While most people are baking cookies, buying last-minute gifts, writing Christmas cards, sleeping off their sleepless nights from finals — we have 25 college students, a priest, and a consecrated woman giving their Christmas break to bring Christ’s love to Haiti.
December 15: 9:00 am: 4 Mexicans in Haiti buying the wood needed for the project they were asked to do: 20 school desks! What a scene, driving around ” Haitian Home Depot’s” to find the better price, just a small problem, no Creole, no French, so the sign language came in handy: nails, 2×4, plywood, varnish. It was like playing Pictionary, Mexican missionaries against Haitians; missionaries won! Finally we had the truck full of all the materials. Just one small problem, the cost exceeded our budget by almost 50 percent. 25 missionaries in need of work, 20 desks to make and no money. What do we do? Take the risk of pulling the money from the transportation budget. God will provide; He always does, doesn’t He?
3:30 pm: the trips to the airport started, 3 missionaries, then 8, then 7more. By 6:00 pm we had almost everyone, headed home to have dinner and go over the attitudes of a Missionary. Every time we wear the missionary T-shirt the ‘old me’ dies, Christ is alive in me; therefore we need charity, service, generosity, joy, self-giving, sacrifice, and love.
8:00 pm: we finish up the travel day with Mass and then off we go to sleep. The adventure has begun!
Did God provide? Of course He did. At dinner time one of the missionaries approached me and said, “I have a cash donation for you. I think is about $$” The exact amount that we had spent, actually $15 more. He is in control; we just have to live by faith, especially this time of year. It is not for nothing that this time of year is called “a time of miracles”.
Stay tuned to follow the adventures of the missionary Elves who will set up a carpentry shop, organize a Christmas pageant and Christmas crafts with the children, and much, much more.
