From Yvon to home

We spent the majority of our time in Yvon working on a large church at the bottom of a hill.  It was a beautiful work of cement art, big enough for over 200 people.  

The other time was spent exploring the beautiful hills surrounding the village and spending time with the kids in the area.  If children can afford to go to the school in the village, they learn French, English, Creole, and Spanish.  We were better able to communicate with many of the children than the adults who had been out of school for many years.  I spoke the tiny bit of French I know, but immediately had better success with English.  The little girls giggled and asked shyly to take the coloring books while the young men asked how to translate things into English.  “How do you say…?” became a favorite phrase between us and the children.  

Every night we slowly made our way back up the mountain, exhausted from the sunshine and work.  We ate all of our meals in the old church that overlooks a huge beautiful lake.  We mostly had rice and beans with fried plantains and chicken.  After dinner we pulled out boxes of dominos and turned on the generator, which powered the lights on the porch, in the kitchen, and one bulb in the church.  About thirty people from all over the village came to play cards and dominos or laugh and sing church songs with us.   

Some days we walked down to the well to help people pump water into five gallon bottles or buckets so they could take it home or bathe in the shadows of the palm trees.  It was difficult work.  The long metal pole to pump the water took almost all of my body weight before a tiny bit of water squirted out.  The well was where everyone gathered at least four times a day.  Even the smallest children pulled and poked their donkeys to the well to gather water for their families.

We talked a lot about the earthquake within our group but we were too afraid  to ask too much from the people in the community.  We weren’t sure if they or their families were directly affected by it or how they would react to our questions.  We finally found  enough courage to ask one of our translators Napoleon and were struck by his story. 

He was in the university at the time, studying to be a translator as it is one of the few semi-guaranteed jobs in the country due to the mission trips that have been more and more frequent in the past five years.  Napoleon was running late the morning of the earthquake.  He said he was walking to the university when he felt the ground move beneath him and the walls around him start to crumble.  He laid flat on the ground and thought to himself, “this is the end, I will die here.”  As the quakes and the aftershock stopped, he continued his walk to the university.  What he saw was complete devastation.  The entire four story building collapsed, killing over 200 students and more than a dozen professors.  

Napoleon said that it was much worse for people who were in school or had jobs - they were the ones inside the buildings when they collapsed that day.  He hesitantly told us about his cousins who worked on the first floor of a hotel.  The entire building fell upon them.  

On the last day of our trip we drove over five hours to one of the memorials, honoring the lives of thousands of people who died in the earthquake.  The memorial was at the sight of a mass grave where bodies were piled into a hole by a dumpster after the quake.  

It was eerie and devastating.  There was a deafening silence - anyone who may have lived near the area has long since left due to superstition and respect.  Over the walls we could see the city of Soleil (the poorest city in Haiti) with clouds of ash coming from the communes where they burned piles of trash.  We sat at the memorial for  several minutes, each of us praying or meditating, remembering in our own ways.  

We flew home the next day after spending a long time in the Haitian airport.  I haven’t been able to write much about Haiti since that day until I sat down to write this.  For a long time I have prayed a devastating prayer: “Lord, break my heart for the things that break your heart. Ruin me for the ordinary and for the easy.”  God has answered my prayers in this trip. 

I want to learn to live in a way that empowers others instead of treading on them.  I want to learn to enable them and help them identify their gifts and calling in this world.  I wish to be a leader who is able to follow, one who leads with gentleness and kindness as well as justice.  I wish to seek the assets of communities and peoples instead of first noticing the weaknesses.  I hope to find redemption and grace in all situations and experiences.  I hope that God will continue to ruin me for the cultural norms and the things that society thinks are natural.  I hope to follow Christ in all my actions and do God’s will - especially when it leads me to new places and makes me feel uncomfortable.  

So, you might be asking (as I am), what is next?  What can we do for a country that takes our aid and sells it for profit?  What can we do for a country that continues to take handouts because they are readily available and jobs are not. 

One thing we are able to do right away is change our thought process.  We must think in terms of what we can do with Haiti instead of for Haiti.  We must partner with the government and aid organizations that are already in Haiti and accountable.  We must look for the strengths within Haiti and throughout the Haitian people instead of focusing on their weaknesses. 

We can also work with churches within Haiti who are accountable to help put money into the Haitian economy.  Although there is a lot of literature about how harmful short term missions are for countries, when done correctly they pour thousands of dollars into the country’s economy and encourage people to care about foreign countries.  Our mission trip gave over $3,200 for the new church and to pay the workers and translators that stayed with us that week.  That money will not go to corrupt government officials or unaccountable aid organizations.  It will go directly back into the Haitian economy.  

