A Visit With Joan

Thanks to the hospitality of George and Jo James, we were once again honored with a visit from Joan Martin on December 17 and 18. At dinner Wednesday evening, she shared many stories and told of current happenings in Gaspard. She met with the school children on Thursday morning, told them about Haiti and answered many questions -- about herself, Haiti, Jesus -- and listened to the children's stories, as well.

Joan's hometown is Rockport, IN, a small town on the Ohio River in Spencer County. In the Evansville Diocese, St. Bernard in Rockport also supports St. Therese. Joan spends much of her time in the US visiting parishes which supoort Haitian parishes in the Diocese of Port-de-Paix. Joan's parish in Tuscon, Arizona, Our Mother of Sorrows (where she lived and taught for many years) twins with St. François of Assisi Parish in Bombardopolis. They have a beautiful Haiti page on their website, which can be found here; the following is from that site:

Joan lives in Port-de-Paix with an order of Haitian nuns, the Daughters of Wisdom. The Daughters of Wisdom is an order devoted to hospital work and the poor, founded by St. Louis de Montfort in 1703.

Joan’s first connections with Haiti were through The Haiti Parish Twinning Program. This program is the largest citizen-to-citizen network linking Haiti and the United States and Canada. It facilitates and supports linkages, or twinning of parishes, mostly but not entirely Catholic parishes, in North America with parishes in Haiti. The program today includes more than 290 twinnings. Twinned parishes provide experience that raises the consciousness of both North American and Haitian participants, and provides for direct relationships and avenues of aid without bureaucracy or middlemen or deductions for salaries or overhead. The contact for the Haiti Parish Twinning Program is Theresa Patterson, 208 Leake Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee 37205, phone: (615) 356-5999.

Peace.