Open Your Eyes, Life Lessons Learned In Haiti

By Jeff Newell

A seemingly benevolent endeavor to help others in a remote part of the world turned out to be much more life-changing than ever anticipated. A faith-driven desire to put his beliefs into action by taking a mission trip to Haiti led Jeff Newell and his family to experience multiple opportunities for personal and spiritual growth and gain a profound appreciation of the people and culture they encountered. Almost immediately the tables were turned when they found themselves on the receiving end of the many life lessons that were unknowingly, yet subtly being revealed. Come follow their journey in the rural mountains of Haiti as they experience the importance of building relationships, dependency on God, sharing from our need and not our excess, and finding God present in everyday occurrences. Open Your Eyes masterfully captures the essence of nearly two decades of routine daily situations, turning them into both meaningful learning experiences as well as humorous anecdotes. "I have enjoyed reading your book. I was captivated from the first paragraph." Lori Sabol, Tippecanoe County Bar Association President, Lafayette, IN. "Thank you for sharing your vision, your mission, your actions and your reflections. I was inspired, informed and educated by your work." Fequiere Vilsaint, owner of EducaVision, Miami, FL. "I am very grateful to Jeff for writing this book to preserve and to share the lessons learned in the field. I have learned a great deal, as something of a second-generation fellow traveler, from reading these stories, and I am confident that many readers of this book will similarly be gifted." John Nichols, STL, PhD, Rensselaer, IN. "I have read through it twice and found it to be superbly written and a much needed message, not only to be read, but reflected upon by anyone doing mission in any place (including here at home). It is very important to include 'lived experiences and examples' verses just theories and ideas. Jeff had done this very, very well!" Father Ron Schneider, pastor St. Ann Church, Baldwin, MI.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781641918893

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Open Your Eyes:

Life Lessons Learned in Haiti

Jeff Newell

ISBN 978-1-64191-888-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64191-889-3 (digital)

Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Newell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword by John Nichols

It pleases me a great deal to be invited to write the foreword to Jeff Newell’s book about what he and his companions have learned from the visits they make to Haiti. It is indeed a collection of wonderful stories.

I’ve known Jeff Newell for more than ten years. First, as his teacher for several of the Ecclesial Lay Ministry theology courses that Saint Joseph’s College furnishes for the Lafayette Diocese. Then in some special ELM courses on the documents from the Second Vatican Council, as we began to observe the fiftieth anniversary of that council. Jeff became the principal advocate for the teachings of the council about social justice, sometimes chiding the instructor (me!) for not giving enough attention to this dimension of the texts. And finally, Jeff and I became collaborators for an ELM workshop on Gaudium et spes, the longest, the last, and perhaps the most challenging of the documents from Vatican II.

In The Church in the World of Today (the English title for Gaudium et spes or GS), the new approach to theology practiced in Vatican II exhibited its most mature development. It was called theology from below, a more inductive approach to an understanding of faith that begins with how people live the Gospels. This is no more complicated than the old adage that Experience is the best teacher.

Chapter 1 in GS seeks to answer the question: What do we learn about what it means to be created in the image of God when we pay attention to our lived experience? We know we have minds that seek to understand the whole of reality, a moral conscience that works at distinguishing good from evil, and genuine freedom to choose what we do. Most remarkably, Christians learn how these essential traits of being human can be done with perfection by observing how the Gospels present Jesus, true God and true man, to us:

He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind.

He acted with a human will, and with a human heart He loved.

Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us,

like to us in all things—except sin. (GS 22 and Heb. 4:15)

How Jesus lived teaches us how to be fully human. And what staggers and astonishes the mind is that Jesus also reveals the Father to us. At the Last Supper, one of the twelve implores Jesus to show us the Father. And Jesus answers: Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9). So the theology from below learns both who we are as images of God and who God is from what Jesus says and does in the four Gospels. In more academic terms, theology is anthropology and vice versa.

The most basic connection between the divinity and the humanity of Jesus is self-giving love, the way the Persons within the Trinity relate to one another and what Jesus became human to do for us and to show to us. GS is very clear about love for God expressing itself through love of neighbor. We are witnessing the birth of a new humanism, where people are defined above all else by their responsibility to their sisters and brothers and at the court of history (GS 55). Responsibility for others—practiced with reciprocity—I see as the underlying theme of this book.

