A Haitian Story

Haiti will get to you—body and mind.

First, it is so hot you are always sweating. You cannot escape the heat. It pulls minerals out of your body—minerals you cannot replace on the rice and beans diet. Your body starts to fail you in small ways.

Next is your mind. Each time you go out into the street, small children approach you. Their ribs are showing. They beg for your water bottle or the meal bar they know you have in your backpack. But behind them are 10 other children watching. If you give to one, you will be mobbed in seconds. So you say, “No,” and walk away. Each day. It wears on your mind.

All you have left is the spiritual. If God fails you, you have no hope. So you cling to God—His Love, His Will, His Plan…

That was about where I was physically, mentally, and spiritually when I rode in the back of a pickup truck halfway up a mountain in Haiti. From there, we hiked up to a row of grass and tarp huts. It was a “village” of 50 people who needed medical care. We brought two nurses, vitamins, medical supplies, food, and water. The people lined up to see the nurses. This was going to take some time.

I took a few photos, but the sun was so hot. I needed to sit down before my legs failed me. There was no shade. All I saw was a thorn tree—a low bush actually. I was so desperate, I sat down and pushed my back up under the thorn branches. It hurt, but the sun was worse. A young boy was done with his treatment of vitamin D and de-worming meds. He came and sat beside me.

In Haiti, the kids were fascinated by our white skin. This boy was no exception. He held my hand, stroked it, and even peered closely at the skin. Most of all, he would not let go. We were attached from that point on. It was sweet.

After the nurses saw everyone in the village, the Haitians wanted to take a group photo. Then it was time to go.

I realized that I had not even asked the boy his name! So I finally did. My faithful companion’s name—Emmanuel. Tears formed in my eyes. “Yes, Lord, I get it.”

My body was suffering, my mind was reeling from all I saw, but on the top of a mountain, there was “Emmanuel.” God is with us.

That was last May. I am back in the USA. My body is healed from the stress of Haiti. My mind has mostly recovered from the sadness I saw. It is so easy for us to rely on all we have and all we can do ourselves rather than rely on God.

But I do not want to forget that lesson—Emmanuel. God is with us—in our jobs, our families, our rest, our health, our plans, even in our hurts and sorrows.

God is with you! Happy New Year!

And thank you for joining with me to help kids like Emmanuel. He needed us that day, too.

Rice and Beans

Mark Julian arrived at the GAiN Warehouse in Chambrun, Haiti, on May 27. Pastor Esperondu Pierre (the Campus Crusade director in Haiti) offered Julian’s ministry (SMI Haiti) the one thing he needed more than anything—food.

“We are getting 5 pallets of food today. That will last about two weeks. Maybe 3 weeks,” Julian said.

SMI Haiti’s goal is to support the needs of the orphanage of 70 children in the Gitonn area—a very impoverished area.

“We need all kinds of food all the time with 70 kids,” Julian said. “We also have a school. We had to cut back from 1,600 students to 500 students because part of the school program is to feed them 3 meals a week. We have not been able to feed 1,600 kids 3 times a week, so we have pared that back to 500 so that we can supply the three meals a week. It is so vital for learning to have full stomachs. Sometimes the kids would just sit there and pass out or fall asleep because they do not have food. So we have a lot of need for food. We have wells, we have water available. Food is the critical element.”

Rice is one of the main food elements of the Haitian people. But the second food staple is beans. Several ministries have asked GAiN to provide not only rice, but the familiar protein element of beans as well.

A Lancaster County church has heard the call for help coming from Haiti. They raised the funds to help purchase 360,000 additional meals of rice and beans. Many of these have been packed already, but we still need help to finish up the packing of this desperately needed food, as well as pack more that we have available. Thus, we have added an additional 200,000 meals of rice and beans and an additional 30,000 meals from Feed My Starving Children.

During the June Mission packing Project at the GAiN Distribution Center, we will finish up packing the high protein rice and bean meals June 21 and 22. Then we will continue the rest of the week packing the 180,000 Feed My Starving Children rice and soy meals.

Pastor Jorel Naurelus of the Church of God in Christ in Haiti also received food from GAiN last week.

Pastor Jorel said: "After the earthquake, I came here to talk to Pastor Pierre. He gave me some food and I shared it with my people. They were so happy, but I did not have enough to give because I have so many people! So I talked to Pastor Pierre again and he said come again and we will give you more food. I have a lot of families under the tent now.

