From August 31, 2019

I had been invited to dinner at my asthma doctor’s home on Thursday night, so I decided to just not think about the return flight beyond the notion of waiting to early Friday morning to make a final decision. Because the JetBlue agent said there were many open seats on the Friday afternoon flight, I figured I would just drive to the airport early in the morning and change the ticket at the airport. The updated weather focus seemed to indicate central and southern Florida were the likely areas where the hurricane would strike Florida.

From August 30, 2019

Rabbits poop a lot. They are eating and pooping machines. Before leaving Haiti, I pointed out to Bency that we had to figure out a way to clean out the accumulating poops. Yesterday, Baby sent me photos that Bency took in which she illustrated her rabbit house cleaning efforts. First, she removed the rabbits.

From August 29, 2019

Earlier in the week, Billy had to transport a number of kids to Grace Hospital for required vaccines, including Patrickson.

From August 28, 2019

Rather than pelican photographs, I’m continuing the trip down memory lane with these images from my fifth trip to Africa in 2012.

From August 27, 2019

On January 24th, my eighth full day in Kenya, I traveled north via plane to the Kakuma Refugee Camp. I was weighed down by a sense of trepidation and nervousness about what I would see. I did not want to leave the comfort and security of my Nairobi home with the Mill Hill Missionaries…and the daily cold beer they offered me at the end of a long, hot day filming in the slums of the city.

From August 26, 2019

Yesterday I gave the homily during the Sunday liturgy in Jesuit parish in a very poor area. The celebrant was my friend Fr. Bob White, an 81-year-old priest who invited me to teach at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome back in the late 1990’s. After he proclaimed the Gospel, he introduced me by telling the people he wanted me to share with them my conversion story and my current work on behalf of the poor. Inexplicably, I was not nervous, and spoke very extemporaneously for about 20 minutes while standing in the aisle without any notes and armed only with a microphone.

From August 25, 2019

Today I spent a few hours filming in Nairobi’s main garbage dump, where hundreds upon hundreds of people sifted through the rotting, stinking, smoldering waste for scraps of food to eat or bits of metal and plastic to sell. Competing with the people for scraps to eat were very large birds that were so big they were taller than most people’s waistline. The images I captured are haunting.

From August 24, 2019

Baby sent me this photo of Bency feeding the rabbit. I put Bency in charge of feeding the rabbit. I’m happy she is taking the “job” seriously.

From August 23, 2019

In January 2012, I made my fifth trip to Africa. It came just three weeks after celebrating the Incarnation of God. Still fresh in my mind was the reality that Jesus was the son of homeless refugees. He was born not to riches, but to poverty. During his life on earth, Jesus knew hunger and thirst, he knew squalor, insecurity, and danger, he knew isolation and loneliness, he knew betrayal and exile. Jesus knew the debilitating destitution of dire poverty.

From August 22, 2019

Here are a few pages of the 142 photographs I took on Friday, as well as others from the 17 days in Haiti.