IPS Student Greg Bottaro Recounts Missionary Trip to Haiti
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During spring break last month, I took a group of 15 missionaries, including IPS student Kathie Rowe, to the mountains of Haiti. Our primary focus was to build an orphan house with an organization called Movin with the Spirit, led by Sean Forrest.
After fundraising for a month, we set out for a truly life-changing experience. Most of our work took place in two villages called Dandann and Duverger.
Every day was filled with beautiful moments sharing in God’s work, one of which I will recount here.
Part of our mission included visiting the homes of people who lived far from the two villages. These people were often infirm and unable to hike the difficult trails to visit family members. In addition, they would go months without having any outside human contact.
One morning several of us, including a priest named Fr. Christopher and a nurse named Monica, entered a little hut with only a front and back room, dirt floors, thatch walls, and a tin roof with wide gaps that allowed the rain to enter.
As we walked to the back of the hut, the stench of urine overwhelmed us. We encountered an elderly woman lying on a 4”-thick cotton mattress, the kind you would find in an elementary school nurse’s office. Both the sheet and the mattress, which was lying on the floor, were heavily soiled.
The only other piece of furniture in the dark room was a small table in the corner with a dirty, empty oil lamp that probably had not been lit in years.
We crouched down around the woman, and as one of the missionaries gently touched her knee, the woman let out a cry. Her skin was painfully sensitive to touch. Her limbs were shriveled and her body looked like that of a five-year-old child under the sheet.
When Monica pulled the sheet back, we could see a stump at the end of her ankle. Her left foot had fallen off a few years earlier because of diabetes.
It became clear to Monica that there was nothing we could do physically for her aside from changing her linens. We decided to first pray, and as we began, the woman reached under her pillow and pulled out a broken rosary. She clutched it in her hand and smiled as we prayed.
I noticed little black scars all over her face and asked if they had anything to do with the diabetes. Monica said no, and had Louis, another missionary with us, ask the woman about the scars. She told Louis that they were from the ants that crawled over her and bit her. She said that she didn’t have the energy to swipe them away.
I was overwhelmed by sorrow and tears blurred my vision of her smiling face as we prayed. It was one of the most intense encounters I have ever experienced.
It was Christ nailed to a dirt floor, suffering the scourging of ants without reprieve. She embodied the experience of complete poverty, powerless in the face of excruciating suffering. The woman had her faith, which can make suffering bearable in a nice conversation, but this wasn’t a nice conversation.
She was simply the suffering servant, the face of the Man of Sorrow. She was Christ Crucified, and we were at the foot of the Cross.
Her suffering weighed heavily upon me. Eventually the sorrow I was feeling was replaced by a range of other emotions as the week progressed.
Fr. Christopher offered a Mass for the elderly woman the morning after our visit. Following Mass, we were caught up in a stream of activity. More visits, more work on the orphanage, more playing with the kids.
Later that same day, I saw Louis speaking with someone from the village and he had tears in his eyes. Louis told me afterwards that the elderly woman we visited had just died.
There are no adequate words to describe the emotions that one experiences in the face of suffering and death.
For me, gratitude has been set on my heart like a seal…gratitude for life; for being taken out of my selfish little world to see the way people live and love in other parts of the world; to see how joy pierces the blanket of sorrow; gratitude for an opportunity to pray with a woman on heaven’s threshold; and gratitude for that woman who is now praying for me.
Because of our work and our generous benefactors, we were able to provide all the funding for the house, which will be finished and ready to receive children by the beginning of May.
If you would like to learn more about Movin with the Spirit or are interested in helping with this critical work (for which ongoing funding is essential for the children), please email me at gregory413b@gmail.com.