Haiti

Last week Caroline and I had the privelege to spend 4 days in Port-au-Prince, Haiti with 20 SI staff and their families. We worked with a tent "city" of 500 people living in the parking lot of a fallen down car dealership in the heart of Port-au-Prince. The trip was very "SI-style" in that we were divided into several sites to minister to different segments of the community (dentistry, construction, bread-making, and kids groups of different ages).

I worked with the teenage boys playing sports and other games. Our field was small and also doubled as the trash dump but we had a great time. The boys really loved the water balloon launcher I brought. I would launch water balloons about 100 feet in the air and they would try and catch them, resulting in a pint-sized shower each time. After each activity we had a short Bible lesson.

Caroline worked with teenage girls. The highlight for them was making hand bags out of old jeans and strips of plastic. They learned to make something beautiful from trash, a Bible lesson in it's self. The other Bible study they did I thought was brilliant. They taught the girls about how the Israelites fled from Egypt and had to start a whole new society with new rules, values and customs. Then Caroline (via their translator named Paper) shared how the girls are in a similar point in life. She asked them what values and rules they want to have in their new city. As a group they shared what was important to them and then wrote down their ideas. Here's what they wrote:

Leadership-We think our city needs leaders to be in charge and maintain rules
Respect-We think everyone should respect each other
Cleanliness-We want our city to be as clean as possible
Community-We want to work together in whatever we do
Prayer groups-We want to start and maintain prayer groups that meet together every day.

As I saw the destruction on every corner of Haiti, I couldn't stop thinking about what these girls value in their new city. It's been 3 months since the crisis and it's already an afterthought for most of the world, but somehow these Haitians have to start over. Where do they begin? The government is broken, the buildings are destroyed, their whole world has changed. What now?

That's all I thought the whole trip: What now? I felt like the initial shock was wearing off for everyone and that's the question they was asking. People's most basic needs are being met but they can't live in plastic tents forever. What now? The first task is a morbid one, finish destroying what the earthquake started. Before any rebuilding can be done, rubble must be removed. So goes the slow task of hacking at fallen buildings with a pick ax and then tossing the remains in a truck to be dumped in whatever open field isn't already filled with tents.

I noticed commerce was starting again. Since most the large businesses were destroyed small scale markets had formed along the street. Imagine taking everything out of a walmart and then selling it on both sides of a road the size of your driveway. It's not very efficient for consumers or cars. What now?

Now is the greatest opportunity for Christians to share the gospel in a tragically poor and historically dark place. My prayer is that as everyone from little girls to governments are forming new rules and values there would be Christians at their side to speak Truth into the process.

Pray for Haiti. Pray that God uses this tragedy to rebuild a country based on Him. Pictures to come soon.