We won’t give up hope and we won’t allow the people to give up hope. We do what we can and light a candle in the dark. on Friday at 5:00 am, Brother Ronel woke up our brothers at our monastery, we had mass at 5:45 am and hastened outside to our yard in the dark and packed in the truck our food and supplies for our mission to Trelawny. There were 20 brothers.

The night before we had prepared 400 parcels and bottles of water. Each parcel had 3kg of rice, noodles, loaves of bread, sugar, corned beef, mackerel, sausages, toilet paper, and diapers. All these had been given by our friends as help for Hurricane Melissa.

There was a great Christian spirit when our friends and benefactors gave us all those goods. In addition, some gave us some good quality shoes, clothes for children and adults, blankets, bed sheets, pillow cases, and mattresses. We will keep on giving, as much as people give to us. We are just instruments of God as missionaries who give up our lives to do the good works of Jesus in the spirit of the beatitudes.

But we also witnessed great kindness among the poor people in Trelawny. There is an old lady whose shack was roofless and the side of her house, made of sticks, was swallowed up by the hurricane’s flood water. When the brothers entered Wakefield in Trelawny, she was among those who wanted to receive a parcel of food. Yet when she saw the large number of poor lined up to beg for one of the parcels, she observed there was a mother with three half-naked children in the back of the line.

The old lady brought the mother and the three children to her place at the front of the line and said to all “Give them my parcels, I am an old lady who do not have much more time to live.”

She led by example and told all 500 people who had gathered together, “This is Christ. This is the living Christ; my eyes have seen the glory of the Lord.” Then she raised the song What a Friend We Have in Jesus. It was moving and encouraging to all of our brothers. And everybody began singing.

Our brothers gave out parcels until 5:00 pm, at which time they had lunch. Before they had lunch, one of our associates, Ate Joy, had stayed up the night before, cooking to serve our 20 brothers plus extras which Ate Joy gave to the poor. Ate Joy herself did not have any lunch.

The brothers, along with Keith Russell, visited with villagers in Trelawny in the maroon country such as Deereide near the Cockpit Country. They also visited Derespater in the Maroon country and a very remote place called Dougherty near the Martha Brae River. The brothers were grateful to Mr Russell for facilitating their visit.

These people in Trelawny were devastated by Hurricane Melissa. They all expressed how frightened they were by the storm’s powerful winds. Two days of darkness, wind, and unending rain. Their shacks were demolished. They kept running from neighbour to neighbour to find a little shelter, only to find their neighbours also had been beaten down by the wind, the rain, and the flood.

What can we do as Christians except to unite ourselves with our poor suffering brothers and sisters. What can we do but give what we have, even if it is just a little visitation and a little food.

This coming week we go with our Missionaries of the Poor volunteers to the west in Montego Bay. Please come and join us. In the following weeks we will go to Westmoreland. Though our help is just a little, we must remember, “A little more oil in my lamp keeps it burning.” We are a people of hope, Jamaicans never give up. We fall, we rise, and we keep on going.

Father Richard Ho Lung is founder of Missionaries of the Poor.

E-mail: mopfounder81@gmail.com

www.missionariesofthepoor.org

This female resident of Trelawny accepts relief supplies from Missionaries of the Poor brothers last Friday. The brothers were in the parish providing aid to residents in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa.

Father Richard Ho Lung