Hope Personified: Frances Maschal Landers

Preface:

From Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After

Once upon a time, in one of dozens of impoverished villages scattered across the barren mountains of southwestern Haiti, there was a young boy. At the first cry of the rooster before dawn, he rolled off his mat to fetch water for his mother. Barefoot, he ran two miles down the steep slopes to the dirty riverbed. On his return, he balanced a full, forty-pound, five-gallon bucket on his head. Careful. Don’t spill a drop!

At daylight he joined his father to farm the rocky, difficult land. He never went to school. There was no school. Like his parents and grandparents, he could neither read nor write.

When not helping his family, he would play with his village friends, using makeshift toys. Rocks, most plentiful. A hoop and a stick. Perhaps string and plastic for a kite. By keeping active, he didn’t hear his hungry, bloated stomach growl.

There were a few rainy days. Sometimes there was so much rain that mud swirled across the rugged road, so much wind that he feared his family’s insufficient house would blow away. But some years there was not enough rain to keep his father’s meager crops alive. And then the young boy’s stomach would grumble all the more.

This was his life.

If asked about growing up, he’d shrug. He assumed he would get married someday and build a little hut close to his family’s home, and his own illiterate children would crowd onto this exhausted plot of earth. Like his father, he would struggle daily to provide. He and his wife would worry when their malnourished kids got sick. Before fifty, bone tired and ready to pass this life down to his children, he would die.

This young boy was in for a surprise.

One January day in 1989, a very tall Haitian Episcopal priest moved to the young boy’s mountains. Four months later, the priest brought to the village a stately American woman. He addressed her as Mrs. Landers.

Yes, in 1989 this young boy’s life was destined to change.

In 2005 Pere Jean-Wilfrid Albert (pronounced “Al-bear”) was exhausted, but not from years of bending over to plant beans or remove another rock or milk a scrawny goat. No, he was tired—mostly in a good way—from sixteen years of bending over backward to be the spiritual father to thousands (including the young boy) in this region called Grande Colline.

Endlessly, Pere Albert preached the gospel and implored his people to live with hope. He recruited local crews to construct schools, hired Haitian principals and teachers, and oversaw their curriculum. And he smiled through the years as he watched the young boy and thousands of other children scamper happily across the mountains to—finally—go to school.

Pere Albert was justified in being tired. Cancer ravaged his fifty-six-year-old-body.

His work was far from done. Too many adults still knew the darkness of Haitian voudo and not the light of the Lord. His parish had sparse water, hardly any electricity, no doctors or nurses, too many coffins, and too little food.

And too many children still without a school.

Though Pere Albert had a large vision and a larger faith, on the third of July that year, the cancer won.

In 2010 Frances Maschal Landers was tired. On the fourteenth of September, five years after the death of Pere Albert—a man like a son to her—Frances was ready to leave her Haiti Education Foundation in the hands of those who loved her. At ninety-three she had devoted the final third of her life to the children of Haiti. She ended illiteracy for thousands of boys and girls and for their siblings, parents, and grandparents.

Frances funded her first school for Pere Albert in 1981. Ultimately, she built schools in forty Haitian villages. Pere Albert and Frances would educate (and her Haiti Education Foundation continues to educate) tens of thousands of children like the young boy.

To the end, Frances was gallant and gracious, faithful and focused. She personified hope.

Pere Albert and Frances Landers knew that educating Haiti’s next generation was the only answer for this struggling, impoverished country. Together, one of them living in Haiti and the other in Arkansas, they answered God’s call to give hope through education. They led and they inspired. They prayed and cajoled. They laughed. And they cried.

These partners changed the life of that young boy and countless thousands of others in Haiti and in the United States.

When Pere Albert and Frances Landers closed their eyes for the last time, they were each richly rewarded. They saw God reach out His arms. They felt His strong, loving grip. They heard Him thank them for all they had done. They smiled as He welcomed them home.

And they lived happily ever after.

The story of Frances Landers and her work with Pere Albert will take us across the United States and over the Caribbean Sea. We will travel down to the depths of despair over the endless challenges that Haitians endure, and then up denuded mountain slopes to the region of Grande Colline, to dozens of poor but joyous villages. Our journey will fill in all of the important gaps between the young Haitian boy’s “once upon a time” and the “happily ever after” that rewarded Pere Albert and Frances Landers.

At its core, this is a story of Christ our Lord moving through ordinary lives to accomplish miracles.

At its heart, this is a story about the life-changing value of education.

At its soul, this is a story about love’s powerful hope, a hope personified by Frances Landers.