Four Scenes From Haiti

A boy is screaming. The lady across from me in the office takes notice. Is it her child? Is he hurt? Scared? Badly injured? It turns out he is scared. A man is carrying him down the street and he doesn’t want to go. I thought She was going to help the man, but she grabs him to make him stop. He pushes past her and keeps going down the hill, the child yelling all the while. After a few more steps, one of our guys strides out into the street and grabs the man by the backpack he is wearing. He mildly but clearly restrains him as the man tries to pull away. He talks briefly to the man, not yelling but clearly firmly telling him to put the kid down. The man complied and stalks slowly back up the hill. Hertz says that he saw some guys drinking moonshine this morning. It seemed to me that this man certainly may have been drunk. He had asked me for $5 for a new phone earlier today. I had the sense that he might jump on me when I said no, but we were surrounded by our crew working on the hill. What was that all about?

I had about half a loaf left over from communion yesterday with the Pastors. I wanted to share it without causing a food riot. I found some kids that had been watching my seminar all week. They were in the school; I assume they live in the houses behind the school. I broke the remainder of the Body of Christ and gave it to them, because I’m sure they are hungry. They gratefully and playfully ate the bread and then invited us to play soccer with them. Hertz and I kicked a little inflatable ball around and had a blast. It’s the first time I’ve given communion as a feeding program. 

I hiked to the top of a hill to see Sainty and Nelson’s church. Sainty remembers going there as a child. He and the other children would take off at top speed after the service, burning off the pent up energy from sitting still for three hours by careening down the mountain to see who was the fastest today. It reminded me of the “Rambo” trail from the mountain chapel at Asbury Hills. The current church is tin; easily destroyed in a hurricane. The Foundation Patrick Charles, renamed after our friend, partner, and founder who died last year, was building a concrete church for them, but they laid it out too large so it was not complete. The church is also where Nelson passed out Bibles that we bought for him. It is stunningly beautiful at the top of the mountain; I would like to go to church there. 

At night, we stay out at the beach in Cormier. Thanks to a new road, it hardly takes any longer to get there than the beach in town, and it’s the same price. Last night after we got back from another long, hard, hot day, I took a dip in the ocean, had fresh Caribbean lobster for dinner, and played guitar on the beach until it was time for bed. The time away refreshes us to get back at it the next day. 

We Do What We Can

We wrapped up the seminar today. I engaged the Pastors on topics that they told me they wanted to discuss. The big one that has been a theme throughout the week is the interplay between faith and grace. We particularly discussed the status of Israel. I led them through Romans 9-11 with the conclusion that God’s promises will not fail. Some of the pastors liked the emphasis on grace and some did not. We then worshipped together. The pastors are great singers, and we sang a few tunes I knew, “Blessed Assurance,” and “I’ve Got the Joy Down in my Heart.” I played “Amazing Grace” and a Crowder tune for them. Then pairs of pastors prayed out loud for us while the others sang. It was very spiritual. We shared testimony next. One pastor testified about God saving him from from a grave illness. Another testified about God calling him to ministry. I also told my call story. Then the final pastor took the cake with his tale of being attacked and God saving him by draining his attackers energy to strike or stab him. After that we took communion together with bread and wine I brought. I was surprised that they all didn’t mind the wine. It was a great ending. 

Anna felt much better today. She pulled 32 teeth. People have serious infections in their mouths and nothing to do about it. It causes pain, sleep loss, and at worst, the infection can get in their blood and kill them. Anna works in the hot, cramped conditions, bent over her patients sitting in a reclining lawn chair for 7 hour days. She is a rock star. Since she works with the local dentist, who mostly does cleanings using her ultrasonic scaler that she taught him to use, he tells us that the people wouldn’t get treatment otherwise. They cannot afford his services. 

Overall I realize I’ve become comfortable with the scene in Haiti, almost too much so. It takes some mindfulness to open my eyes to the poverty and difficult living conditions. There is so much need and so much difficulty. We deal with impossible situations, a child who needs an x-Ray, a man who needs a computer for college, another who wants to build a church, every day. I get tired of saying no. We can’t help everyone. Do we help enough? Do we bring hope? I don’t know. 

Today in Haiti

I’ve been busy writing this longer theological piece on Haiti and I’m missing the chance to simply write about our day to day, so I’ll get to it. I’ll work backwards. Today was rough, certainly the roughest we’ve had in Haiti. We both woke up with upset stomachs. That’s a first for us. Usually we always go to the same place for lunch, but it was closed so we tried something different. We all said the hamburgers tasted a little funny, some kind of seasoning. Apparently, the special seasoning was bacteria. I had diarrhea, but got it stopped. Anna felt nauseated but powered on. Eventually she puked and rallied to see more patients. Hertz felt pretty terrible all day, too. We weren’t sure Anna would make it through the second half, but after some Gatorade and a lunch of white rice, she got back in the saddle. She’s so tough!

She’s helping a ton of people. Dr. Benoit is cleaning teeth and she’s mostly pulling them, 23 yesterday. Dr. Benoit is the local dentist. Normally he sees 50 people in a year he said. He will see 50 people this week. He seems very happy. The clinic is in our office in the Bon Aire community of Cap Haitien. 

I am teaching a class in the morning for pastors. They requested that I teach. We are discussing Acts 20:28-32, “What does it mean to be a Pastor?” Today we talked about taking care of ourselves. They seemed very excited about that, and my translator Sainty agreed. We broke into pairs and prayed together. Afterwards, they talked about trying to meet together on a regular basis to support each other. It was pretty cool. We also talked about the Shepherd image from the passage. We agreed that we must love our people, and that can be hard sometimes. Tomorrow I’m going to try to answer some of their questions, which may be pretty hard. Please pray for us. 

It’s going well. We are building steps to help the community access the mountain, plus the clinic and the seminar. Not bad for 4 people! Of course it’s not just 4, but our whole Haitian team that works very hard to see all the work done. It’s great to work with friends.