Haiti Mission Trip Summary

            I’ve been asked to sum up some of my thoughts about my trip to Haiti.  I had to think about it a little before I could put it all into words.  Some things have so many different emotional feelings and intellectual thoughts all mixed together that words seem feeble.

            Let me begin by expressing my deepest thanks to all of you who prayed, who took interest, who gave, who cared.  I and our team could not have gone and had such great success and been so blessed if it had not been for you. Your gifts, prayers and words of encouragement meant more to us than you will ever know.  May God bless you for what you did and the mere fact that you cared.

            Haiti is an open and obvious mixture of the best and worst of mankind.  It is a place where there is little hope, but the little hope that is there is more real and far greater than most Christians will ever know in other parts of the world.

            While there I found myself with conflicting thoughts and emotions that were happening simultaneously or intermittently.  I found myself wanting to cry and found myself fighting back the tears.  I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to shed tears and I couldn’t  understand why I was fighting them.  A few times, like while doing the medical clinic, some of the Haitians noticed the tears in my eyes and they were profoundly wondering what would make a man cry when I was the one who had something to give, when I was the one who was showing my love, when I was the one who seemed to be God’s servant doing the good deed?  I sensed an outrage in my heart against the one’s who perpetrated and prolonged the suffering in Haiti and I felt a love that I had forgotten that I could feel for a stranger.  I was, for brief moments, afraid, not for myself, but for Haiti and it’s people.  I was also filled with a courage that I think I could have died for any one of them if it were God’s will.

            Haiti is an open and obvious mixture of the best and worst of mankind.  On one half of an island is beauty and wealth and tourism and joy and on the other half of the same island is poverty, suffering, the ugliness of sin and the smell of dumps and death. 

            To see the poverty in a photo is like looking at a photo that you took of a glorious sunrise, or the Grand Canyon or a loved one’s wedding.  The little photo is a pale reflection of an experience that captured your mind, gripped your heart, filled your eyes; An experience in the odors of that day, the sounds of that day, the many people that were in and around you on that day.  The photo feels the same as if you sent a postage stamp of earth to another planet so that they would know about us.  That is what I see in my photos of Haiti.

            The people there are all just people, young and old, good and bad; people like us, but not like us.  The greatest beauty is in the faces of the children, the children who often have only one worn set of flip flops or no shoes at all; the children who are happy to have a single toy; the children who thrill and giggle to see a bunch of funny looking white people; the children who have not yet become cynical and bitter by the ugliness of life.  They seem to laugh more than the children in the U.S.  Maybe that’s just how I felt, but it seemed that way.  They were happy to get a hug, a smile or just to touch or be touched by a stranger.

            Of all of the money given to Haiti after the quake, only about 15-16% has gotten there.  About 5% of the rubble has been cleaned up.  There seems to be no leadership and what there is seems more concerned about their political agenda than the lives of Haitians.  The infant mortality rate is 17%.  The life expectancy in Cite Soleil is 50.  There is no sewage system so all of the human and other waste sets and flows in the streets where the children walk and play.  There is no clean water system or supply for a city of 4 million people.  The electricity is sporadic and people are expected to wire it into their own home from the wires on the poles in the streets.  About 1 % of the intersections have any kind of a stoplight or any kind of a sign.  A man was killed on the road less than a hundred yards away as we worked and in 10 minutes  you would never have known.  No CSI, no reporters, nobody.   On every corner and every street there are also those who want to hustle you for a buck and don’t have the smallest sense of anything that is near to integrity.  It’s the ugly side of mankind’s sin that has deep roots in the past and will have consequences far into the future.

            The good side of Haiti is that it is truly a beautiful Caribbean island with beautiful people who are, for the most part, kind, friendly, family oriented, clean, hard working, and eager to learn and become better than what they are.  Their family ties are much closer.  Their sense of respect for the elderly is greater.  Their love for their children is extremely apparent.  For the most part they want what we want, but have no way to be able to even get the simplest things needed for bare survival.  There is potential everywhere you look, but it is clouded with the dust of decay and the smoke of a self serving government.  I dare not let myself go on.

            The spiritual needs in Haiti are the same as anywhere in the world, but there seems to be fewer people there to bring the good news and even fewer who will stay there and teach them how to live out the gospel day to day.  What they need can’t be bought and shipped.  What they need can’t be completely given from afar.  They need for the world to step in and set them free.  They need it more than Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan.  They need for those will come along side and work with them just long enough to help them get started, then get out and let them work.   Teach them, then back away and let them grow.  Win them to Christ, then help them to establish their own church, supported by their people and let them reach more of their own people.

            Sadly, there seems to be very little hope for any quick fix, both for Haiti and for the world that is wanting to help them.  The things that need to change can only be changed as God changes human hearts one at a time.  Things will change in Haiti only as God changes people’s hearts and fills those hearts with a love for the Haitian people.  Then, God willing, there will be a spiritual revival in Haiti which will lead to a moral revolution which will simply make all of their good traits and their nation all the more beautiful.

            I came away from Haiti wanting to go back again some day, God willing.  I left there with a deeper sense of commitment to pray for them and for the people of this world who may be able to help them.  I left there with a renewed love in my heart for Jonathan, Marcial, Christilla, Franchise, Moice, Franceli, Richard and many, many others.  I came home and left a small piece of my heart there, but I know that they also sent a small piece of their hearts here with me. 

            From a purely pragmatic perspective God did bless both us and some of them.  I can not express how grateful I am to all of you who prayed for us, for our safety, for God’s work.   Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.  There were over 750 people that received medical attention for infections, malnutrition, worms, colds and many other things.  We took up a collection among ourselves to pay for some to go to the hospital because in Haiti you have to pay before you can be helped.  There were almost 300 families that each received a large bag of groceries with vitamins and other necessities.  There were somewhere between 5 -7 people who prayed to be forgiven and to receive Christ.  But, in summing it up, even though we could do relatively very little, I think that what we did brought some hope to some people.  Hope for this life, hope for mankind and hope for the life that is to come.

            I would be lying if I did not tell you that I and the team came home far more blessed than what we were able to bless.  We received much more than what we gave.  We came home richer by far.  So, thank you for blessing me to be able to bless them who in turn blessed me all the more. 

                                                            With love for Him and for you,   Bill