As the chapters in these pages make abundantly clear, the time spent in Haiti involved much more receiving than giving on the part of those traveling there from Indiana and, in the light of the theology from below, much more learning than teaching. Living in those very special communities produced thirty-some lessons in how to live the Gospels.

I am very grateful to Jeff for writing this book to preserve and to share the lessons learned in the field. I have learned a great deal, as something of a second-generation fellow traveler, from reading these stories; and I am confident that the many readers of this book will similarly be gifted.

Thank you, Jeff, and Si Dye vle, m’ap avek ou. (See chapter 9.)

John Nichols, STL, PhD

Saint Joseph’s College (retired)

October 11, 2016

Feast of Saint John XXIII

Introduction

It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.

—Acts 4:20

Frequently people ask me what would they do if they were to go to Haiti with me. The inference is that they don’t know whether they have skills that would be helpful there. I respond by telling them that I am the least useful person to go to Haiti. I am not very fond of going to the doctor or even seeing blood or needles, so I am not particularly helpful in medical missions. I am not mechanically inclined. I can’t do electrical work or rewire a generator or work on fixing anything beyond a flat tire on a vehicle. I do not have any good trade skills. My friends tease me that I am best suited to be the dummy end of the tape on any task requiring two people! I am not trained in masonry work, which is a vital skill to have in Haiti. Therefore, the talents I do have do not seem to correlate well with those areas that Haiti seems to need the most.

So why is it that I go and keep on going back to Haiti? Hopefully this book will shed some light on those two simple, yet powerful questions.

While I may not be useful in the many endeavors I just described, I do feel that I am good at spending my time with the people of Haiti. I love to walk with them, to talk with them, even to learn to speak Creole, to eat with them, to worship with them, to sing, to dance, to laugh, to cry, to comfort them and to be comforted by them, to be with them and share whatever the moment brings with them. We are told in 1 Peter 4:10, As each of us has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.

I have experienced countless wonderful situations throughout my many mission trips to Haiti. More importantly, God has allowed me time to reflect, to absorb all that has happened, and to notice even the little moments. Deuteronomy 4:9 confirms the importance of this when it says to not forget the things your own eyes have seen nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live. God has given me insights that hopefully make me a better person in all facets of my life. My reflections on each of these trips and experiences have taught me so many wonderful lessons about life in general.

I also think that I am good at coming home and sharing those many wonderful experiences with anyone ready to listen. I have written a lengthy journal after every trip I have taken to Haiti and shared those journals with others willing to read them. I suppose that writing this book is an extension of my desire to share my experiences and what I have learned over the past two decades.

After all, Jesus instructs us to do so at Mark 5:19 when he says, Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord…has done for you.

While my mission experiences have come from my many trips to Haiti, the life lessons I have learned could have just as easily been acquired wherever mission work occurs, from inside your own home and community to as far away as a developing country in another part of the world. Ultimately, we are called to mission everywhere. Pope Francis reaffirmed this worldwide calling at the closing of World Youth Day in 2013 when he said, Where does Jesus send us? There are no borders, no limits. He sends us to everyone.

Wherever it is that you choose to follow God’s calling, remember the words from the following Franciscan Benediction. They fit perfectly with doing any such endeavor:

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

1

Mission: What Does that Mean?

The first task in approaching another people, another culture, another religion, is to take off our shoes, for the place we are approaching is holy. Else we find ourselves treading on people’s dreams; worse, we may forget that God was there before our arrival.

—Bishop Kenneth Cragg

Probably the most important lesson I have learned deals with answering this question: What is mission? After all, if I am going to go on a mission trip, what is it that I am trying to do?

If you asked me before my first trip, my answer would most likely have been simply, To help those in need or To put my faith in action. Those reasons sound worthy and even seem to dovetail with the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would want them to do for you. However, my answer today would be much different and much deeper. It has taken a lot of reading and reflection on this simple question after many visits to Haiti for me to form my current view.

