On a mission trip to the Caribbean last month, a dozen volunteers repaired a chapel and started a new home build, while answering two riddles. How do you stand in two countries simultaneously? And what do you get when a Dominican, a Franciscan and a Haitian work side by side?
The hardy band of volunteers found both answers during the week of Jan. 17-24 in the remote mountains of the Arlington diocese’s mission parishes in Bánica, a rustic border town in the Dominican Republic.
The group varied in age and was comprised primarily of parishioners from St. John Bosco Church in Woodstock and St. Camillus Parish in Silver Spring, Md., and traveled under the banner of St. Francis Builds, a nonprofit organization that sends volunteers on mission construction trips across the United States and throughout Latin America. For some missionaries, it was their second trip to Bánica in several months.
Working side by side with Haitian and Dominican community members, missionaries dug down 4 feet into clay and rock to set a stable cinder block foundation against rain and hillside runoff. The new, three-bedroom structure will house a family of nine currently living in a single-room shanty. The family matriarch proudly showed pictures of her eldest son who is entering seminary.
The team also renovated a small chapel dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi. The chapel serves Haitians in a remote community and nearly succumbed to failing roof timbers and rotted windows and doors. The restored chapel is ready again for services.
Additional highlights from the week included evenings of thought-provoking engagement with two diocesan priests assigned to the mission, Fathers Stephen F. McGraw and Scott Sina, and kilometers of hikes with three Spirit-driven Poor Sisters of St. Joseph. One hike traveled a short distance into Haiti, ambling along the curiously named International Highway, a dirt trail that for 50 kilometers bisects the two countries with the Dominican Republic on the right and Haiti on the left. Among the missionaries, one first-generation Dominican and others of Haitian descent, delighted in straddling the border, with one foot in each country.
As the week concluded, the team celebrated with a visit to a farmer’s market, a swim in the river, a hike up to a Franciscan shrine, and an evening visiting destitute families with the sisters.
For its next trip to the Dominican Republic later this year, St. Francis Builds and St. John Bosco parishioners intend to build a new school for impoverished Haitian immigrants served by the sisters. They also intend to help refurbish the shrine above the diocesan mission in Bánica, which thousands of Dominicans and Haitians will visit during this special Jubilee Year of St. Francis.
Ventimiglia is a parishioner of St. John Bosco Church in Woodstock.
Find out more
For more on the upcoming mission trip, email Vince Ventimiglia at [email protected]. To learn more about St. Francis Builds, go to StFrancisBuilds.org.