"The government has stopped giving food to the people. My people are very hungry—they are starving. So we need your support. We thank you for what you have been doing. We keep praying for you so the Lord can open more doors. We pray that the Lord blesses you and that we would be blessed by you."

Campus Ministry Team Arrives

Campus Crusade for Christ’s Campus Ministry team arrived in Chambrun around 1:00pm Tuesday, June 1 on a big school bus that no doubt drew a few stares. They met in a large open tent for orientation with Pastor Pierre, Pastor Sony (leader of the Haitian Campus Ministry), and Gary LaBlanc of Mercy Chefs (the ministry that will be cooking for the team and hopefully the students and beyond).
After orientation, they moved all of their suitcases into the church/school building to create a dorm. They packed 8 to 10 students in each of the classrooms on cots with mattresses. They hung mosquito nets up and hooked up a few electric fans (run by a generator) to circulate some air in the cement building.
The team split up and started to help the GAiN construction teams with building bathrooms, showers, and even hooking up a solar/battery-powered water filter one of the students had created. The system will eventually be a gift to a local orphanage, but for now, it is purifying the water the students are drinking. (It also runs a solar-powered coffee pot—the only one in camp ready to go so far.) (See photo left)
Another team of students helped unload a truck from Nehemiah Vision ministries that held boxes of rice-soy meals from Kids Against Hunger. Some of the students had packed Kids Against Hunger meals in Florida on their spring break. A few were very happy to think that they could now hand out the meals personally.
The kids are staying after school to hang out with the Americans. They even try to help with the work. Lots of new friends.
Because the kitchen was not hooked up yet, the team ordered pizzas from Domino’s Pizza (yes, you read that right). After their meal, they had Bible study and then lights out. And it was truly lights out as the security guard is trained to shut off the generator. He shut it off as usual—and the area was completely dark. (Each of the students had flashlights.) Hopefully the word got to the security guard today to leave the lights on.
Eventually, the campus ministry team will be distributing aid like hygiene kits, rice-soy meals, family seed packs, and more. But day two for the campus ministry was a push to finish the showers, install toilets, hook up the kitchen cooking appliances, sort the food supplies, and hook up a huge Culligan water filtration system. (Three super intelligent students took the manuals to the Culligan filter, studied them, made plans, ran them by the GAiN construction guys who were very impressed, and will install it soon.) One team even helped tie rebar for the concrete base that will eventually be the warehouse for humanitarian aid.
In Haiti, it is easy to make plans, but it is hard to get the parts for those plans. (This is a serious understatement.) A fast trip to the grocery store for food for the kitchen took all day, four stores, and a trip into the mountains. A simple trip to pick up the toilets to install required the store to stay open after hours waiting for the truck to arrive with the shipment of toilets—and a saw to cut the lock on the shipping truck! Day by day we find parts, just not as fast as all of us would like. But this is Haiti. As they say to Americans, “You have the watches, we have the time.”
The Campus Ministry will be posting stories and video at http://hopeforhaiti.posterous.com –well, if they can get internet out in Chambrun. I am not holding my breath on that one. After all, we thought buying seven toilets would be easy!

Pstor Jorel Naurelus and Church of God in Christ

Pastor Jorel Naurelus (center) of the Church of God in Christ in Carrefour has been receiving the rice-soy meals from Pastor Pierre so he can feed his church.
“We have a lot of people in my church—about 600 people, Pastor Naurelus said. “There are about 150 kids there each Sunday morning.”

After the earthquake, Pastor Naurelus asked Pastor Pierre for help.
“ He gave me some food and I shared it with my people. They were so happy, but I did not have enough to give because I have so many people!” Pastor Naurelus said. “So I talked to Pastor Pierre again and he said come again and we will give you more food. I have a lot of families under the tent now.”

And many of the original feeding programs have ceased.

“Now the people are so hungry under the tents. They are very hungry—they are starving,” Naurelus said. “And they have many more problems. It is now raining and they are walking in mud. “

The food is not only life-saving, but it also tastes good.
“The food tastes good. Really, it is good,” Naurelus said. “The people are very satisfied. They are very happy with it. They keep asking, ‘Pastor, when will you bring us some more?’ I tell them, ‘I keep begging. As soon as they give it to me, I will give it to you. I will bring it back to you.’”

