Encountering Joy

In the spring of 2013, two Catholic parishes decided to form a novel partnership, one based on solidarity and focused on facilitating an encounter with God in community through service. Think about that. It bears repeating: An encounter with God in community through service. Our Lady Star of the Sea (OLSS) is a materially wealthy parish located in the prosperous community of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. San Antonio de Padua (Guerra) is a materially poor parish located in the struggling rural community of San Antonio de Guerra in the Dominican Republic. Their partnership is called the Sister Parish Ministry (Sister Parish).

The parish of San Antonio de Padua is located in the center of the agri-business municipality of Guerra, which has a population of more than 100,000. Surrounding Guerra are some 28 bateyes and campos. Bateyes are villages that began as migrant labor camps for sugar cane workers brought into the Dominican Republic from Haiti over the last century. Campos are very similar to bateyes but have primarily Dominican residents. It was agreed at the outset that Sister Parish would serve both campos and bateyes.

The partnership envisioned by OLSS and its sister parish is a dynamic entity. It is based on connections between and among people; on relationships, not on resources. The primary purpose of Sister Parish is to remove the obstacles that prevent spiritual encounters. The encounters that might result can be deep, highly personal experiences involving the individual and God. Or, they can be encounters with the Christ in each other, something we call an "encounter in community." We determined early on that the best way to facilitate encounters in community is through service.

The residents of both the campos and the bateyes of our partner parish are truly among the poorest of the world's poor. The primary service purpose of the partnership established by the Sister Parish Ministry is to radically change this situation. Together with residents of the communities, and with volunteers from other organizations in the Dominican Republic, we are providing medical care, building houses and chapels, and working with local residents to develop their communities.

The activities of Sister Parish include an average of nine missions each year, some for medical treatment, some for family and motherhood education and support, some for housing and community improvements and some for sustainable economic development. A major priority of every mission trip is to deepen the personal relationships between and among the missionaries from Florida and the residents of the communities in and surrounding Guerra. First, and most important, the missions provide opportunities for encounter -- transformative personal experiences of the Divine. These opportunities come up on the individual level for each person, on the family level, when several family members travel together, and on the group level. The encounter is more likely to occur in community -- the relationship between and among our missionaries, our counterpart volunteers and the individuals, groups, and communities we serve. Finally, the best opportunity for an encounter to occur in a community is through service -- doing work, whether that is the obvious work of the medical teams in their clinics, or the efforts of other missions to clean, paint, construct, and build chapels, houses, or infrastructure projects. As everyone who has ever been involved in mission work repeatedly says, the house we build is not the point, rather, it is the spiritual experience and relationship value that is created.