Standing with each other in tough times

Just having celebrated Christmas, we remember how the season of joy and wonder also memorializes an abhorrent massacre of babies in Bethlehem, and how the family of Jesus had to flee as refugees. 

Massacres, the bondage of slavery, and refugees all across the globe have added a somber tone to our new year celebrations.

The UN reports on their website that “more than 110 million individuals have been forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. We are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record.”

Haiti is no exception.

Do such numbers lead you to compassion burnout? Or to empathy fatigue?

Join us, instead, in helping God to be Provident, and people to be hopeful.

When the Hebrew people were freed from slavery in Egypt, but not yet in the Promised Land, they were “between a rock and a hard place.”

And yet manna, a lifesaving food, fell from the skies to save them.

This picture below is taken behind our hospitals in Tabarre. 

It is the Riviere Grise, or the gray river, along which thousands of internal Haitian refugees are living, fleeing massacres and violence.

This is life between a rock and a hard place, with no exaggeration.

Although we have a number of different ways we try to address the most basic needs of our terrorized neighbors, bringing food is like manna falling from heaven.

Just yesterday, we delivered one thousand food packages, each weighing about 20 pounds, with rice and beans, spaghetti, and cooking oil.

Do you see the young boy pictured below? Both his hips and knees are permanently flexed, and so he walks low to the ground and as slow as a turtle. Not exactly a candidate for a food line rush.

Yet his first blessing came in the form of a bicycle, which is how he made it to our trucks.

He is an example to all of us of zest for life even in difficulties, of stamina and determination.

He hasn’t quite yet figured out how to mount the bicycle with his blue sack of food.

Although food distributions can be totally chaotic if not well organized, it is amazing how fast the atmosphere becomes festive.

I know giving out food is not the end of the story.

But it is not NO STORY.

Food is also the manner in which solidarity is shown, hope is generated, and memories of God as Provident become more deeply rooted in the hearts of these people of strong and manifest faith.

Will you support our effort?

Each food package is roughly $17.

Would you consider becoming a monthly friend of this program, by donating $50 per month for 12 months? Friends will receive updates on this program twice during the year.

Thanks for considering support for these refugees.

There is still so much to do,
But together we can do so much!

Fr Rick Frechette CP DO
Port au Prince
January 13, 2024