April 2007
Dear Friend,
I am now back in the States for three and a half months of interpretation
assignment, which is the term used in the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.) to refer to what once was called “furlough.”
It is a time for mission co workers to share our personal stories
about our work and the work of the partners with whom we work.
I will be in the States until July 14. Then I will be in Nicaragua
for two weeks to participate in the Fifth Annual Regional Agricultural
Conference at Rancho Ebenezer and I will be back in Haiti by July
28 to continue my work with MPP (Mouvement Paysan Papaye), the
Farmer’s Movement of Papaye, the organization with which
I have been working since May 2004.
My time here in the States is already heavily scheduled. However,
if you represent a church that would have liked to sponsor me
to visit and speak, please let me know. Life is uncertain, and
possibilities may open up when I least expect them. Amesville,
Ohio, where I am staying with my parents, is 20 minutes from Athens,
which is two hours southeast of Columbus. But even if you represent
a church much further away, let me know of your interest. At the
very least we could talk about the possibilities for my next extended
visit to the States.
There is a great deal of beauty that surrounds us here in Amesville—the
hills, the forests, the corn and hay fields along the edges of
the creeks, fields of sheep and cattle. There are deer, wild rabbits,
hawks flitting along the edges between the forests and the farm
lands, a diversity of songbirds attracted to the bird feeders
in town. There are well tended yards, most of them turning bright
green now and edged with dense clumps of bright yellow daffodils.
Human warmth here is also present and accounted for, in the schools,
in the churches each Sunday, and especially during special celebrations
like baby showers, community dinners. This is a good place to
come back to.
Rochenel in front of the old tires he set up at his house. All
four tires are planted with Amaranth, an edible vegetable plant
high in protein, iron, vitamin A, and other vitamins which is
cooked like spinach.
Where I live in Haiti, in the small community of Papaye, there
is also a great deal of beauty—tree lined roads, yards filled
with a collections of flowers and fruit trees, gardens filled
with ten foot banana trees, fields filled with sweet potato vines,
corn, sorghum or beans. Swinging by my friend Rochenele’s
house after church one Sunday, my friend Ann, visiting for a couple
of days with her husband Allen, was startled by a view of the
tree filled valley, mountains rising up through the mist in the
distance. Ann said to me, “Mark, you know that you live
in a very beautiful place, don’t you?” I do.
The spirit of people in my community and in MPP is something
you sense, I think, when you first meet some of the folks. But
the full impact is something you can only appreciate as you begin
to work with them and understand the kind of work they are doing
and the kinds of limitations that they have to overcome daily,
limitations that they often turn into jokes.
I remember one day in January when I worked with Francklin and
Wilner, who work with me developing more productive agricultural
techniques for small farmers. We worked swinging hoes together
for four hours, scraping out irrigation ditches to water a field
of moringa trees. In four hours of hot, sweaty, hard labor, Francklin
and Wilner never stopped cracking jokes or poking fun—and
they never stopped swinging their hoes, either. When we finished
working and rinsed off the sweat in water from the concrete tank
that holds the water to irrigate the trees, the weariness washed
away as easily as the sweat, because Francklin and Wilner’s
jokes kept our thoughts easy and made the workload light.
Then there’s my friend Erisson who the crew and I work
with on the moringa project at the Colladère cooperative,
a project sponsored by the Presbyterian Hunger Program. When I
called Erisson last Thursday, I asked him how the financial situation
for MPP was. “Not a cent in sight,” Erisson told me,
then laughed and went on to some other subject. MPP has not had
the funds to pay Erisson and many of the other employees their
salaries for several months. But Erisson is still on the job,
dedicated to working with the farmers—helping them organize,
helping them find ways to do more with what they have, helping
them to recognize the strengths they themselves have. He’s
doing what he does because he believes in it, beyond the problems
he has to deal with and the sacrifices he makes on a daily basis.
Ma Letrois, a member of an MPP group, in front of her house
with three old tires in which she is producing tomatoes, hot
peppers, and parsley.
The folks I work with in Haiti are professionals in dealing with
difficult situations, of making it through hard, tedious tasks
with a light heart. They know how to find the way where there
is no way; they know how to make life feel special, even at its
hardest. I believe that this capacity has its roots in faith and
an intimate experience with the power of Jesus Christ. Faith in
Haiti is not always expressed in the same ways as it is here in
the United States, but our faith and the faith of Haitians has
the same starting point, the same action that created space for
all of us to live lives of hope. The life, death, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ—the love of God made real and present for
all time—is, I believe, at the heart of life in Haiti, just
as it is at the heart of our life here, as members of the church
of Christ Jesus here in the States.
Life is rarely entirely straightforward. Joy is often mixed with
sorrow and pain, love mixed with difficult moments in relationships.
But out of all that confusion, one thing is very clear to me:
I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to have served,
and to be able to continue serve, alongside the people of MPP,
people of faith in Haiti. In the midst of all the problems and
frustrations, there is a clear, shining path before me, God’s
Kingdom present and also coming ever nearer. The folk of MPP are
on it and, praise be to God, so am I.
Many blessings in all your challenges and difficult times.
Mark
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
49
P.S. The biggest news I have may be my engagement to Jenny Bent,
a woman from the Moravian Church in Managua, Nicaragua, who I
began dating about four and a half years ago. I asked Jenny to
marry me on January 3, right before she left to fly back to Nicaragua
after visiting me in Haiti for about ten days. Amazingly enough,
she accepted. It probably won’t be until sometime in January
2008 that we will be able to set the final date for the wedding,
but we are looking at sometime between March and May 2008.
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