At the end of the day all we have is love.
When we got to our moment of sharing today, it was obvious that what we experienced today was a great big mix of high points and low points. We spent all our day serving at the Missionaries of Charity Children’s Home. Here the sisters run a kind of free hospital for sick and malnourished children that can hold nearly one hundred children. Their parents bring them here so that they have a chance to get healed and nourished before returning home.
All of the parents would have been quite proud of your kids to see how totally they gave themselves and engaged with the sick children from the very beginning of our day.
We had thought that a few of us would have the opportunity to serve at the wounds clinic this morning, but we didn’t know that it had been cancelled because several sisters were making their final vows today and a great number of Missionaries of Charity from all over Haiti were at the Children’s Home to celebrate with them. A good number from our group were able to meet the Papal Nuncio who celebrated that Mass and was on tour afterwards!
Now, take a moment to try to imagine what it is like to first enter the Children’s Home. You are nervous because you don’t know what to expect. You are excited, because it is the first day of the mission. You are scared because there is that chance that you might do something wrong. And you enter a green-tiled room with pictures of the Blessed Mother, Mother Teresa, and other saints adorning the walls and filled with white cribs that each contain one precious Haitian child who has just woke up from his long slumber. Hungry. Sick. And with great, searching, brown eyes. What do you do?
Well, these missionaries got right down to it. After holding the babies for a bit, we all got to try our hand at feeding the kids (some with more success than others as our t-shirts can attest). Some of us were frustrated with the language barrier, but somehow we all found a way to communicate what was most essential.
One very strong moment for the group was with a particular child in Room 1 (it holds the smallest and most ill babies). There was one child there who just seemed a bit worse than the rest and at a certain point, Sr. Annie Francis (the MC in charge of the Children’s Home) asked Father if he would be willing to baptize the baby. The child’s mother was there (and although she is not Catholic was eager for her child to be baptized). So Aly went ahead and rounded up Connor and Julie to be the godparents of little Elizabeth. A large group of missionaries and other volunteers were on hand to pray and witness this child receive the grace of Baptism and not even a minute later the anointing of the sick. She was put on oxygen and was still alive at the end of the day, but her prognosis is not promising.
We broke for lunch and went back to the guesthouse (most everyone taking advantage of the time of siesta) before one van went back to the Children’s Home and another went to pick up our last two missionaries at the airport (who then joined us at the Children’s Home). We had two more hours in the afternoon with our children (some missionaries have already found their “favorite” kid) and with a few projects the sisters asked us to help with before we went back to our home away from home.
There is a lot that we need to process in this day; it was a day of contradictions. We have come up against our own limitations and the reality that we can’t “fix” the problems in Haiti (although one of our newcomers, Michael, decided to “fix” what he could by changing every dirty diaper he encountered). But Emily said it best when she shared that God is not asking us to solve all the problems. He’s just asking us to do what we can right now!
We look forward to our day tomorrow where we will celebrate the feast of Pentecost with the community at the Home for the Dying. Pray for our hearts to open even more so that we can love Christ in the people that we meet and allow them to encounter Christ in us.
