Dear Friends of Mission,
We hereby express our sincere gratitude and appreciation for your keen interest in our missionary work. Your recent donation to our Church for the Orthodox ministry which we do here in Haiti was really valuable.
Your assistance greatly enhances our missionary work in Haiti and is definitely imperative to our existence in my home country, since after the Duvalier regime, its long-lasting economic and socio-political crisis has had a serious impact on all the fields of national life. A large number of agricultural products are not cultivated for the population, thus resulting in the economic disorientation of the country, the control of the market from foreign products at the expense of our scanty local production, the occasional loss in value of our national currency which almost led to its replacement by the US dollar, the migration of peasants to the capital in search of a better life, the environment is deforested, either for arbitrary building or for charcoal production for domestic cooking, corruption spreads through all social strata, drugs kill our youth, while violence in our neighborhoods and young people’s immorality are skyrocketing.
My brethren, I have mentioned all this so that you can also get an idea of how important the presence of our Mission in Haiti is, both spiritually and socially. Here, in this corner of our humble Holy Metropolis, His Eminence Metropolitan Athenagoras of Mexico and Central America has been covering for many years all the expenses of our elementary school in the parish of St. John the Baptist in Petion Ville, a school which provides not only education but also hope to hundreds of poor children.
Our work is not easy, but by the Grace of God we have a great Spiritual Shepherd, who is always by our side. We love and respect him and we are grateful that on his initiative and with his blessing before he ordained me, he brought me straight into your hands in Greece, where I received theological education. There, I had another blessing: to be under the paternal presence of His Grace Archbishop Eugene of Crete, who, since then, has been immensely supportive to the Mission and to my unworthiness, and to whom I am deeply grateful. I thank God for all His great blessings, particularly for making me “a fisher of men”, like the Apostles, to convey the Orthodox Faith and the message of the gospel to the people of my native country Haiti, which is in great need.
By His Grace in our Parish of Sts. George and Nectarios in Pelerin, my native village, we are continuing for the second year with a catechetical project with my home as its base, where gather some people who are slowly converting to Orthodoxy. In addition to that, we have already made the necessary preparations for the construction of an orphanage, and with God’s help, we will take a public place for the future of this project. God willing, it is estimated that we will receive 24 children at the beginning of the summer. We need to make arrangements for the rooms, the kitchen and the living room for the little children to assemble in order to take care of them in a spiritual place. This, of course, will only be realized if God answers our prayers.
Although we are aware of the long- standing crisis in our beloved Greece, we are making an appeal to your kind heart, hoping for your charity and support to our Holy Metropolis and praying that our Lord Jesus Christ blesses your life and your works, gives you strength and courage for every single work that you help with your contribution to the glory of God and of the Holy Orthodoxy.
With humble feelings,
Father Paul Petit-Homme
Prelatic Commisioner inHaiti
