Volunteers at Our Lady of Sorrows Parish help farm workers access sacraments and doctors

VANCOUVER—Volunteers in farm worker ministry responded beyond the call of duty when they met a Guatemalan man with a severe eye infection.

A group from Our Lady of Sorrows Parish was visiting a Langley farm, delivering bicycles and clothing, when they met the injured farm worker.

The farmers “were working really late, and when we arrived they were just coming from the fields and beginning to make their supper,” recalled volunteer Connie Fabian, a lay Scalabrinian.

They asked the man about his cloudy eye and learned he had previously had a job in Guatemala that required him to fill containers with unknown chemicals without any face protection. At the end of one workday, he showered, fell asleep on the couch, and woke up in great pain.

“When he opened his eyes at about 12 midnight, he felt his left eye was on fire, like a hot pepper, very hot,” said a translation of a statement from the worker, who requested his name not be used.

The man saw a doctor the next day and received some medication, but his eye was still very grey when he arrived in Langley in 2011.

“I thought he must be blind in that one eye,” Fabian said. Her group was moved and set up a doctor’s appointment, paid the $60 bill, and sent two volunteers along to translate. It turned out he needed to see a specialist, which cost them another $170.

“His desire was to work in Canada to make enough money so his kids could go to school,” Fabian said, adding that the father of three was illiterate.

“His fear was that if his eye was a liability he might not be able to come back and work because someone with two good eyes would be picked.”

It wasn’t the first time Our Lady of Sorrows volunteers have stepped up for farm workers with medical problems. They have translated in hospitals, visited cancer patients, and even donated a wheelchair to a family member in Mexico.

“It is something that is unexpected but is going to change a life,” she said.

Father Richard Zanotti, CS, pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows, said their focus is meeting spiritual, not physical, needs.

“The farm owner is responsible to take them to the hospital if there is a need,” he said, but “how do you separate the two things? You can’t catechize someone if they’re hungry.”

He said the group tries to act like a family for farm workers away from home. “Really what they want is someone to pray with them, someone to be with them when a relative in their home country dies, and so on.”

Recently a farm worker from Mexico became very ill. After an operation, his condition worsened and he was put on life support. Father Zanotti said migrant ministry volunteers worked with the Mexican consulate to bring the man’s son to Canada before he died.

“Once the son got here, the man revived and came out of the coma. The presence helped this man.”

Volunteers paid frequent visits and found a place for the son to stay until the man was well enough to fly back to Mexico.

“When those kinds of things happen, I noticed Connie and the others mobilize” to help as they can.

Fabian has been involved in migrant ministry at Our Lady of Sorrows since 2010. She speaks broken Spanish, and cites that as an example that anyone can be involved, despite a language barrier.

“We are all migrants now. We are all on a journey. Most of us have come from somewhere else.”