The Aspiring Minister

Gerard Claude, aka Joe, might be the cutest, most hard-working, dedicated, and driven 15-year-old young man I've ever met in my entire life. Having just finished his secondary education, he was home for the summer and had nothing to do other than sit around at his parents' house in the Habitat housing development. So instead, he decided to come work with us for the week. Every day, he was there at 8am sharp to jump on the bus with us and get to work on the construction. He was the younger brother of one of the skilled masons who was working for Habitat to build houses so I guess the affinity for construction was in his blood, but he still didn't have to come work with us. In terms of work-ethic, strength, and stamina, he put us all to shame... myself included. It was only after we knew this hard-working, energetic kid on the construction site that we realized he was getting up well before 8am everyday to clean our bathrooms and showers. Turns out the house our 8 students were living in actually belonged to his family, and he was signed up to look after the group for the week. So every morning, at about 5:30am, he'd be out there cleaning and getting things ready for the sleepy students that would roll out of bed a good 1-2 hours after him.

Aside from his conscientiousness and incredible work-ethic, Joe is an incredibly devoted believer. It's amazing what kind of conversations you'll have when you're shoveling dirt or mixing mortar for 3 hours straight. We learned that Joe was planning on applying to seminary school by the end of the month in hopes of becoming a priest in the Catholic Church, the church he went to every single Sunday. All of a sudden the large, glow-in-the-dark cross around his neck made sense. When we went to a Methodist Episcopal church service on Sunday, he even talked us through the formalities and made sure we knew what page we should be on in the hymnal. The tragedy of all his aspirations was that the registration fee cost 20 Ghanain Cidi's, roughly equivalent to $20. He didn't have the money yet, but he was faithful that God would make something happen. Little did he know that he himself would be exactly what God would make happen. His infectiously positive character, his humility, his commitment to others and to his life calling - all of these things impacted us in a very real way.

At the end of the week, our students left almost everything they had. Clothes, shoes, personal items. All the things they brought with them that they now realized, after living here for a week, they didn't need as much as they thought they did or as much as others might need them - they left them all behind. This included a hefty sum of pooled money in thanks of the community's hospitality to be divied among the families there. This also included a gift to Joe only to cover the cost of his seminary registration fee so that he could pursue his dream.

NOTE: There's another point of this story that I'd like to make, particularly relating to the last sentence. If this story doesn't convince you that people from this region of the world can't be religiously tolerant, I don't know what will. Seven of the 8 students were Muslim, seven of them were Arab (but not the same student). Not only is this generosity of a group of that religious and ethnic makeup indicative of the fact that they can tolerate, even support and encourage the pursuit of other religions, but it demonstrates just how much the power of spirituality and a desire to connect to our creator can create bonds between people of vastly different walks of life.