The Ordinary Ones

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