Partnership with Haiti has meant, first and foremost, our need to educate ourselves, about our own historical role in Haiti’s extraordinary poverty and governmental instability.

Often we hear that Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Rarely do we learn of the role of colonization and slavery, and the intersections with Minnesota’s national statehood.

Haiti’s Taino Indians first met Europeans in 1492 when Christopher Columbus’ ship, the Santa Maria, wrecked on the island then known as Hispaniola. Spain leapt at the chance to colonize the region, and in the next fifty years annihilated an estimated 4-5 million Taino Indians by the hard labor required to mine gold and other rich resources. 4 million? 50 years? 365 days each year? One must do the calculation to understand that an average of more than 200 indigenous people died every single day for 50 years.

Eventually losing interest, in 1697 Spain abandoned to France the western portion of the island, now known as Haiti.

The richest of all France’s colonies, Haiti offered products much-coveted by the western world: including indigo, mahogany and sugar. To harvest these labor-intensive resources, France entered the cross-Atlantic slave trade, developing an especially cruel system of human trafficking. Records show that the estimated 700,000 men and women shipped to Haiti from western Africa could be expected to live little more than seven years before they died of exhaustion, starvation, or direct violence inflicted by plantation owners.

A complicated overlap of European insurgents, Napoleonic incursions and a slave rebellion, in 1804, led Haiti to become the world’s first black republic. One footnote of history is that Napoleon’s need for money to fight Haiti’s slaves fueled his sale of the Louisiana Purchase to U.S. President Thomas Jefferson. This expansion of our country encompassed fifteen present U.S. states (including Minnesota) and small portions of two Canadian provinces.

Many years of internal and international power struggles that followed — too long and complex to include in this brief history — rarely gave regard to the well being of Haitian people. But one cannot escape the fact that In Haiti, not an ounce of gold would have been stolen, a single mountain laid bare, nor any Indians or Africans enslaved if people in countries with technological might and cultural practices of dominance had not wanted to build houses, live luxuriously and ground their identities ever-more deeply in what they owned.

One obligation of our partnership is to understand what changes in our own behavior are demanded, to mold a relationship of shared dignity, respect, commitment and responsibility.

So, too, do we educate ourselves — indeed, experience first hand — the generosity of spirit of the people of Bigonet.

Minnesota visitors to Bigonet describe Bonne Nouvelle’s generosity as “off the charts,” non-stop gestures of welcome and friendship. Giving up their beds for the comfort of visitors. Offering gifts of song, almonds, and skillfully-crafted sculptures. Teaching us to cook. Students in the sewing class, designing and making skirts for their guests.

Teen visitors to Bigonet have been especially moved by the generosity of spirit that pervades Bigonet’s village life. They talk of a sense of community unlike any they’ve experienced before — daily interactions in which people know one another, welcome one another into their homes, attend to one another’s needs.

Prior to consolidation with St. Luke’s, the people of St. James faced life-changing decisions re the future of our parish, the people of Bonne Nouvelle walked side by side with us, teaching us to trust in God’s love — to be confident in God’s will for our future.

Eglise Episcopal Bonne Nouvelle (Episcopal Church of Bonne Nouvelle) in Bigonet is one of the first Episcopal churches in Haiti, established under the leadership of African-American Bishop James Holly, in the late 1800s.

Bigonet is a village — more accurately, a zone — in the mountains southwest of Haiti’s capitol city of Port au Prince. Bonne Nouvelle is a church, a school ( ± 300 students, preK through 9th grade) and the central gathering place for civic activity for the region. The partnership of Bonne Nouvelle and Sts. Luke and James has mutually enriched our lives — in Haiti and Minnesota.

Haiti’s government provides no funds for rural education. So, a central theme of our partnership is assurance: for every family that their children can attend school, for every teacher that they will be paid for their work. Together, we’ve purchased computers for teachers and classrooms, equipped and staffed sewing and music programs, built an area for soccer and other play, maintained regular internet connections, and much more. Our partnership takes collective pleasure in Bonne Nouvelle’s 90 - 100% yearly pass-rates on Haiti’s national exams.

In January 2010, within 40 seconds, earthquake destroyed everything in Bigonet. Homes. Church. School. Clothing. Cooking pots, Livelihoods. For some, even confidence in the earth itself.

But, not everything. The people of Bigonet never lost their commitment to one another and to the well-being of their community, and through the years that followed they re-built their school and their homes. In this village where average yearly incomes are less than $500, the church took a monthly collection to, someday, rebuild their church. In 2018 they reached their goal of $800. They hired an engineer and laid a cornerstone — a symbol of hope.

In mid-2020, the walls have risen and the roof nears completion — the result of skilled research, hundreds of hours of volunteer labor, and careful stewardship of money raised, in both Minnesota and Haiti.

The goal: by year’s end to complete the roof, thereby allowing the people once again to worship together in their church. Someday Bonne Nouvelle hopes to have a floor. Maybe new pews. Maybe other comforts of worship. For now, it will be enough to have a roof.

In 2008, at the beginning of our partnership little did we anticipate the meaning of our stated goal, “See where the Spirit leads us.”

In fact, the work of the Spirt has sometimes left us breathless.

We’ve shared food and friendship, births and deaths. Together, we’ve faced-down Hurricane Matthew — raising money and tilling the soil to re-build farms and livelihoods. We’ve prayed with one another; sung songs of praise and thanksgiving; shared baptisms, pageants, even a wedding. We feared for the safety of friends following earthquake. Together have celebrated the success of children in school, the beauty of artists creations. Together we’ve suffered disappointment — grants not received, travel visas denied, opportunities lost.

We’ve celebrated the expansion of “we” — as others have joined our partnership, shared in our joy, done the work together. Trinity Lutheran Church in Hovland, Minnesota. Anwatin Middle School and Kenwood Retirement Community in Minneapolis. St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul: these organizations and others have joined in the work and rewards of friendship and shared goals.

The people of Bonne Nouvelle walked with the people of St. James on the Parkway as we walked into years of uncertainty in closing our building — they celebrate with us as we joined in consolidation with St. Luke’s Episcopal Church to form Grace Episcopal Church.

Together we walk bravely, to see where the Spirit leads us.