Community

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.

Another day, we sat together around the dinner table and told our most embarrassing moments, while Fr. Louis and Paul translated back and forth from English to Creole, and Creole to English. Sometimes humor doesn't translate well. On a different day, we each told the moment when we first knew that Jesus was really God.

We have experienced a lot of incredibly good things from community so far. One of our community members who has kids with his girlfriend is now getting married in the Church in January. Our mason who has stayed with us for most of the last two months working on the property, is not Catholic, but now wants to be and wants to get married in the Church. When discussing the recent mission trip we hosted here, a few of the Haitian members in our community said that they felt loved and included and were thankful that there was "no humiliation". From what I can understand, they are used to living lives where they are looked down upon, or humiliated, and it is a new thing for them to be living and working and praying with people who see them and love them as human beings.

While we are not perfect at loving one another, and certainly not perfect at communicating well with a language barrier, I am realizing that even the efforts to do so are huge, and loving, and life-changing. What we are trying to do here is a big thing. Living in a community that tries to love across culture and language is challenging, but I believe it is one of those things that is difficult because it is worth it.

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