We can also pray.  Although it sounds benign considering the pain and heartbreak in Haiti, we know that God is able to do incredible things.  We have no knowledge of what God might do through pray and what God has already done through the churches in Haiti.    

From Port-au-Prince to Yvon

I won’t tell you it was life-changing. It is far too easy to go back to living my normal, Westernized,  previous life in South Carolina.  It is much more difficult to change.  In fact, I am already back to my normal routine - only to be intermittently interrupted by people asking how the mission trip went.  I have not sold all of my things and I am not running to the pulpit to preach about the devastation in Haiti. 

But now I have seen it - the children and mothers begging for food, the charity from hundreds of foreign countries being auctioned on the streets.  I may not be changed, but I am not the same.  

One of the most stunningly tragic parts of the trip was the ride from Port-au-Prince to Yvon.  We left early that morning and packed into a very small bus for the ten of us and all of our luggage.  As we pulled out of the Methodist guest house compound, it became obvious that I would not be going back to sleep for the four hour ride.  

I was jostled by the symphony of honks and brakes and engines revving at the next intersection.  I was taken by the sights and the sounds all around me.  It was like nothing I had ever seen before.  I was sure that the bus driver had purposely gone through a more depressed part of the city in order to “show these North Americans how good they have it.”  But as we continued down the maze of streets, I realized that every street was the exact same.  All the vibrant colors on the walls of the city were muted by a layer of dust.

There were huge hogs in the drainage canals which were no longer draining anything due to the amount of human and animal waste piled high within them.  There was an obvious difference between the women in the streets.  In Haiti, if you get pregnant you are kicked out of school.  The young women who make it through school and are lucky enough to find a job have a visible sense of independence and pride - something that was very obvious in our translator Angee.  

As we got out of the city, I thought I would get the chance to relax my muscles and take a nap.  We rounded a corner and saw trash piled high, burning.  As we passed our group coughed and  covered our eyes.  It stung my eyes and nose and gave me a deep sense in my gut that I was not going to get any sleep on this trip.  

We passed half-complete construction sites from past service projects and empty promises.  In many places in Haiti, people will build until they run out of money and cannot build anymore.  There is no financing, no hope of asking for a loan for a new house.  Many times, houses are left half-finished with long poles of rebar sticking high into the air.  

As we continued, I started to understand the language of the car horns - the long drawn out of “I’m coming over” or the short burst to villagers of “don’t cross the street” or the tap-tap of “thank you” after passing.  My favorite was the screeching warning to cars as we flew around sharp corners at nearly 80 miles per hour.  (There are no speed limits in this part of Haiti.) 

The glimpse of the ocean between the crumbling walls helped us forget where we were for a brief second.  It is stunningly blue and tranquil outside of the dirt and chaos of the city.  Until you see the specks of people fishing - realizing that their labor is not for pleasure but survival.  

After about two hours of travel we have become accustomed to the rotting or dead animals on the side of the road.  The gusts of sewage washing over you starts to be familiar.  The houses became less  structurally sound as we moved further and further from the city.  They were made out of whatever people could buy, find, or trade - tin, mud, and palm branches. 

We slowly passed by a large market that took up almost the entire street.  Men reached into the open windows of the van trying to sell us bread, water, and sodas in glass bottles.  Others were selling school supplies, diapers, toothpaste, and soap by the box.  I felt a fire rising in my chest like heartburn as I realized that relief from foreign countries and missions were not going to people in need but instead being auctioned off to the highest bidder.  

We continued down the narrow road and as I thought, “surely we will run out of island soon and drive right into the ocean,” we turned onto a dirt road toward the village of Yvon.  

Here I Am

It has been a long time since I have written anything.  It turns out that seminary keeps you as busy as everyone says it does!

I just got back from an incredible trip to Haiti where seven of us spent six days in the small village of Yvon building a church.  I am never very good about writing after I come back from trips - it takes me a long time to absorb everything after a trip like that.

But as I reflect on my trip and recover from sleep (and binge watch Netflix), I cannot help but think of the words that our Mary uttered just a few weeks ago in the lectionary.  My sermon might not do it justice, but I keep thinking about how willingly Mary accepted her new journey with God.

Another thing rolling around in my brain is about internship.  Where am I going? Will we have a weekend free to get married? Why hasn't anyone emailed me in over three weeks?

But I do have one assurance.  God is calling me to something different.  And God is there when I take that journey.  No matter where I am called - to Haiti, Argentina, London, or South Carolina - God provides and God journeys with me.  All I have to say is, "Here I am."

So with that in mind, here's a link to my sermon from Advent 4. I had the incredible opportunity to preach in my home congregation over Christmas break.  I heard a lot of people say that it was a blessing to have me preach that morning, but I feel that I have been blessed doubly by such an incredible congregation and the story of Mary that has been resonating in my soul for several weeks.