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Haiti helped re-form me. Help rebuild her.
By Jeremy | January 13, 2010
When I was 14, someone from my church backed out of a missions trip to Haiti. Since her spot had already been paid, I was invited to go in her place. Our destination: New Missions in Leoganne, approximately 10 miles from the epicenter of yesterday’s massive earthquake.
It’s cliche for people to cite missions trips as life changing — so I won’t. Instead I’ll call it reforming. Haiti re-formed my future by reframing my understanding of some things.
Like poverty.
And also hope. Joy. Love. Life.
And Gospel, as in the Good news described in Luke 4 and more fully in Isaiah 61.
The reframing has continued for years. But in Haiti I began to glimpse the fact that Good News doesn’t look like Western materialism. That it defies partisanship. That it overcomes military corruption and political unrest. That it rebuilds broken walls and restores broken lives and remedies injustice.
I learned in Haiti that Gospel transcends circumstances. I witnessed in Haiti the joy that can truly sustain us and peace that cannot be explained away unlike anything I had seen in New York or New Jersey.
The people our group was supposedly ministering to taught me far more about life and faith than anything I could have possible brought to them — because they were living what were preaching.
Haiti grieves again today. Haitians mourn the deaths of thousands of their brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, fathers, mothers, perhaps as many as 100,000.
For non-Haitians around the world, this is another tragic news story, complete with the loss of life, property devastation, catastrophe, and hardship. Haitians have overcome all that and more for hundreds of years.
For as long as the news cycle has our attention fixed on Haiti — and far beyond, I hope — let’s love Haiti and her people, and serve them as they rebuild their country.
But let’s also learn.
Related
The New Missions compound where I stayed 21 years ago suffered extensive damage, and at least a dozen deaths have been reported in the area, including a kindergarten teacher at their school. Please keep them in your prayers, and consider supporting their efforts to rebuild.
Topics: compassion, disaster response, disasters, haiti, new missions | 3 Comments »
January 13th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
hey my brotha i am going to haiti on saturday raising $ and supplies pray we are trying to acquire a boat to take large amounts of rice and corn in.. blessing pastor frank
January 16th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
[...] Haiti helped re-form me. Help rebuild her. [...]
February 14th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
[...] ++ And of course, please don’t forget NEW Missions, the Haitian mission organization I blogged about previously. [...]