By Katie Vasquez
Less than a week after returning from a mission trip to the Dominican Republic, three members of the Vicariate of Black Catholic Concerns Youth Leadership Ambassador Program continue praying for the people they served.
“Their house is like half of a regular room,” said Christelle Couloute, a VBCC ambassador. “They would have a small kitchen, sometimes a pot, maybe not. They would have to cook outside.”
“I think when you really get to see firsthand what was going on, it really touches you,” added fellow ambassador Bryan Maitland-Jones.
Eighteen ambassadors and eight chaperones traveled to a batey, a community where workers from a sugar cane plantation live. Many of the residents are Haitian migrants who came to the Dominican Republic after being promised a better life as Haiti continues to face gang violence.
Father Dwayne Davis, executive director of the VBCC Ambassador Program, said the reality was far different.
“It seemed to me like modern-day slavery,” Father Davis said. “These people from Haiti were promised these wonderful things. And really, they come, and what they’re living in is like a little shanty town, living in shacks.”
During the mission trip, the group helped dig the foundation for a community center, installed water filters, played with children and ministered to residents.
“We did a lot of digging, we worked with the kids, but we also worked on our hearts,” Father Davis said. “I think a relationship with Jesus Christ is an experience that you can never get anywhere else.”
Several ambassadors spoke Spanish and Haitian Creole, allowing them to communicate more easily with residents.
For Christelle Couloute and Christian Lafontant, both of whom were born in Haiti before moving to New York as children, the experience was especially personal.
“That kind of broke my heart because I’m like, ‘Oh, my people, they don’t catch a break,'” Couloute said. “So that really touched me. I was just praying that God would help them.”
“It shocked me the most because that, in the realest sense, could have been my life,” said Christian Lafontent, a VBCC ambassador alumnus. “In another life, if I didn’t come to America, that was me.”
Despite the hardships they witnessed, the ambassadors said they were inspired by the faith of the people they met.
“It was good to see the people’s faith,” Father Davis said. “They had hope, they had joy.”
“I believe with God, if they walk with God, walk with Christ, that hope will come,” Maitland-Jones said. “I pray that every single day.”
The ambassadors said they will carry the lessons of the mission trip with them as they continue their faith journey.
Next year, the group plans to follow the Selma-to-Montgomery trail, tracing the path of the Civil Rights Movement.