Recently, a Trinidadian lady who is married to a Jamaican complained to me: “I find you lower cast Jamaican people lazy and non-productive. This is why this country will not get anywhere.” I was furious but had to contain my anger.

She was an upper class lady with domestic helpers and servants at her house. She had come to visit our brothers at our homes for the homeless and said she needed to employ some hard-working Jamaicans at her home and her husband’s factory in St Andrew.

She said she would divorce her husband, leave Jamaica, and go back to Trinidad to live with her well-to-do family. As you know, I am against divorce, so she came to seek my advice.

When she saw our home with the cripples and mentally ill children, she began to cry. “Oh my God, I never dreamt that there are people like these — totally abandoned and useless,” she said. I told her she needed to go home and pray for the salvation of her soul.

She called me that night and simply wept. I asked her what does she do all day long and that she did not know how to love. She wept and said, “I believe you are right, father, I believe I need to do some volunteer work.” I told her to think and pray about it. Then we could talk.

I had mass with the brothers, the readings were about the bridesmaid who went out with their lamps to meet the bridegroom, five of them are foolish and five of them are sensible. This woman would have been among the foolish who had no oil in their lamp. They had no ability to love. This woman only loves herself and no one else; she is in great danger of losing her soul.

I love Jamaica, I love the poor, I find among poor Jamaican men and women the ability to work hard and pour themselves out in service of others. I believe there are some lazy people, slothful, self-indulgent, gamblers, and ganja smokers who are non-productive and on the road to violence. They need guidance, encouragement, jobs, and a sense of community.

Jamaica! Jamaica! We must work hard, we must pray, we must take care of one another. Missionaries of the Poor (MOP) are in 14 different countries. In all 14 countries we are known as Jamaican brothers. But there is only one Jamaican, and that is myself. Why can’t we give up our lives, sacrificing ourselves for our own Jamaican people and for poor people all over the world?

We offer free service all over the world. I have no wife or biological children, yet I have brothers and thousands of people all over the world in the poorest of countries all over the world.

MOP must produce, multiply, generate MOP brothers all over the world. The poor are all God’s special children. We must try and never stop trying to live, love, and be generous to the poor. We cannot be selfish and self-concerned, we must not live in a world of me, I, and myself.

I am so happy when I see brothers feeding, sweeping, cleaning, and changing the clothes of our rejected people from so many countries; always with a smile, with the brooms in their hands and singing songs.

As our MOP lyrics say;

We are building a house!

We are building a house!

We are building a house for God to dwell.