to give to people who don't have those things. But I know that we must also be careful, and we cannot encour

Last week we completed our first mission trip with a mission group in Haiti. Nineteen people (all full-time Life Teen missionaries) came to be our guinea pigs as we led them on mission for nine days. I was terrified that we wouldn't have it all together, that we would fall flat on our face, that we wouldn't have enough for them to do, or know enough of the language to be effective, but God provided for all of our weaknesses, and we experienced a beautiful mission trip together. We worked, painted, prayed, visited houses, played basketball & soccer, danced, went to prayer meetings, and hosted a procession and XLT that over 200 Haitian teenagers attended. Because I can't tell you everything, here are some stories and thoughts from one impactful afternoon that I experienced. "I think they want me to go pray with their friend who is sick." I said to Fr. Louis as more than a few 10 - 15 year old Haitian girls began pulling my arms to get me to follow them. This w

Last week, I was laying out rocks to line the edges of our road inside our property. In the front of our property is a school. We live behind the school, separated by some trees and a basketball court. I was working on the road coming from our houses, leading up towards the school. As I was laying rocks down, I heard some little voices calling my name, “Sara, Sara!” To me, it always sounds like they are saying, “Sa-lah!” It was a group of about ten kids from the school, calling to me from the back of a meeting room at the front of our property. I looked up, saw them, and waved. They waved back and giggled. I wasn’t sure if I should talk to them because they were supposed to be in school (I think this was like their “recess” time), so I went back to laying down my rocks. They stayed there and kept watching me. A couple minutes later, I heard them again. “Sa-lah, Sa-lah!” I looked up and they giggled again and waved more. I waved back, and decided to go talk to them, at the ri

I have always thought of praying for the souls in purgatory as just that random prayer that people sometimes tack onto the end of their meal blessings. I prayed sometimes for the souls in purgatory, more often when I knew someone who had passed away, but not very frequently. On November 2 nd , All Souls Day, we went to a monastery here that is up a mountain, about an hour away from us. When we got there, we went to pray in their adoration chapel. A few minutes later, their priest asked to talk to us about purgatory. He told us that many saints have said that one second in purgatory is more painful than all of the pain that we could ever experience on earth. He had printed out a paper for us. On the paper, there were some quotations from a soul in purgatory who had appeared to a sister or nun to warn her about purgatory. The first quotation said this: “If you could only know what I suffer! Pray for me, please. I suffer intensely everywhere. My God, how merciful you are! No one c

Today I took a shower with a bucket of rain water. There were leaves and dirt at the bottom of the bucket. Before I began, I wondered if I would end up dirtier than I started. I am pleased to report that I felt surprisingly refreshed. The past few days have been hard as the wind and rain pounded our buildings. We found out where all the leaks were, which included over some of the missionaries' beds. Imagine getting rained on in the night. We have been cooped up in the Center with little electricity and no running water. It is a totally different experience for me than when I lived in Florida and we would have hurricane parties, or watch movies, or at least sit safely on our couch while the rain and wind pounded the windows, watching the destruction in other places on the television. A few of us also made the unfortunate mistake of washing our clothes right before the hurricane hit. We didn’t know it was coming until the day that it arrived. Now, three days later, our cl

Our time in Haiti so far has been incredibly blessed. We live in Madian, Haiti at the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization. We live in a community with other missionaries and a priest. Some of us are from Haiti and some from America. We have been so blessed so far to pray together in a mixture of English, Creole, and French. This has been challenging but also beautiful as we learn prayers together and attempt to read and sing in other languages. On October 22nd, the feast of Bl. John Paul II, we had Mass with about 300 people from the surrounding community, including many school children and our beloved Bishop Dumas. Many people came at 7am to celebrate this feast with us. Later on during the day, some young girls from the school on our property (ages 9-15), came by to talk with Ti-Roro (our 71 year old congo player and dance teacher) who had told them to come by for dance lessons. Apparently, the plan is for them to learn to dance and then teach the “blan” – the white peo

The past few weeks have been filled with preparations for Haiti. There has been and still is so much to do. I don't think I really knew how much preparation has to go into a mission like this. Here are some things we have been doing: figuring out electricity and solar panels, cars, phones, internet, what to pack, health insurance, shots/meds, communicating with the priest in Haiti who will be serving with us, communicating between all of our mission team (one member of our team is joining us in january and is currently living in Dallas), traveling to a school and raising awareness for the mission, fundraising, writing thank you cards, trying to learn and practice the language as much as possible... and so much more. I have a constant running list of things to do, and I seem to think of new things every day. Yesterday, we bought our plane tickets! It is official! We are flying out on October 9th, and will land in Haiti on October 10th. Please, please pray for us. Buying tickets ha

Alarm goes off. Trying not to hit the snooze button. Turn off my alarm, fall back asleep. Wake up a little later than planned. Whoops. Holy hour & morning prayer in the chapel at Covecrest. Get in the car with another missionary & drive down to Atlanta. Meeting at a school about how they can be involved with our mission in Haiti. Talk with the school cook about cooking a Haitian lunch. September 25th. Date set! Talk with one of their staff members who is from Haiti. Share, chat, hear about milk in Haiti, the cathedral in Port-au-Prince, her childhood etc. Ice cream break at Brusters. Yes please. Drive to our mentor family's house from our Atlanta mission last year. Eat dinner with the family, catch up, play checkers with the kids. They beat me both times. Who ever heard of being crowned four times? They say, "It's the fun way." Sitting on the couch as Zoe brushes my hair, reading with Clare, while Simon tells me about his lego car garage. All at one

The past couple of weeks have been full of many different things for me. I've begun seriously sitting down with the language, Creole, that they speak in Haiti. I have never tried to learn a language through computer programs in this way, so it has been interesting. It requires so much discipline to actually sit down and either go through flashcards in a computer program, practice pronunciation, or listen to sound files where you repeat words in Creole over and over. One minor problem that I have is that I studied spanish on and off for years in school. When I don't know a word in Creole, the spanish word pops up in my head, and sometimes I think I know the right word when I actually don't. Whoops. Hopefully this will diminish as I keep practicing. One exciting thing for me is that I love learning. Sometimes I miss being in school, so this is an incredible opportunity for me to continue growing as a student, and learning some new things! However, I really think I will lear

I used to HATE fundraising. I found it so difficult to ask people for money when I know that our culture tells us to fend for ourselves, earn our keep, work hard, get a job, and be independent. It was humbling and difficult and awkward. It made me nervous, sweaty, anxious, and left me feeling inadequate. In the past couple of years, I feel like my relationship with fundraising has changed significantly. While I still often find it awkward, and it still makes me nervous, I have experienced some really beautiful God moments through asking for other people's prayers and financial support. Let me give you some examples: 1. My first year of missions, someone set a reminder to pray for me at 2:20pm every day. I love the intentionality and commitment there. 2. A couple of people who were my prayer partners for a year or two, began supporting me monthly last year, at a rate that I know was a sacrifice for them. It is incredibly humbling to receive gifts like that. 3. Someone who co