Glenville Catholics assist Dominicans

Five years ago, Immaculate Conception Church in Glenville entered into a sister-parish relationship with Mary Star of the Sea parish in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.

The two communities met through the Albany diocesan sister-parish program, "Pueblo to People."

After half-a-decade, the two communities are still growing together and contributing to each other's faith lives through biannual visits, letters, prayers -- and even singing and dancing.

Visitors

This year, a group of Immaculate Conception parishioners -- four adults and three teenagers -- visited Mary Star of the Sea for a combined medical and cultural mission.

The parishioners stayed in Dominican homes to engage in the cultural exchange. They ate traditional foods and danced the merengue with parishioners at a parish social.

The adults went primarily to survey the medical needs of the churches, with two nurses and a doctor, Michael Welch, bringing along stethoscopes, glucometers and antibiotics to augment the meager supplies at Catholic-run city clinics.

Check-up

Dr. Welch, a family practitioner who also teaches residents at St. Clare's Hospital in Schenectady, visited two clinics run by Catholic parishes in the city and compiled a list of needs.

"Things we take for granted," they don't have, he said; doctors at one clinic shared stethoscopes, and another had one nebulizer for the entire clinic.

"Medically, the Catholic Church and parishes provide a safety net" for poorer residents, he explained. "They have a tremendous need for anything we can do. We want to build a bridge and get some of [what they need] down there."

Welcome

Joanna Smith, a junior at Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Central School and member of the parish council, was impressed and energized by the sense of community she felt at Mary Star of the Sea.

The people, she said, "kept on repeating over and over again that 'you're welcome here, all the time.' It's like you're family now. We felt so welcome."

During her stay, she and two other teens met Dominican teens, toured a school, and participated in activities youths love, like dancing, going to the beach and experiencing baseball mania.

Impressions

At Mary Star of the Sea, "they seem a lot more excited to be" at Mass, Ms. Smith said, noting that she was impressed with the music and involvement in the liturgy. "Everybody knows everybody. There was lots of excitement and everybody was having fun, and clapping and singing along."

She believes that Catholics in Glenville could learn a lot from the excitement and vibrancy of the Masses she participated in.

"It's opened my eyes to so many possibilities," she said.

Poverty

Deacon Mike Melanson counts "meeting the poor" as one of the most striking parts of the trip. There is no middle class in Santo Domingo, he said; parishioners at Mary Star of the Sea are either wealthy or very, very poor.

"It was life-changing," he said, to see, in a medical clinic, how an instrument that American hospitals would use only once was wiped, cleaned and re-used because the clinic did not have enough money to replace it.

"These people literally have nothing," he said. "What we throw away up here they could survive on. It changed everything."

The lasting effect of meeting the Dominicans has already found its way into Deacon Melanson's preaching, both to the Immaculate Conception community and in his prison ministry.

"We're blessed," he said of life in America. "So you take God's blessings and you use them for the betterment of everyone. I hope our cultures will continue to grow together as a family."

(Last year, Glenvillians had a statue of Mary commissioned and sent to their sister parish in the Dominican Republic. This time, the Americans brought home a Dominican flag and plan to display it on parish property.)

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