As another new year moves into its second quarter, we extend our gratitude to you, our benefactors and co-missionaries for your persistent interest in, and support of, the work of our missionaries in the field. We delight in being able to continue to bring you personal accounts and stories of our engagement in the lives of our brothers and sisters around the world.
Our purpose and priority have always been delivering the Gospel promises to the most marginalized and needy among us. We go to the people living on the outer edges of society: the weak, the poor, the abandoned, the sick, the elderly, the desperate. And by going out and living working with people in their milieu, our missionaries can witness to the compassion of Christ in the real, personal context of those they serve.
Though our missionaries regularly report encounters surrounding people who experience a great deal of suffering, collaboration and grace and sweat equity allow them also to report on the shared joy and great peace that comes from hope and faith.
So, as we forge ahead in this new year of missionary experiences, let your heart go along with our missionaries, into the frontier situations they describe. You can participate in their service, acting in solidarity with our brothers and sisters everywhere, through your compassionate interest and support of the universal fellowship of Christ.
Thank you for continuing to share in our mission.
Missionhurst Magazine
Since my novitiate year in Missionhurst-CICM, I had already set my eyes on Haiti. There is something about this Caribbean island that enticed me to do my mission here. Knowing that this country has the current distinction of being the poorest country in the Americas, and one of the poorest in the world, I prepared myself for the difficulties that I might encounter along the way. But, as the journey continues, there are always surprises in store for me—far more than I could ever have imagined.
The basic human function of honoring and burying one’s dead is a personal one. It also often involves one’s family, church, and community. Local custom and traditional attitudes have their parts as well. This is the story of an elderly woman of our parish, who had just celebrated her 90th birthday when she passed away in November. She left behind five children and several grandchildren. Her brother and sister lived over 550 miles away from Kinshasa, and they are from an area where people have to walk or canoe for substantial distances before reaching any appreciable roadways to Kinshasa.
On January 10th of this year, some 30,000 Brazilians are reported to have been in attendance for a special mass, celebrated at a stadium in the city of Curitiba in southern Brazil. The occasion marked the 5-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake that tragically shook Haiti in 2010. The event also commemorated the death of Dr. Zilda Arns Neumann, founder and head of the Pastoral Care of Children organization. Though Dr. Arns was killed in the earthquake of 2010, her legacy of life-affirming attention to poor children lives on today. The Pastoral Care of Children network of Catholic charities (that she began in 1983), today supports almost two million needy children in Brazil alone, while the organization is also active in many other countries, from Latin America to Africa and Asia. Because of her incredible contributions to the lives of so many poor children and families, Dr. Arns was honored and celebrated, and a request was made by the Pastoral Care of Children to initiate the process of beatification.
The Jedutuhun Salvation Ministry is a community dedicated to the praise and worship of the Lord. It is named after the Old Testament figure of Jedutuhun: a Levite, and one of the musical masters appointed by King David to sing inspired songs of thanksgiving and praise to the accompaniment of lyres, harps and cymbals during liturgical services. (1 Chronicles, 25) His descendants were likewise assigned to sing and play musical instruments for liturgical services. In Makassar, our Jedutuhun ministry was born out of a desire to be of service to the archdiocese: through praise and worship with the accompaniment of musical instruments.
In the Dominican Republic, the very poor “company towns” made up of Haitian migrant sugarcane workers and their families, are called bateyes. The barracks in the bateyes house migrant workers who harvest (or used to harvest) sugarcane; they are usually wooden slat, cinderblock, and corrugated tin shanties. There is no running water, no latrine, little electricity, and no basic infrastructure (roads, sewers, etc.). The bateyes were erected in the sugarcane fields, far from “regular” Dominican life. Life there consists of struggling for basic human needs, such as: health care, clean water, food and education. It is a difficult life and there are many social problems in this milieu. Though it may seem that choosing to work and live in this manner is unsavory, many of the workers and families prefer life here in the bateyes to the harsh socio-economic conditions and difficulties faced in Haiti. Many here are actually the descendants of migrant workers who never left decades ago.
