In the late 1970's,
my wife Barb and I took a Caribbean cruise that stopped at the Haitian capitol, Port-au-Prince. We couldn't fathom why the cruise line would mar a luxury vacation with a visit to such a horrible, filthy place.
The brief stop left uncomfortable images indelibly etched in our minds, making us wonder what the rest of the country looked like. Later, Barb read a magazine article about a new program in which Roman Catholic parishes in the United States sponsored parishes in Haiti. We contacted the organizer for further information, and soon our St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Bartonville, Ill., adopted a Haitian parish: St. Dominic's in the village of Marigot, which sits on the rural, southern coast of Haiti.
I hadn't returned to Haiti since the cruise, and I honestly didn't want to. But with strong encouragement from my wife and the program organizer, I eventually agreed to make a short trip to Marigot.
To my amazement, in less than a week I fell in love with Haiti and its people. Despite their squalid existence in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haitians showed me a friendliness that I had rarely seen anywhere else. Moreover, I marveled that these people had so little, but shared a strong, unyielding faith in God.
I saw an obvious need: The parish sorely lacked medical attention. In 1985, after powerful prayer and gentle arm-twisting, I and five others from St. Anthony's made our first medical mission to Marigot, where we treated 550 patients. The satisfaction and appreciation that we received pushed us to return again and again, growing each time, and our recent trips have served as many as 7,000 patients.
We now have our own clinic, which one day I'd like to see filled with volunteers all year. With your help, we can make that happen.
Richard Hammond
