Christian Life Center at 31 Gilford Avenue, Laconia, NH 03246-2829 US - Missionary Servants-Work and Prayer (Excerpts taken from the "Missionary Servants Work and Prayer" booklet published by Ray and Lauretta Seabeck.)

"The purpose of our work with  Mother Teresa's Sisters in Haiti, is to help them provide for their poor.  We do this work with permission of our bishop in the diocese of Manchester, NH. We also do this work in memory and in honor of our dear Papa Luciani, (Pope John Paul I)  whose smile we try to bring to the poorest of the Poor through the work of Mother Teresa's Sisters.  It is impossible to determine how many people the Sisters work with.  In some cities/villages, they work with over 2500 families.  They feed them, clothe them, provide schools for the children, catechize them and give them medical care.  The work in Haiti has been described by Mother Teresa as "trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon."  The Sisters all take a fourth vow of Free Service to the Poor. they do all of this work free of charge and in the light of the Gospel.  They strive to see Jesus in the Poor they serve.  The Sisters in each mission also provide nutrition classes and sewing schools so young women can learn and provide for their families.  They have nine missions in Haiti and in most all of these missions they provide all of the above.  They also have built a retreat house where Mother Teresa's sisters from througout the Caribbean can come for retreats.  We also provide the Sisters with spiritual reading they need and have set up a small library of good books in each of the convents.  We also have helped them extablish other missions throughout the world, including a chapel for each.  We are blessed to have so many wonderful people involved in this work, and that is why we are able to accomplish so much.

Because of our poor health, we are no longer receiving or shipping suplies from our home like we used to, but we continue to send chapel supplies to the isters as they are needed.  We are also shipping sea containers of food, clothing and diapers, loaded by other charitable groups, to our sisters and our poor in Haiti.  Our part is to do the paperwork and pay for shipping.  Since lifting for us is no longer possible, Jesus has given us aanother way to continue to help the poor.

Along with sending already loaded sea containers, we continue to publish Humilitas, give our thirty to fortry slide presentations per year, open our home to day-retreats, and help the sisters with financial donations.
Ray and Lauretta Seabeck, 22 Boyd Hill Road, Gilford, NH 03249 (Phone/Fax: 603-524-4740 

"SEEING LAZARUS"        (Trip to Haiti in 2003)
by Janet Leroux

As I exited the plane in Port-au-Prince, I felt a blast of heat!  I nervously followed the crowd toward the terminal building and waited my turn to go through customs.  Several Missionary Sisters of Charity joined our group in Miami and Sister Jacinta and several other sisters were waiting there to welcome us.  It became a whirlwind of activity until all the bags and boxes we had brought with us were piled in the van.  Sister Jacinta was the driver of our van bringing us to the convent compound.  What was probably a 25 minute ride, was a journey of a lifetime I will never forget.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is a city that attacks your senses. Smells of hibiscus was mixed with the rotting garbage and diesel fumes.  Brightly painted public buses they call "Top-Tops" play deafening music that clashes with the loud cries of peddlers hawking their wares.  Pedestrians squeeze past one another on sidewalks clogged with merchants while street-children hustle for spare change.  The streets were littered with garbage and burned out cars.  The further we drove the poorer everthing looked.  I was truck by the rows and rows of tin roofed shelters and in the distance I could see the beautiful and wealthy villas dotting the mountainside. 

Jesus tells the story of a poor man named Lazarus who sits every day outside the gate of a rich man's house (Luke 16:19-31).  When the two men die, Lazarus is taken by angels to paradise.  The rich man finds himself in Hades, where he is endlessly tormented.  He begs Abraham for pity, asking him to have Lazarus dip his finger in water and to come cool his tongue.  But Abraham reminds the rich man how well he had lived in his earthly life and how difficult life was for Lazarus.  A great chasm has been fixed between them, says Abraham, that no one can cross.  On earth, the rich man must have passed by Lazarus daily without ever really seeing him.  Now he endures the torment of seeing Lazarus across the chasm that separates them, but he can never make contact.

I spent 8 days in Haiti in November 2003 working with Blessed Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity serving the "poorest of the poor."  I live in Belmont, NH where it's not easy for me to see poverty, and I tend to forget that the poor even exist.  The poor live in shelters in Laconia, in Concord, in Manchester, in Boston or in countries far away.  Today, we who are rich no longer need literal walls and gates to separate us from the destitute.  Instead, we are walled in by advertisers who constantly tell us that we still don't have enough.  I constantly see signs and bumper stickers that suggest that we "shop till we drop."  Because I rarely cross paths with the hungry Lazaruses of our world, I lose my perspective.  A few years ago, Trudy Bantle at Catholic Charities presented a three week session on Catholic Social Justice.  She said that three billion people in our world live on less that two dollars a day.  What are the numbers today?!  We have homeless people all around us.  It's a critical situation not only in Laconia, but throughout the State.  We don't know these people.  They're invisible to us.  We can drive to the mall and shop till we drop without ever seeing Lazarus.  In our global economy, the poor are exposed to the lifestyles of the rich and famous.  But it's a one-way mirror.  They see us, but we don't see them.

I'm also reminded of the story of Bartimaeus in Mark 10:46-52:  "The people around Bartimaeus seemed satisfied that he remain a blind beggar for the rest of his life.  They might help him find his way to the road each day to beg for scraps:  rags to cloth himself with, things that other people didn't want.  But when Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was close by, he cried out for direct help.  He was tired of living on charity.  Those around him told him to be quiet and not to bother the Lord with his problems.  But he persisted in crying out louder.  Jesus spoke to Bartimaeus saying, "What do you want?"  Jesus wanted Bartimaeus to participate in the process of becoming whole.

Haiti is like Lazarus sitting at the gate of the United States.  Our countries are separated by less than a two-hour flight, but we live on opposite sides of the economic universe.  For North Americans, a willingness to step outside our gate and spend a few days on the other side of the wall that divides us can be more than an expression of solidarity.  It can awaken us from the American Dream and show us the emptiness of our worldly persuits and the vitality of life lived for love.  A week in Haiti was the beginning of a life dedicated to bringing down the wall of injustice.

Poverty tends to dehumanize people not only in their own eyes, but in the eyes of others.  The poor become invisible to us.  Being amidst poverty can be an ointment for usch blind eyes.  Something of deep spiritual significance happens when the rich and poor sit down together around the same table, something that is profoundly liberating for those of us who are "rich."  In the presence of the poor, Jesus can open our eyes to see God.  For me, the 8 days in Haiti were SACRED MOMENTS!

Jesus sees through the guise of our wealth and knows our inner neediness.  He invites us to step outside these prison walls, into a world where we will see him in the guise of a Lazarus, waiting.  Knowing that Christ is ready to meet us in our relationships with those who are poor can give us the courage and patience to really see them.  Instead of rushing past and throwing them our scraps to relieve our consciences, we need to dedicate ourselves to understanding the forces that have kept them impoverished and join their struggle to bring down the walls of injustice.  Humbled, shamed, speechless, I often feel a surge of anger at the injustice in Haiti.  A pile of sand, dust, rice --a useless mound of scraps out of the mountains of our disposable excess takes on a ludicrous significance in the scarcity of their lives.

(Back)