January 3, 1840, Josef de Veuster is born in Tremeloo, Belgium. Only nineteen year's later Josef de Veuster joins the Picpus Fathers of Louvain as a novice. (A novice is a member of a religious order who has not taken any final vows.) Shortly after joining Picpus Fathers, Joseph se Veuster's name is changed to, as we know him, Father Damien.
             October 30, 1863 Damien starts his four-month voyage to the Hawaiian Islands. He arrives in March of 1864. The ship takes him to the city of Honolulu on the Island of Oahu. Honolulu was a city with a busy port and many buildings.
             A few years later Father Damien moves to Kalaupapa Peninsula to start the bulk of his missionary work. The first night Damien spent the night under a pandanus tree. (A pandanus tree is sometimes called the screw pine, has long roots which raise the trunk three or four feet above the ground level. It forms a cave like shelter beneath the tree.) There was a little chapel in the middle of all the huts they called the village. The chapel seemed abandoned so the first thing that Damien did was to clean the chapel.
             One of the hardest things about working in the leprocy colony was the smell. The smell from the huts, people, and the graveyard. So wherever Damien went, he smoked his pipe so that a cloud of strong smelling tobacco would surround him.
             There was so much to be done that Damien didn't know where to start. He needed medicines, bandages, and medical instruments. Damien had no medicines to treat the leprocy. So Damien flooded the government in Hololulu with letters asking for things he needed.
             Damien got the healthier men to clear patches of land and plant crops. It gave them something to do, and it added to the food supply. But every day people were dying. The people would try their best to burry them, but they could only make shallow graves. That meant that wild pigs would dig up the bodies and scatter their bones. S...