By Paula Day

Taking the opportunity to get out of their “comfort zone,” a group of young people and adults from All Saints parish in Dunwoody spent almost two weeks on the island of Trinidad in the West Indies this past August.

The 30 students and youth leaders from the parish youth group together with 10 adult parishioners left Aug. 7 for a work project in Sangre Grande parish, Trinidad.

“Before we left I thought I’d be sleeping on the floor of the jungle,” 23-year-old Gina DiBenedetto said. “It was a lot better. We had beds and running water, even though it was cold water. Just the food was hard to take. You couldn’t name it; you didn’t know what it was. You just ate it. And the bugs – the roaches were two feet long.”

All Saints’ staff member Reverend Thad B. Rudd and youth director Rob Chaput collaborated with Trinidad’s Archbishop Anthony Pantin to arrange the trip. Members paid their own way. A parish effort raised almost $10,000 through contributions, car washes and donut sales for mission needs. The group also took more than 30 duffle bags of donated clothing and supplies with them to distribute to needy communities.

During their stay the students concentrated on building slab foundations for a small rural church together with people in the Vega community of Trinidad. The adults focused on restoration, repair and plumbing installation in Marian House, an inner city drug rehabilitation center for young homeless men in the capital of Port O’Spain.

Ernie DiBenedetto, 19, worked on the slab foundation for the addition to an existing building. The workers’ first task was to bring a 40-foot by 40-foot section up 16 inches to grade. Their only equipment was eight buckets, two wheelbarrows and five shovels “scrounged” from the local residents.

The group formed a human chain and used a bucket brigade to transport the soil. The task included leveling the soil, digging trenches and putting in forms for the concrete. “A job that would take two weeks we knocked out in a week,” DiBenedetto said to emphasize the energy put into the work.

“We worked solid from morning to lunch break and then till about 4:30 or 5.”

In the evening the Atlanta and Trinidad young people joined for celebration of Mass and played cricket at the church. Everyone went to the beach one day. The Atlantans had brought Braves bats and Falcon hats and pompoms.” “We taught them how to play softball and they taught us about community,” Gina DiBenedetto said.

Both DiBenedettos were impressed by the open friendliness of the Trinidadians. It was a case of give and take. Ernie DiBenedetto taught a 17-year-old to play softball and got help from him on soccer moves.

DiBenedetto described the poor economic conditions as “overwhelming.” The houses are small and poorly lighted, he said. There are no fans, no air conditioning. Many houses have open windows and no doors. In rural areas the water supply is a running tap in the middle of the village.

For DiBenedetto sharing evening meals with different families in the parish was a high point. Chicken with rice is popular; pork is a delicacy, he discovered. But it was not the menu but the sharing that he found meaningful.

One family with three small children lived in a “very tiny house the guy build himself,” DiBenedetto said. The wife prepared four or five small pieces of pork with a sauce for her guests that was “delicious.”

“It was the best meal I had,” he recalled. “I was still hungry when we left, but I enjoyed the whole atmosphere – the joy they showed, how loving they were, how open to us and friendly.”

For this sister, Gina, the liturgical celebrations were high points.

“Here teens go to Mass because their parents make them,” she said. “There they go to celebrate, to have community. The music is incredible, so uplifting. They put such energy into singing, into the responses. The words are the same but there’s a different beat, not like a funeral. It’s beautiful here, but it’s a celebration there.”

The mission effort to Trinidad is very much alive in the hearts of those who participated in the summer effort, according to parish youth director Rob Chaput. Plans to return this coming year are developing. In mid-October Father Garfield Rochard, pastor of Sangre Grande, visited All Saints and expressed his gratitude for the parish’s involvement.

Archbishop Pantin recently wrote the Atlanta missionaries saying, “I have been telling people about … the extraordinary bond of friendship that sprung up so naturally between those who differ so much in race, colour, and culture. It is all God’s work.”