Any thought process on mission should begin with Jesus. What did He do? Who did He help? Sinners, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the lepers, the poor, the widows, and orphans. These people were at the forefront of whatever Jesus did and thereby taught us to do. His ministry was defined by helping those who were least able to help themselves, the marginalized and often forgotten in society.

We have many Gospel calls throughout the Bible, each giving us our marching orders to do mission. I know the Bible is replete with many more examples of such marching orders, but I will list three of my favorite mission verses, the ones that speak the loudest to me. The first is found at John 13:15. Jesus has just finished washing the feet of the disciples after the Last Supper when he says, I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do. Seems simple and straightforward, doesn’t it?

A second Gospel call is the Golden Rule, which can be found in two places, at Luke 6:31 and Matthew 7:12. Both essentially say, Do to others as you would have them do to you. While these callings may not be complicated to understand, they are much tougher to implement daily.

My third example, and my favorite instruction on mission, comes from chapter 25 in the book of Matthew. We all know these verses. They involve the judgment day when the sheep are separated from the goats. What separates them from each other for eternity is their feeding of the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and imprisoned. Summing up their acts of mercy, the Lord says, Amen, I say to you, what you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me (Matt. 25:40). Likewise, He adds to those who did not do any of those things, Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me (Matt. 25:45). Many homilies, books, and treatises have been written on these verses of the Bible.

Recognizing Jesus in such situations reminds me of what we are taught in Hebrews 13:2. Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels. Better yet, to adapt it to Matthew 25, unknowingly entertained Jesus!

It seemed my initial aim of helping those in need was the calling that I was being led to do. It was very easy to want to simply give some assistance to the many worthy needs we encountered. We didn’t have to look very hard when we were in Haiti as they were everywhere. In the beginning, that was what we did.

However, it took much contemplation for me to realize those Gospel calls were the starting points for mission, not the end goal of mission. To do mission in the spirit in which it was intended, more is required. Being a missionary cannot be a one-way endeavor. It can never simply be about the haves giving to the have-nots. If it is, the mission will eventually die out and fail. A proper foundation must first exist. I know that is a topic often found in the Bible. For example, see Matthew 7:24–27 and 1 Corinthians 3:11.

Mother Theresa put this idea of a proper foundation in perspective for me. She said, Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

The cornerstones for setting that proper foundation are a profound focus on relationships and mutual respect. You cannot see yourself as bringing Jesus to others but rather you must see Jesus in the others and then draw yourself to them. Then true missionary work can begin.

Former British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli encapsulates this idea of mutuality well when he said, The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own. This mutuality theme can also be found in Booker T. Washington’s comment, When you want to lift up yourself, lift up someone else.

Seeing Jesus in others is a skill that takes a lifetime to develop. I found a simple tool that helps me. When my oldest son, Justin, was in third grade in St. Mary School, he was at a school garage sale fundraiser. He bought a small wooden carving that spelled J-E-S-U-S. There were raised areas that were a different color than the background of the rest of the block of wood. To the untrained eye, those raised areas looked more like Japanese letters than English letters. The word J E S U S was not obvious when you first looked at it. You had to study it to find it. The letters spelling J-E-S-U-S were what were behind the raised portions that were there merely to divert your attention.

When he first brought it home, we had to mark the back side of the piece of wood so we could figure out which direction to hold it so it would be easier to discover J E S U S the next time we looked at it. Without those cues, we struggled to find the letters. It took us many attempts to find J E S U S before it began to become easier to do. What is amazing to me, I now have a difficult time looking at it and not seeing J E S U S.

I loved the symbolism of this simple piece of wood. Once you learned to block out the interferences of the false raised letters and look past them, what was left was J E S U S. Too often in our lives we train ourselves to see the wrong things. We typically look at the surface, thereby missing Jesus in the situation. Just like with the piece of wood, you must learn to look past the distractions to find what is important. It is always there, just rarely is it obvious! Think how much better Christians we all could be if we were better at looking beyond the interferences and finding Jesus. Just like with the piece of wood, think how much better we could become in finding Jesus in others with some practice. Maybe we could get to a place where it was more difficult to not see Him than to recognize Him in others.

