Haiti Ministry
The Haiti Committee of Saint Matthew Catholic Church exists to support, nurture, and educate the people of our sister parish in Gobert, Haiti. We seek to involve our parishioners and encourage them to share their resources to provide hope, health, and healing to the parishioners of Our Lady of Miracles. By sharing our common faith and Christian love, we hope to foster understanding, respect, and unity between our cultures.
Since 1995, the church of St. Matthew has been sending monthly collections to Our Lady of Miracles, our sister parish in Haiti, to support the day-to-day church operations. In April of 2002, our Pastoral Parish Council voted the Haiti mission as an official ministry at Saint Matthew. A fact-finding mission then traveled to Haiti in May 2003. When they witnessed the conditions in Gobert, the group was overwhelmed by the tremendous need.
Our largest annual appeal and fundraiser is Well Played: A Songwriters’ Night, which is now in its 15th year. We are hoping to build on the success of last year’s event, which raised over $44,000. We have an exciting line up featuring country music songwriters Bobby Tomberlin, Lance Miller, and Mark Narmore. They collectively have written songs for some of the biggest names in country music including Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Luke Bryan, Cody Johnson, Thomas Rhett, Reba McEntire, Rodney Atkins and more! Learn more about the event by clicking below.
Did you know…
Over the years, our Haiti Ministry has focused on supporting the people of Gobert in four main areas: Education, Infrastructure, Medical, and Spiritual. Take a look at how our committee is able to provide support in these ways. You might be surprised to learn just how much we are able to provide.
Our Lady of Miracles School in Gobert, Haiti is supported by St. Matthew Church and School. OLOM school teaches Pre-K through 12th grade and educates 400 students. They employ 1 principal, 30 teachers and 9 additional support workers. The school year starts in September and ends in June. If they are able, OLOM school parents pay $10 per month for tuition fees. This helps cover school operational costs such as chalk, paper, pens, etc…
Currently, the school is in need of expanding by four additional classrooms. It is a goal of the Saint Matthew Haiti Ministry to help them construct this in the coming years. Our Well Played: A Songwriters’ Night event in 2025 is taking a special focus on education to help our brothers in sisters in Haiti.
Collectively our church and school donate $25,200 a year for the principal and teachers’ salaries. $12,600 of that total is raised by SMS students each school year. Additionally, SMS creates awareness about our brothers and sisters in Haiti through a dedicated school bulletin board, Haiti mission member presentations, and student lead projects. We are grateful to all the SMS students and their families for their amazing attention to awareness and support of Haiti. SMS raises funds throughout the year in various ways.
Haiti Market – Art, jewelry and food are sold by a variety vendors in the school gym. All vendor fees go to support the SMS Haiti Ministry. It’s a held in the fall and great way to start shopping for Christmas!
Penny Drive – A longstanding and highly engaging tradition, SMS holds their annual Penny Drive during Catholic Schools week in January. SMS students bring change to school for five days in a row. It’s boys vs girls and whoever collects the most wins this fiercely competitive competition. In 2025, the school raised $6,151 during the penny drive with the boys beating the girls by a mere $4.
Summer Challenge – Students give one day in the summer to raising funds for Haiti. The ideas range from selling lemonade to mowing a lawn to selling created artwork. This helps the students directly connect to this cause by supporting OLOM school with their hard work.
Grocery Store Rewards Program – A perfect way for you to get involved! Add St. Matthew School as your beneficiary partner when you shop at Kroger and Publix. It is absolutely free to you. Just add your phone number at checkout and a percentage of your purchase comes back to SMS as FREE MONEY! Click here for simple set-up instructions.
DID YOU KNOW… Only a short time ago, the parish of Our Lady of Miracles in Gobert, Haiti had no access to fresh water and no electricity. Through the generous donations from St. Matthew Parish, we have been able to install a well, a water purification system, solar panels and inverters for electricity, a diesel-powered generator to run larger items such as the well pump, and countless bio-sand and Sawyer cartridge water filters to the surrounding community.
