The Place Between My Own Two Feet

One of our teens, Franceline, has been coming to our mission base often in this past month. She has a lot of things going on spiritually (presumably because of some kind of past experience with voodoo) and we have prayed with her over and over and over. Sometimes she has even slept in our chapel. It has been hard and sometimes exhausting. Some nights it has felt like it will never get better. I have never in my life prayed so hard and so long and so consistently for another person – sometimes we have been with her for hours at a time, missing meals or sleep. Sometimes it feels like her problem will never be fixed or that God is just not listening to our prayers. At times it has been discouraging and overwhelming. As we have spent so much time in the chapel with her, my perseverance in prayer has definitely been tested. My hope has been tested. My faith has been tested. But I have also learned a lot from our time with her. For example, often I have felt like I don’t know how...

We first met Abdel when his eleven year old daughter, Madosa, came to our mission base complaining of a toothache. Her family told us that she had been up all night crying. After talking with a priest who knows the family we decided to give them enough money to go to the dentist (the equivalent of about $5). We were also told that Madosa's father, Abdel, was an alcoholic but that he loved his daughter very much and would do anything for her. Over the next few days, Abdel began working with our mason to complete construction on our bathhouse. After a couple weeks, he told someone in our community that he wanted to start going to Mass again, but he knew he had to go to confession before he could receive communion. That day, he decided to go to confession and come back to the Church. He made his confession on his knees, and was beaming with joy afterwards. It was a beautiful witness of the transforming mercy of God! On the same night that Abdel went to confession, several teen...

A couple weeks ago, I found out something difficult about one of our teenagers. It is a problem that you would not often find in America, but one that I suspect is common here in Haiti. One of the teens that comes to our mission base almost every day, Taina (pronounced like Ty-een-a), doesn’t have a bed. Because we live at a Diocesan Center, we have several beds here. We don’t have as many as we would like sometimes, and our mattresses are not in the best condition, but we at least have enough beds for us to sleep on, and about twenty other visitors (thirty if some are willing to be slightly uncomfortable). One day last week, some of our teen girls came by on a day when we needed to make beds for visitors. Since they are always willing to help with tasks, I asked them to help us make beds. After we finished, there were some leftover mattresses (okay, let’s be real, they were floor mats that were less than an inch thick) piled up in a corner. Taina (one of the smallest girls, an...