Gaudium et spes was the final document approved by Vatican II in December 1965. It espouses this thought well in paragraph 93 by saying, It is the Father’s will that we should recognize Christ our brother in the persons of all men and women and should love them with an active love, in word and deed thus bearing witness to the truth.

Mahatma Gandhi takes this recognition of Jesus in others to a higher level when he challenges us by saying, If you don’t find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further.

I don’t know why but it was much easier for me to see Jesus in others when I was in Haiti. I think part of it was because everything I encountered was so new. I did not have a lifetime of third world experiences tempting me to focus on the wrong things, so it was easier to look beyond the distractions. Since everything was new to me, no interference was strong enough to divert my attention!

After further reflection on this, I realized that I have never been to Haiti without feeling that I was there to be at God’s service, to do whatever He led me to do. I never have had the illusion that I was in charge of anything when I was there. My dominant type A personality disappears while I am in Haiti. When something does not go as anticipated while in Haiti, I often think, God, what are you trying to teach me now? I am quite certain that has never been true for me while in the United States. When I am here, it seems that I don’t turn to God for help until I have exhausted everything I can do and have come up empty. In Haiti I go to Him first, not last. With that as my mind-set, it is easy to understand why it is much easier to see Jesus in others while I am there. My challenge now is to carry that priority over to the rest of my life and not just while I am in that tiny Caribbean nation.

Another reason it is easier for me is that I am truly impressed with every Haitian that I have met. My whole life I always had electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, a house that did not have dirt floors or thatched roof, paved roads, and a nearby grocery store. The list could go on forever! Most Haitians do not have any of these things that we would consider routine or expected. In Haiti, they would be luxuries, especially in the rural mountain areas.

In addition, I have backpacked many times in my life. I know how difficult simply not having clean drinking water readily available can be and how finding it can take an inordinate amount of your time and energy. So the Haitians quickly had my admiration for being able to live their entire lives in a way we would consider very difficult, if not impossible, and not merely survive a few days of voluntarily roughing it!

Frederick Ozanam, the founder of St. Vincent de Paul, summed up my feelings well when he wrote: Assistance to the unfortunate honors when it treats the poor with respect, not only as an equal, but as a superior because he is suffering what perhaps we are incapable of suffering.

Ad gentes divinitus was another document approved near the end of Vatican II in 1965. It summed up being a missionary in paragraph 8: Missionary activity is nothing else, and nothing less, than the manifestation of God’s plan…thus missionary activity tends toward eschatological fullness.

A final thought I have on mission comes from Julie Lupien, executive director of From Mission to Mission. I have heard her speak several times and love when she says, When the God in me meets the God in you, great things will happen.

Great things will happen when a solid foundation is laid for the mission. You don’t have to go thousands of miles to do it. You can see Jesus in the next person you encounter, wherever you happen to be! As Bishop Cragg’s words so aptly remind us, He was there before our arrival.

Wood carving with the hidden J E S U S. Can you see Jesus?

2

So What Do We Do in Haiti?

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

—John C. Maxwell

I am repeatedly asked, What do you do in Haiti? My response always is, We build relationships! That can be a difficult concept for most Americans to grasp or appreciate. After all, we are doers. We like to take charge, assess the situation, fix the problem, and then go on to do something else.

We like to keep score and quantify results. We always tally how many patients were seen or how many vitamins were passed out or how many houses were built. You name the endeavor, and we can measure it somehow!

Results are difficult to quantify when your goal is to build relationships. In fact, it is nearly impossible. Before each trip, I tell all the first-time travelers to Haiti that the most important thing we do is build relationships. To help satisfy that American need to keep a tally, I also tell them that they will have a successful trip if at the end, they know the name of ten different Haitians and that those ten Haitians know their name. This cannot occur without spending time and effort getting to know them, which is at the core of building a relationship with someone.

Koze mande chez is a Haitian proverb that is directly on point. Translated, it means A conversation requires a chair. The chair symbolizes time. A true conversation, as opposed to a mere chat, takes time. Obviously, a conversation lasts longer if you are sitting than if you are simply passing by one another. The same concept applies to building a relationship. It can’t be accomplished in your spare time. A relationship needs an intentional investment of your time and energy to fully develop.

