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. 

Fighting Demons and Pulling Teeth

The last two days have been great. Yesterday, we went to the Free Methodist church of Pastor Costume (kos-tu-ma). Cynthia and I were both offered the chance to preach, but she had a migraine and hadn’t slept. So I preached on Luke 15, the lost sheep. It is the passage we are focusing on for the Bible school for the children. Pastor translated, and I got into a pretty good rhythm of call and response with the church. I told them, “No matter what you have done, no matter how lost you are, Bondye benu (God loves you)!” Then I played guitar and we sang “Amazing Grace” us in English, the congregation in Creole. After worship, we had a fantastic afternoon on the beach. We sat on the sand and played and sang songs with Patrick, the Hertzes, and Anna. 

Today, Anna stole the show, rocking out her clinic. Everyone was impressed with her system, her skills, her bedside manner, and her leadership. Heather and Janice worked in with her, cleaning instruments and moving patients around like a well-oiled machine. Archibald kept things flowing and Dr. Benoit and Dr. Goldston saw 50 patients. In the morning they pulled teeth and in the afternoon they did cleanings. Cleanings are not Anna’s plan or desire, but all the Haitians she has talked to are sure that people want cleanings. People were lined up to get their teeth cleaned, so it must be so. 

In the meantime, I had possibly the best experience I’ve had in Haiti. Cynthia and I gathered with five Haitian pastors to study scriptures and talk pastoring together. We began with the easy stuff, Christ died for us and all that, and then it got really interesting. We bounced all around reading scriptures and talking about progressive salvation and sanctification. I would have thought that they would have been more about baptizing people and being done with it, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. They were very concerned about creating deep spiritual lives for their people, and building them into communities of love and care. Pastor Louisnar read Acts 2:41 about the early church and said he was teaching his people to give to the needy. Pastor Joshue agreed and told this story. One of his members starved to death. He brought the news to the church and they were horrified. They decided to do something about it, so everyone who can brings $1 Haitian (about 8 cents) every week. When they have enough, they give the money to the neediest member to use to buy some goods, sell them, and begin a business. Since this initiative began several years ago, no one has starved to death. That is an effective stewardship campaign. 

After this, several pastors asked me theological questions about once saved, always saved and about communion. At first, I thought they were evaluating my theology, but upon further reflection, I think they were using me as a resource to help them respond to difficult questions. The younger pastors were asking the questions, who likely had very little theological education or reading. Not a ton of books are translated into Creole. So, I was able to offer some theology for them. I say me because Cynthia sensed that they were uncomfortable with her as a female pastor, so she did not reply much. 

Finally, we shared testimony of God’s power. It was incredible to hear the miracles God was working in their communities. Just to share one, Pastor Costume testified that God sent him to serve in a neighborhood with a very small church. The church was weak because a voodoo priest set up shop next door and a demon had possessed her. Pastor led his church in a community prayer ministry to fight the demon. Long story short, the prayer ministry drove the demon out of the community, and the church is now thriving. Every story was that incredible. 

Jesus to the Rescue

I saw that saying on a tshirt someone was wearing. I don't know if the guy knew what it said, but it struck me profoundly. I believe Jesus is coming to the rescue here in Haiti. But do there have to be so many malnourished kids first? 

I do believe in God's preferential option for the poor, and I think Jesus will be coming here pretty close to first when he comes again, because Jesus says the last shall be first. And almost never do a yearn for that day to come sooner than I do here. There are great, wonderful people, sweet, fun children here and they are suffering. Kids are hungry, people have no work. Both kids and there parents have nothing to do, and idleness is mentally crushing for people who want to work and play. 

We do what we can. We are building a church. People need a place to worship, to hear words of hope. We can give some hope, too, give a few toys and a little candy. But even that has its limits. Someone let extra kids into Toulouse's house when we were doing the vacation Bible school, and we ran out of lollipops. It stinks to turn away delighted children because you run out. It's so easy to focus on the physical needs of people. Everyone is hungry, everyone needs clothes, everyone needs a buck. I gave away six pairs of shoes today, which means I encountered six children in eight hours who had no shoes. But just as we help a few, there will be dozens more who need it. 

Everything we do here has limits, which is why I long for the day when Jesus brings abundant life without limits. A place like Haiti needs Jesus to come to the rescue. We cannot do it on our own. The whole Body of Christ acting together could do it. Jesus will do it. For now, he has sent us to give just a little taste. Our driver has Psalm 34:8 on his windshield. "O taste and see that the Lord is good;

happy are those who take refuge in him." It's true. The Haitians we meet are all suffering, but for a short time at least, they are happy to see us coming and spend time with us