Where are they now?

Transformed by their experience of cross-cultural mission, former Scarboro lay members live a new vision of the world

Living Mindfully
By Anne Quesnelle
October/November 2006

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If our life were a book, what would we entitle the chapter we are in right now? When our Scarboro family asked for an update on our lives since our return from mission in Ecuador I tried not to cringe.

Marc Chartrand, Anne Quesnelle and their son Sami, 18 months. Marc and Anne served with Scarboro Missions in Ecuador for three years.

My first thought was that Marc and I have not done much in the community where we have put down new roots. We are no longer the well-known actively involved couple we used to be. But as I reflect over the last two and a half years I realize that we have been doing something important. We have been busy working and living consciously, mindfully, with integrity, while being true to ourselves. Let me explain.

As soon as we returned from our mission experience in South America, I decided to follow an inner calling and become a teacher instead of returning to my previous career in the fast-paced financial sector. During my year in teacher's college, we also took on another role and embraced parenthood, welcoming into the world our beautiful son Sami. His arrival allowed us to clarify our priorities and to perfect the art of living in the here and now.

Marc and I are currently employed by the French Catholic School Board in Sudbury, Ontario, as contractual teachers awaiting permanent positions. Marc is a math teacher at Coll.ge Notre-Dame and I am a supply teacher at the elementary school level. Not only did we want to live closer to our families, but we also chose work that is in sync with our values and allows us more time with those we love the most.

We consider ourselves incredibly fortunate to be able to live comfortably with all our daily needs and wants met. We indulge in the simple pleasures of life such as get-togethers with friends and family as well as hiking and canoeing in Northern Ontario's great outdoors.

Some of our career-oriented peers in Canada consider our life a bit frugal – an older house, owning only one car, and no cable TV, cell phone, high-speed Internet or MP3 player. Yet, we know that at least four-fifths of the world's people would be happy to trade places with us.

Marc and I choose to practice voluntary simplicity and consume less so that we are able to spend money in other areas like charitable causes, early retirement and travel. We have just returned from a wonderful and unforgettable month-long holiday in Spain with Sami, now 18 months old. During the trip we were frequently humbled by the daily demands of caring for a child but we were still able to enjoy quality time as a family, constantly learning how to be with our toddler and how to let our toddler be.

So as we continue to see our own life as a journey and as an adventure, we invite everyone not to dwell on the future nor focus on the past but to live wholeheartedly in the present moment. And may we all follow Gandhi's advice to "live simply so that others may simply live."

A time of change
By Betty Ann Martin

Arriving home after three years and seven months of mission in Mzuzu, Malawi, I expected a time of change. However, I was quite unprepared for what I was about to experience.

I immediately moved back into my house and the 100 boxes waiting to be unpacked. In my haste to move out nearly four years before, I had given much of my furniture to my daughters. As a result, my living room was now filled only with chairs arranged in a circle. One of my daughters said that it reminded her of group therapy sessions. Perhaps there was a message in that.

A neighbour informed me that Thursday was garbage day and everything had to be curbside by seven in the morning. Afraid that I would miss the pick-up, I slept little Wednesday night. The next morning found me running out in my pyjamas with a mountain of garbage, only to be told that they were picking up recycling material rather than garbage. Since when was garbage day not for garbage, I wondered.

Not only that, but I learned that I had to put compostable food waste in a green bin, also to be picked up on designated Thursdays. I was such a wreck in those first days that I kept all my garbage in the house and then looked out onto the street on Thursdays to see what was being put out and what wasn’t.

Another problem was hooking up telephone service. When I called Bell I spoke to “Emily” the pretend employee who gave me six or seven choices. By the time I got to choice number seven I had forgotten the first six and had to start over. Finally, in a fit of desperation I told “Emily” that I wanted to speak to a real person who as it turned out wasn’t nearly as smart as Emily.

The winter months passed and I slowly adjusted to life in North America. I was asked to speak to a group of doctors, nurses and social workers at a palliative care residence in Montreal about my experiences in Malawi and the possibility of them offering their services. I also spoke to some high school students and their parents about life at Marymount School for Girls where I taught while in mission. This is a subject dear to my heart.

Spring arrived and I went to Thailand to visit my brother as well as Scarboro missioner Susan Keays. When I returned to Toronto I felt ready to fit back into Western life.

Not so. To my dismay I found that a family of raccoons had moved in under the deck in my backyard and were wreaking havoc on my newly-landscaped postage stamp size yard. I was determined to evict them.

I tried mouse traps with peanut butter to give them a “slap” on the paw. I think there were several raccoons running around the neighbourhood attached to mouse traps because most of them disappeared from my lawn. Mousetraps, that is, not raccoons. I entertained evil thoughts about them but they did not sense this and for some reason found my property the most appealing of all in the area.

Every day I went out to find large pieces of sod rolled back in the raccoons’ search for grubs. I tried water sensors, only to soak myself more often than them. I tried spotlights and even bought a radio, leaving it on a talk station because I heard raccoons do not like that sound. I’m not sure how much my neighbours liked the bright lights and the sound of people talking all night either, but eventually I managed to get rid of them. The raccoons, that is, not the neighbours.

Throughout these months of adjusting and settling, I've had a lot of time to think about how simple life was in Malawi. When it came to garbage, one just dug a pit in the backyard and threw everything into it, eventually burning it. The phone was simple; it either worked or it didn’t and there were no choices.

Occasionally, I was bothered by a poisonous snake but no one thought that I was inhumane when I went out and beat it senseless with my broom, which, incidentally, I never used for sweeping the house.

Living in Malawi was the best thing I have ever done and I am so thankful for having had the opportunity.

Being open to God
By Dorothy Novak

In a little more than a year after leaving Scarboro Missions, I still miss mission in Thailand and the beautiful Thai people. Wonderful friendships grew there and we still keep in contact by phone and email. They always ask when am I coming back.

L-R: Margaret Vanlow, Dorothy Novak, Sisters of St. Martha Sr. Loretta Gillis and Sr. Agnes Beaton, and Margaret Caine. St. Kitts.

After four years in Thailand, the “Land of Smiles,” I began a new journey with people on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts with the Sisters of St. Martha of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. This change in my life’s path was another beautiful experience of how God works when we are open to just being.

My first weeks in St. Kitts were a time of listening and learning. I attended meetings with various parish groups: the youth ministry, St. Vincent de Paul, prayer groups, and hospitality ministries, simply to observe and be open to helping out wherever the need. I became known as “the meeting lady.”

Soon I was working within the parish in prison ministry, home visits to the sick and shut-ins, and visits to the hospital and nursing home. I was overwhelmed by the people’s faith and trust in God despite their difficult circumstances. They welcomed me into their lives and shared their stories with me.

Since returning to Canada in January I have continued to hold the people of St. Kitts in my heart and to keep in touch with some of my new friends there. And we remember each other in prayer.

I am grateful to the Sisters of St. Martha for inviting me to help them in St. Kitts. Although my time there was short I was able to share a great experience of love.

It has been a difficult choice to return to Canada after being in mission overseas for more than five years. Since my return I have spent wonderful times with family and friends across the country, listening and sharing, and being open to each day as it unfolds. Some are calling me the littlest hobo.

In this time of transition, I continue to trust in God who guides and sustains me. I ask for your prayers on my journey, open to going wherever God may lead.

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