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!