I know the notion of the importance of building relationships is not easy to grasp, but nearly everyone begins to comprehend it the longer they are in Haiti. Many that have traveled with me have come up after a few days and said, I am up to six! or I am up to twelve! The highest number anyone has told me they achieved was thirty. They are typically beaming with their newfound understanding of this concept.

There are two profound early experiences that helped define the importance of building relationships for me. Each took more than one year to fully develop. The first began on my initial trip to Pendus in March 2000. We went in mid-March so we could celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph (March 19) with the parishioners of St. Joseph Church in Pendus, Haiti. The celebration of this feast day was different than our similar Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8) at St. Mary Cathedral in Lafayette, Indiana. The biggest difference was that the Haitian feast lasted the entire weekend and the entire community was involved. It truly was a party with food and music, joy and laughter, praise and festivities.

Everything was new to me. All my senses were being bombarded with new sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. I was not used to seeing machetes, the big bladed knives that looked more like a weapon than a common everyday tool. Many men and women would carry them as they walked, holding them hanging down toward the ground as they moved around.

There was one middle aged man at the feast. I never did learn his name. He was very slightly built, standing not much taller than five foot. He wore a Civil War rebel hat, which I found very curious. His clothes were big on him, and he was barefoot. He was also a deaf-mute. He could only communicate by grunting, none of which I thought discernible by anyone as none of it was Creole, just guttural sounds. He was very animated when he tried to communicate with anyone, waving his arms and making as much noise as he could. I suppose most folks simply had ignored him for most of his life. Those machinations were necessary for him to gain anyone’s attention. And he did get my attention, but it wasn’t with the flailing of his arms or the decibel level of his grunting. What grabbed my attention was his machete! He carried his upright, not hanging down by his side. By holding it up, it seemed to be right in your face as you meet him. When he tried to get your attention, his arm movements included the machete waving in the air too. I know he was not threatening me with it, but I was unnerved a little nonetheless.

During that first trip, we passed out rosaries to everyone at the feast day Mass. The church was more than packed. There were people standing outside looking through the concrete block windows since there was no more room inside. I had no idea who everyone was that received one, just that we gave out all that we had brought with us.

I did not see the deaf-mute man after that Mass, nor did I see him during the next year’s trip. The following year, our group hiked up a mountain to the chapel at Mayombe for the first time. It was a very tough hike. We each climbed the rocky path at our own pace. This means that we were all strung out along the way up. Therefore, I was essentially hiking by myself. About an hour into the hike, another path from the other side of the mountain merged with my path. Right at that juncture I came face-to-face with the man that was the deaf-mute.

By now I was beginning to learn some Creole. My first instinct was to greet him and finally ask him his name, but I quickly remembered that he could not understand me, nor would I understand his response. However, there was instant connection on both our parts. I do know that he recognized me as someone he knew from the expression on his face, and I am positive he could read my face and know the same from me! Father Bob Klemme was walking about twenty to thirty yards behind me. Father was also on the first trip two years earlier. I turned to him to tell him to hurry and come meet this man again. However, when I spun back toward the man, he had already pivoted around and was hurrying back down the path toward his thatched roof home about one hundred yards below.

Father caught up with me about the time the man went into his home. I explained who he was. Father said he recalled him from that initial trip. Before we could turn away and continue our journey to Mayombe, the man came back out of his house. I could see him staring up at us. He was waving his hand over his head and grunting as loud as he possibly could. It was loud enough that I could hear him. He kept waving his hand back and forth, like you would do to gain someone’s attention during an emergency. However, there was no emergency other than his desire to communicate with me. He was holding a white rosary. I know he was telling me in the only way he knew how that he remembered who I was because he associated me with him getting that rosary two years earlier!

Sadly, I have never seen him again over the next decade and a half, but he did teach me a very valuable lesson on relationship building. I was building a relationship even when I did not know I was doing so, even when I was a little intimidated by him, his inability to speak, and his machete!

Another powerful example of the importance of building relationships began in December 2000. That was my first trip to Haiti with my wife, Sharon, and son, Kyle. Our travel from Port-au-Prince (PAP) to Pendus was slowed by poor roads and several flat tires. It was dark when we arrived at the rectory in Gros Morne. Even