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WORDS FROM BROTHER FRANCKLIN ARMAND - FEBRUARY, 2011 |
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Beloved Brothers and Sisters,
I am happy to be able to visit with Msgr. Gaus, Kindred Journey, the parishioners of Holy Name, and to make a new acquaintance: snow! I have been here previously either just before or just after winter but never in the midst of a real winter. I find snow to be beautiful - but harsh; also, I understand better the importance of the sun. When you have a sunny day here, people say “Beautiful day!” We have bright sun every day in Haiti and never even remark about it!
I come from a country born of destruction, inequality, division, where there is much hatred of one group by another because of our past—a past marked by suffering and oppression. We end up looking for enemies everywhere. We have transformed our country into a society of apartheid, a Manichean society with definite separation of good and bad. But in living this reality and approaching it with a Christian mindset, starting with our baptism, we realize that we are all brothers and sisters in God—different one from the other but obligated to work and live together trying to keep a positive and constructive outlook on men and women, life, and objects.
Last year we experienced in Haiti an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, an earthquake that resulted in thousands of deaths and left over 1,500,000 homeless. This year it is cholera, which has killed and continues to kill thousands of people. And the epidemic has not yet peaked. Now it is spreading throughout the whole country. A person who contracts this disease can die in 30 minutes if he or she doesn’t receive necessary care quickly. Are we a cursed people? I do not believe so. The problem is not theological but sociological. It is time for humankind to find appropriate remedies.
I know that at the parish level, through Kindred Journey, you have been at our side in prayer, in solidarity, through your gifts and your compassion. It is important to me to thank you publically in the name of the Haitian people and the peasants of Pandiassou. With the support of Kindred Journey, we have been able to supply 5000 people per day with purified water—water taken from the hillside lakes that we have built with your support, ultra-purified, and bottled—so that the epidemic does not kill the children in our nutrition centers, the pupils in our schools, or the population in the surrounding area.
We continue to feed children, to educate them, to train them for jobs. By the grace of God and the support that we receive, we provide jobs for over 1000 people through our various projects: education, agriculture, sanitation, fish farming, food processing, and special schooling for street children. Through our various activities we touch the lives of some 300,000 individuals throughout the country.
Let us together thank the Lord in union with the Church in Haiti, in Pandiassou, and here at Holy Name so that the love of God may triumph over hate, justice over injustice, sharing over selfishness and life over death
Francklin
(translation by Mrs. Martha O'Brien) |
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