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Happening ... in the Local Church
 A
mother and daughter visit a clinic offered at Notre Dame de Lourdes
Parish in Belladere, Haiti. (Photos provided) |
 View
of a previous medical clinic offered in the parish hall of Notre Dame de
Lourdes Parish in Belladere, Haiti. |
 These
girls attend a school run by women religious in Belladere. |
 Dr.
Tom Troutman, a volunteer from Grace Methodist Church in Rochester,
gives an eye exam. |
One man’s first missionary trip sparks an ongoing project that has touched thousands.
By Kevin Cullen
The Catholic Moment
ROCHESTER — When Mike VandenBossche
made his first missionary trip to Haiti, 25 years ago, he never imagined
that it would spawn an ongoing project that has attracted more than 100
volunteers and touched the lives of thousands of impoverished people.
He sees it as an expression of the old Baltimore Catechism that he studied
as a boy: a way to know, love and serve God in this life, and “be happy with
him in the next.”
“The
needs are endless,” says VandenBossche, a retired business executive, member
of St. Joseph Parish here and founding coordinator of its Haiti Parish
Twinning Program. “We try to be as helpful as we can. Money seems to come
out of the trees. I ask and it comes.”
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. In January,
VandenBossche, with three physicians, a nurse practitioner, nurses and
others, will make a 10-day mission trip to the “sister” parish: Notre Dame
de Lourdes, in Belladere, near the border with the Dominican Republic. It is
accessible by unpaved roads.
The 14 missionaries will serve between 1,200 and 1,500 patients, both
Catholic and non-Catholic. They’ll treat conditions caused by malnutrition,
high blood pressure and anemia. They’ll perform outpatient surgeries, treat
skin disorders and distribute between 120,000 and 150,000 doses of vitamins.
“Mike is an organizer, number one. I call him ‘the Boss,’” said Dr. Severino
“Benny” Sulit, a retired surgeon and member of St. John the Evangelist
Parish in Hartford City. He and his wife, Karen, a registered nurse, have
participated in the medical missions for 10 years.
Sulit said he saw poverty in his homeland, the Philippines, but it was
nothing like what he has seen in Haiti.
“We see a lot of malnutrition, worms in the kids; we give them worm
medicine. With the adults, back pain is most common, and acid stomach,” he
said. Using local anesthetic, he operates on tumors, polyps and hemorrhoids,
performs circumcisions, and “we removed a wooden splinter that had been in
there a few years.”
“I get a lot in return, more than I give them,” Sulit said. “They need
everything. I would like to stay longer if my wife would let me.
“It’s the best vacation I ever had. I look forward to it every year,” he
said. “They ask me when I will stop, and I say, ‘I will go as long as I am
able to.’”
In March, another team will fly down to provide dental services. Other
program volunteers work on water-filtration systems and eye care. Between
$5,000 and $10,000 a year is collected for operating expenses at the parish.
Donations helped buy a new Jeep for the pastor, and replaced a rotted church
roof.
VandenBossche’s planning, search for donations, and help with fund raising
never ends. The multi-denominational volunteers have included teenagers,
journalists, engineers, business people and clergy.
Each team member pays $900 to $1,200 to defray expenses.
All have “given of themselves, their talent, (and) their treasure,” said
VandenBossche, 73, an Indiana University graduate who formerly was vice
president of a manufactured homes company.
The volunteers have seen that although the people of Haiti are strangers,
they are “all children of the same God,” he said. “And hundreds more have
participated vicariously with their financial support of our effort.”
Grace Methodist Church in Rochester, for instance, has provided money for
every medical mission. Several congregation members volunteer.
Pierre Absi, a parishioner at St. Joseph Church, Rochester, said he has made
at least five trips to Haiti through the program. He speaks French and has
served as translator.
“Those people down there have a faith that literally can shake mountains,”
said Absi, a former member of the parish council. “They live in a simplistic
way that blows me away. I try to imitate them in how I live, especially in
this materialistic world, to refrain from getting material things and
focusing more on the spiritual and the Church.
“That first trip changed my life,” Absi said. “You can’t describe it to
people. You have to go there yourself and see the sights, smell the smells,
eat the food and talk to the people. I knew Haiti was poor, but I didn’t
know it was that destitute.”
He felt overwhelmed at first, he said, “then we realized that there are
little things we can do, and need to do. If you care for one person with
high blood pressure, that is one person you have helped. If you go there and
tell them you care, that, to them, is worth more than any amount of money or
health benefit. They are such a proud people; they thank us for taking the
time to go see them, but they were giving us back a lot more than what we
were giving them.
“If every able-bodied person in the United States went to Haiti, our country
would be in much better shape,” he said. “(Americans) would begin to look at
things differently.”
Absi said that VandenBossche works constantly to promote the twinning
program — helping to secure donations, e-mailing participants, planning
flights, recruiting volunteers.
“Mike has done a wonderful job from the beginning, and he continues to do
so,” he said. “It’s not easy to put a group together.”
VandenBossche’s concern comes naturally. His parents subscribed to
missionary magazines when he was a child. His oldest brother became a Holy
Cross priest, and spent 15 years in Bangladesh. When VandenBossche was a
student at old Central Catholic High School in South Bend, he was taught by
some Holy Cross brothers who had been missionaries in Bangladesh.
“In about 1980, I started having thoughts about trying to get a better
understanding of what was a new term to me: the ‘Third World,’” he said.
Sister Maureen Mangen, CPPS, his spiritual director at John XXIII Retreat
Center in Hartford City, suggested that he visit Haiti. In 1983, he flew
down by himself.
“My wife, without saying so, thought I was crazy going to Haiti,”
VandenBossche said. “She thought that with all the poverty, I would come
back depressed. Just the opposite happened. I came back absolutely elated,
and I kind of fell in love with the Haitian people. Their spirituality is
beautiful. Their love of music, song and dance impressed me immensely.”
Since then, he has returned many times, and in 1997 he organized the first
medical mission. Volunteers have come from the “clustered” parishes of St.
Joseph in Rochester, St. Ann in Kewanna and St. Anne in Monterey. Others
have come from more distant parishes, and from Protestant congregations.
Some of the Haitians walk five to 10 miles to visit the clinic,
VandenBossche said. Often, they wear their best clothes.
“It’s hard to express what keeps calling me back, except that the need is so
great,” he said. “I feel that we in the States have so very much. We don’t
even know how much we have. The people on the streets in Haiti do without on
an ongoing basis, and are so appreciative of what we do. It is a difficult
situation for many of our team members. They see quickly that we are not
doing much more than a Band-Aid approach.”
Still, he said, team members generally agree that helping others, if even in
a small way, is reward enough. The Haitians appreciate those who “care
enough to come,” he said.
Volunteers often hear about the Haiti trips, and are eager to join in.
“This year, I think we have six of 14 coming from the Hartford City area,”
VandenBossche said. “It is word of mouth, people talking about their
experiences in Haiti. We had a chemical engineer from Cincinnati, a nurse
from Newark, Ohio … it goes on and on and on.”
Over the past 25 years, he said, conditions have sometimes improved in
Haiti, but it remains a study in contrasts: extreme poverty amid extreme
wealth, often fed by political corruption, an entrenched caste system, and a
long history of oppression. The United Nations, popes and generations of
well-meaning people have been unable to “fix” Haiti.
Missionaries accept those realities, and do what they can … one pill, one
medical exam, one tooth extraction, one touch at a time.
They are people who are grateful for what God has given them, and feel a
“need to give back,” VandenBossche said. “It is, in many cases, a very
special retreat. Christ calls us to love one another.”