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Happening ... in the Local Church
 Father
Bob Klemme and Fritzner Guerrier (Photo by Kevin Cullen) |
By Kevin Cullen
The
Catholic Moment
LAFAYETTE — Fifteen years ago, Father Bob Klemme was on a mission trip to Haiti. By chance, he met a bright-eyed 14-year-old youth in the village of Grand-Savanne, 2˝ hours from Port-au-Prince.
Father Klemme — then associate pastor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Carmel — was shocked when the boy spoke to him in English, not Creole. Fritzner Guerrier explained that had grown up in a Catholic orphanage, and had been bilingual all his life.
When Father Klemme learned that Guerrier was not attending school, he felt called to help him. And that changed the life of Fritzner Guerrier forever.
“I feel the spirit of God was working in me,” said Father Klemme, now pastor of St. Patrick Church, Oxford, and St. Charles Church, Otterbein. “I immediately said to myself, ‘This guy has to go to school. He knows English too well to not go to school.’”
He first gave a Haitian priest the $100 needed to enroll Guerrier in a local school, and later he paid school and living expenses to send Guerrier to a school in the capital of Port-au-Prince. Guerrier completed high school, then a one-year baccalaureate program in the national school.
“Without Father Bob, I would be one of the worst people, with no education,” Guerrier said during a recent visit to Lafayette. “The orphanage kicks you out at age 14. I was out, living with an aunt in that small village.”
He now works as a professional interpreter. He has been hired to interpret for volunteers on mission trips to Haiti from the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Lafayette; St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church, Carmel; St. Mary Church, Anderson, and St. Thomas Aquinas Church, West Lafayette. He has interpreted for the 16 trips to Haiti made by cathedral volunteers.
Before the January earthquake hit Haiti, Guerrier also worked for the United Nations in Port-au-Prince. Since then, he has interpreted for several medical mission trips.
Guerrier, now 29 and the father of two, was in Indiana from May 11-22. He spoke to children at St. Mary Cathedral School, then visited friends and parishes in Lafayette, Anderson, Carmel and Benton County.
“It is very exciting. Good people,” Guerrier said. He said he was thrilled to see smooth highways, railroad lines, orderly urban development, windmills and wheat fields.
He recounted the horror of the quake.
“I was inside a car when it started shaking,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on. The country was white with dust.”
His 14-month-old daughter was trapped in the rubble of their three-story apartment building for two days. Ten friends with picks and shovels finally were able to get her out. She was dehydrated and unconscious, but eventually recovered.
“We took up a collection for our three interpreters,” said Jeff Newell, a cathedral parishioner who has made a dozen mission trips to Haiti. He is coordinator of CINCH — Central Indiana Churches for Haiti.
Four months after the earthquake that killed approximately 250,000 people, conditions are horrible, Guerrier said. Many people in Port-au-Prince, he said, still need food, clothing and shelter. Disease is rampant because many dead bodies remain in the rubble.
He and other members of his family have been living in a tent since the quake destroyed their home and its contents. He has sent his 5-year-old son to live with an uncle in another town so he can attend kindergarten.
“We have a blanket on cartons, with no pillow,” Guerrier said. “There is just a small stove, to cook inside the tent. You can’t cook outside, because people are hungry.”
Regardless, like so many other Haitians, he is thankful for what God has given him.
He thanked Father Klemme, and the other Americans who have followed and aided him.
“He has been the man in my life,” Guerrier said.