The critical importance of these items can not be overstated as they provide the most important factor in human health – clean water. Due to the generous support of our St. Matthew parishioners, we have recently completed the installation of a new reverse osmosis water treatment system which will offer clean water not only to the parish and school, but also the surrounding village.
In addition to the water and electricity systems, we have been able to help OLOM expand the school, expand the medical clinic, build a bakery/kitchen and numerous other projects. We have also recently installed a new Starlink internet service at the church to greatly improve communication and information access for the community. Future infrastructure goals add additional classrooms to the school so that all grades will have space within the school. We also have a goal to add additional space for our medical clinic.
All of these projects have had returns well beyond the investments provided. The people of Gobert and the committee thank you for your continued support of the Haiti Ministry through our ‘Well Played’ Songwriter’s night, this Spring of Hope appeal, and general donations.
Did you know that, from 2004 to 2019, a team of medical team of doctors, nurses, dentists, and others went to Our Lady of Miracles (OLOM) annually? Due to violence, gangs, and political instability, we have been unable to travel to Gobert since January 2019. In these previous medical missions, the team saw an average of 2,500 patients per week. In addition, a dental team would see dozens of patients daily, extracting decayed teeth and giving fluoride treatments to the school children. We also provided cervical cancer screenings from 2016 to 2019 and did cryotherapy to treat precancerous conditions.
In 2010, OLOM hired Dr. Librice, the staff physician, to run its medical clinic. Dr. Librice is an invaluable asset to the OLOM community because access to medical treatment is limited, as the next closest clinic is 30 minutes away by motorcycle and the nearest hospital in Milo is 2 hours away. Dr. Librice sees patients for various medical problems, including treatment of tropical diseases such as malaria, intestinal parasites and typhoid. He also manages chronic hypertension and diabetes in a large number of patients, dispenses medications and vaccines for the children in the school, and educates the community on clean water and sanitation.
Through the funds raised from the Well Played: A Songwriters Night and generous donations from the Saint Matthew community, we can continue to provide medications for the community and pay Dr. Librice’s salary each year. We cannot wait to return to Haiti one day for on-site medical missions. For now, we will continue to support Dr. Librice and all his endeavors from afar, thanks to your generous support.
“The Haiti Committee of Saint Matthew Catholic Church exists to support, nurture, and educate the people of our sister parish, in Gobert, Haiti.”
The key words of that statement are support, nurture, and educate. These words parallel our calling as Catholics to the Works of Mercy, both Spiritual and Corporal and apply to the spiritual health and growth of the people of Our Lady of Miracles Catholic Church.
Prayers and financial donations from St. Matthew parishioners contribute to the thriving Catholic community at OLOM Church. Approximately 50 to 60 children, age nine through eleven, make their First Communion each year. Confirmation is held every three years and normally consists of more than 100 children aged fifteen or older.
The Diocese of Haiti does not provide stipends to priests. Your generous donations to the Haiti Ministry allow Father Nicolas to buy the necessary materials for Mass, such as communion hosts and wine, support a music program, provide for a parishioner emergency fund, food for the rectory, gas for the church generator, conduct special parish celebrations, or to simply cover transportation costs. Fr. Nicolas travels many difficult miles to serve other small Chapels in the surrounding community to perform Mass, minister to the sick or dying, and celebrate feast days.
St. Matthew’s pairing with Our Lady of Miracles is a true blessing for all. It is an opportunity for us to practice both the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. With our support of Father Nicolas’s efforts in Haiti, we help him keep this spiritual commitment to the people of Gobert and Our Lady of Miracles Catholic Church.
See your work in action…
Follow Our Lady of Miracles on Facebook. See the joy radiating through their parish as they pray and worship together as a community. All this is made possible through your generous support.
For more Information: Barney Schulte at ben87ce@yahoo.com
2014 photography by Nick Adams
