Growing up on a farm in Augusta County, Va., my dreams were bigger than me. I longed for excitement and spent time making up stories to tell at the dinner table. I remember sitting on the back steps, hoping one day I would see more of the world.
Dreams come true.
I started this blog before I left for Haiti where I would live and serve among people who would become family to me. A blog needs a name. My fingers typed out: The Long Way Home.
Thirteen years later, I’m home. Pretty close to where I started. Sharing time with my amazing family and so many friends. I’m becoming involved in community here. I do love Staunton, Va. (If you’ve never been, you really should come.)
Funny how life turns out
Not-so-short synopsis: I fell into Haiti missions like I have most things in my life (I literally learned to swim by accidently jumping into the deep end of the pool and was too embarrassed to yell for help.).
Roger Bowen is a retired Episcopal priest living with his wife here in Staunton. I met them at a social event. He told me his passion was introducing people from the U.S. to people in Haiti. Then he asked me to read Mountains Beyond Mountains, an incredible introduction to the small Caribbean country. I was hooked.
I began learning Haitian Creole in 2009. I even helped start a Creole class with a native speaker and 18 people showed up the first night!)
Short visits to two communities in Haiti sealed the deal – I had a new passion that would direct my life. In 2012 someone sent information about a job with Presbyterian Church (USA) for a post living in Port-au-Prince. I laughed and laughed. Then I heard a distinct call that said: You need to take that job. Haiti needs storytellers.
I applied, confident that folks in Louisville would see this was ridiculous. But no. By May 2013, three days after turning 51, I landed in Haiti’s bustling, brightly colored, crowded capital city. The next day I went to church with a group also staying in the guest house, met someone who gave me the name of a real estate agent, and in two days found the apartment where I would live for three years.
Whew
The kid from a farm in Stuarts Draft wasn’t just seeing the world; I was a part of it.
I loved and was loved. I trusted and earned trust. I walked on broken sidewalks crowded by tired produce sellers. I met close friends. I entered deep relationships navigating in another language. There was great joy. And heartache. And guilt for grave mistakes. And grace shown to me. Unbidden. Unearned.
After renting the apartment in Port-au-Prince, I left for Cherident where I would spend a month in the countryside. It was a community I knew well from earlier visits. Because I would be working with farmer organizations, my supervisors wanted me to live in a rural area to learn culture and Creole.
I had vaguely known one member of Papa Luc’s family, but here I was, packed for a month and more than a little uneasy. The driver wasn’t sure where to go when we drove into the village, but a young man standing on the road saw our truck. He flung open the door to the backseat where I sat, grabbed me in a big hug and cried, “My sister! You are here”
That was Herns Celestin. Papa Luc’s second son. He lived in Port-au-Prince about two hours away with his wife and young son. On the yard of the small wooden house, Herns sat me down immediately to “test my Creole”. He asked me to name what foods I liked. I started showing off. I named every food I knew in their language.
Most of the family were there that night. Papa Luc’s eight children took turns coming to the house, teaching me so much more than language. Lucson, Herns, Goursse, Wislande, Felix, Noel, Widline and Esther. Their spouses, classmates, children, neighbors — they all took me in like family.
An hour after I’d arrived, Papa Luc came home from his carpentry shop, other family members gathered at the table, dinner was served – with every food I’d named. It seems the women who were cooking were listening in on my lesson.
Herns came to where I sat before the meal. He carried a small tub with a bar of soap in it. In his other hand, a pitcher a water. Over his arm, a towel. I washed and dried my hands while he waited.
How I got through that meal without bawling, I do not know. But I ate. And ate. And talked. And listened. My stomach was full, and my heart. Oh my.
Prayer service
After dinner while trying to digest, Herns came to me again. The family was gathered for prayer, he said. It wouldn’t take long. Only about 15 minutes. What I thought would be a time of rest for me would be participating in this small worship service.
About a dozen of us stood around the cleared dinner table.
A prayer. A hymn. Everyone sharing a Scripture from memory. Someone reading a Psalm Papa Luc had chosen. And Papa Luc, a 63-year-old farmer and carpenter, a widower with eight children, a man who carried a tattered Bible but could recite the words with his eyes closed, asked that I read Psalm 7. In Creole.
Another prayer. The Doxology in French. Prayers of the people. And we all bid goodnight.
Every night in this house, there is worship of our Lord and Savior before sleep.
Seamlessly I was a thread in the fabric of a place of violent poverty, endless beauty and powerful faith.
Though I left Haiti in 2019 because of the violence, I KNEW I would go back home. Even as I stayed in Virginia those years, I called it temporary. So much was left back there – my mother’s Bible, family photographs, handmade furniture.
I followed the news to the point I couldn’t write about Haiti anymore. It was too hard to find new ways to say Haiti was on the brink of disaster – and find any hope in it. I had tough conversations with God. I went through a crisis of faith like I had never imagined.
Every day I speak with my dear friend Garry. As he says if he doesn’t hear from me, m pa allez. I’m not comfortable. Each morning conversations starts with: M domi, m levi, m di mèsi Bondye. (I went to sleep. I woke up. I thank God.)
And there is bad news to report
“Cindy, Sonson mouri.”
A phone call from Garry. A close friend who often had meals in my home had been shot to death.
“Cindy, Olna mouri.”
A colleague in the FONDAMA office died from Covid-19.
My heart.
Last year I was deployed to the Dominican Republic, still serving the Haiti partners, but learning the work of new ones. A new language. Adventures on buses. Surprising Haitians by speaking Creole with them. Just across the border from my second home, I found a new calling.
Then 2025. My work changed. I was assigned a job living in the U.S. I am in a new home here – not living with family or renting rooms in other homes as I’d done for five years. I won’t be deployed again. I’m home.
I’m excited about the new work. It’s slowly becoming clearer, and I will be back here to share those stories.
But with a few days off as this year ends, I’ve been able to deeply reflect.
It was only this week that I understood the door to Haiti has quietly closed. Though I hope to visit again when — God help us — there is any semblance of peace, I will not live in my second home again.
I’m in a place I love. I have Haitian art on the walls. I’ve had friends from Haiti visit here, and we ate Creole food (they cooked!) drank Prestige and remembered good times.
And so it is, I’ve taken the Long Road Home.
I hope to rework this blog and contribute regularly. Yes, Haiti needs storytellers.
So does the rest of this beautiful, broken and hurting world.
I hope to see you back here soon.
A journey beyond Haiti 