Other Parishes Working To Help Haitians
St. Joseph Parish in Vanderburgh County has been an inspiration to other parishes across the diocese when it comes to helping our friends in Haiti. St. Theresa parish in Evansville is one of them.
In 1983, when then-Pastor Father Ted Temple suggested the parish become involved in Haiti mission work, St. Theresa was “twinned” with St. Rose of Lima Parish in Pilat, Haiti, through the Parish Twining Program of the Americas, based in Nashville, Tenn.
St. Theresa’s assistance projects include helping with tuition, books, uniforms and lunches at St. Rose of Lima School; raising funds for a Haitian orphanage; and the purchase of a hospital generator to replace one destroyed in the 2010 Haitian earthquake.
St. Theresa will merge with Evansville’s Good Shepherd Parish in 2016, and St. Theresa parishioner Mary Beth Davis serves as the St. Theresa/Good Shepherd Haiti outreach coordinator. She visited Haiti in 2012, when the mission team assessed the needs of the twinned parish.
In 2015, St. Theresa and Good Shepherd hosted the first “Rice and Beans Dinner and Sharing,” and more than 100 people attended. The purpose of the event was to “educate all interested and provide a venue for support and sharing for parishes that have Haiti or other third-world projects.” Information was shared, and from that, an increase in interest and willingness to help has grown.
The second St. Theresa/Good Shepherd Rice and Beans Dinner will be held at Good Shepherd Parish immediately following the 4:30 p.m. CT Mass on Jan. 9. There is no set charge for the dinner; a free-will offering is encouraged, and all funds collected will go directly to Haiti.
Maryknoll Sister Janet Miller, an Evansville native who serves as co-director of the Maryknoll Sisters Environmental Office, will deliver the keynote presentation at the event, which also will include a panel discussion involving volunteers from parishes with mission teams. Ann Ennis, a member of St. Joseph Parish in Vanderburgh County, also will give a presentation on available travel grants funded by the Father James Lex Global Social Justice for Third-World Travel Endowment.
“Thanks to the people of the Diocese of Evansville for their action steps, financial support, prayers, and ongoing hopes and plans for the people of their sister parishes in Haiti,” Sister Janet said. “Their responses will, as Pope Francis said at the United Nations in New York in September, help ‘... to alleviate the impacts of climate change, to fight poverty and to make the dignity of the human person flourish.’"