The Church of God in Christ in Carrefour also tries to support a school
“I feed the kids at church and in our school,” Naurelus explained. “I want to have a permanent feeding program, but I cannot do that yet. I do not have the support to do that yet. So we need your support. We thank you for what you have been doing. We keep praying for you. We pray that the Lord blesses you and that we would be blessed by you.”

Naurelus’s faith in God is evident. He said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord—He provides for us. He knows we are here, and He will make a way. We believe in Him.”
He also mentioned a prayer request: “My dream for Haiti is change. The situation that we are in is terrible. I want Haiti to change the condition that the people live in. As human beings, we are not supposed to live in that condition. Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere—a third world country. I want Haiti to change so it can get out from that condition. The big problem we have is in our political leaders since Haiti became independent. We do not have good leadership in Haiti. That is why we keep fasting and praying, so the Lord will send someone to lead the country. My dream is that we would have a pastor to be President. We have tried everybody, but we haven’t tried a pastor yet. We are praying for that.”

I asked Pastor Naurelus what he would say to my fellow Americans who helped ship the aid he was receiving. He said, “Haiti is a poor country. The Bible says that if you help poor people, the Lord will help you, too. He will take care of you. In the name of all Haitian people, I am extending my thanks to the American people. I want you to continue to send food for us. We cannot reward you, but I tell you there will be a reward. The reward will be in the Heaven! You will receive a crown when you take care of the Lord’s people. Before the Bema seat, everyone will be together there—not to be judged as a Christian. But to receive the crown for what you have been doing while you were in the Body of Christ, which is the church. We appreciate you—you are doing a good job. But please continue the job.”

Sheep

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)

There are a good many real sheep here in Chambrun just wandering around. Now when I say that, some of you will think, “Aw, how cute!” Yes, my first thought too, but look closer.

These sheep are rag-tag, bony creatures that I first thought were some kind of starving goat. No cute, little, white, fluffy, sweet animals here. They are in such bad shape, you may want to avoid them. Oh, and they all have worms.

Harassed, yes. No food. Bad water. Looking for shade. Out in the rain. Afraid of people and machines.

Helpless, yes. No barn. No fence. No shepherd. No owner. No treatment for sickness or injury. Just endless, fruitless wandering.

I think this is what God really saw when he looked out at the multitudes. Of course everyone would try to help cute, white, fluffy sheep. But what about these ones?
My mind and heart try to take in the metaphor.

I saw a man walking down the street with no clothing—only a garbage bag tied around his waist. One Haitian interpreter told us that it is not uncommon to see people walking down the street naked. “They have lost their minds from grief,” he said.
I saw an old woman picking through the trash to see what she could find.
I saw men sleeping under their dump trucks—their only possession.
I saw children and adults coated in dust and mud with nowhere to wash.
I saw mothers and young girls carrying water miles from the town pump—and I knew it was not the first time that day.
I saw families sitting outside of tents made of bed sheets and tarps waiting for the day to end.
I saw signs spray painted on walls—“We need help—food and water!”
I saw children by the sides of the road begging for water, food, or just a dollar.
I saw so many eyes watching me, wondering what I would do.

“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’" (Matthew 9:37-38)

Please, please pray with me for Haiti.

We are the World

We were driving down this dirt and gravel road toward Chambrun listening to Haitian radio. All the sudden, I realized what I was listening to--the song "We Are the World" recreated for the Haiti earthquake.

This song gives the Haitians hope--that someone cares and someone is helping.

I wonder, do we even play this song on the radio in America?

Myrta's Story

Myrta has had a hard life. Her legs are paralyzed, and her husband abused her and left her with three children.

“In the morning, her family members would take her outside and lay her under a tree all day. Then different family members would bring her food,” said Jackie Brumley, a nurse at the Chambrun clinic. “She had no way of getting around.”

“We gave her a wheel chair, but there was no way she could push her own wheel chair out here on these rough roads,” Jackie said. “She could find someone to push her to church, but it was hard going. Then she had to wait at church until someone would push her home. But the gravel out here just eats the tires off a regular wheelchair. So we got her a PET Cart and it has been awesome.”

A PET (Personal Energy Transportation) Cart is a rugged wheelchair/cart you can pedal with your hands. It is made for rougher roads than a normal wheelchair can take.

In fact, when Jackie came to visit Chambrun, Myrta came out pedaling as fast as she could across the gravel road to find the American group. She shook hands with them all. And each Sunday, she petals the half-mile to church on her own.