Back From Haiti
Hello!
We arrived back from Haiti Wednesday night, and after a total of eighty hours of traveling in eight days, we were glad to be back! With most of our trip planned at the last minute or on the spot, without a guide, and without the ability to speak the language, it made for quite an adventure. We had to get from Santo Domingo in Dominican Republic, to a town in Haiti near Port Au Prince. Though we were warned more than once of the danger of this undertaking, we had to go! People needed help; they needed Jesus! Amazingly, we got to the chaotic boarder, met up with a man named Caleb Lucien who is a pastor in Haiti doing relief work across the country, and he took us to his town called Pignon.
Our eight days away were full of traveling, the distribution of supplies (food, water, tents, and medicine), as well as praying for people in the hospital in Pignon. With the destruction of Port Au Prince, many people have fled the city and taken refuge more rural areas. Thus, the hospital in Pignon was full of patients that had been in the earthquake. The grief and shock that the people were under was tremendous, so we would usher in the presence and peace of God as we prayed for healing and restoration. Just about every Haitian person we talked to had either lost at least one member of their family, if not their entire family. We would listen to story after story from brokenhearted people of the loss they had experienced.
For those of you that gave to this trip, your financial contribution went to a host of different things via Caleb: food, water, shelter provisions, flashlights, medical supplies, etc. Caleb is shipping truckload after truckload of supplies into various areas in Haiti, and though your money didn’t buy all of those supplies, it did contribute to it! Our team unloaded around 12 airplane loads of food and medical supplies in the short time we were there, and that is in addition to the supplies that are being trucked over from Dominican Republic to Pignon for distribution.
We made a trip to Port Au Prince and saw some of the destruction of the city. By the time we got there the dead bodies were already cleaned up, Praise God. Though Christine and I have been in many third world countries, we saw destruction and sadness that we have never encountered before.
God is not responsible for this mess; the enemy is. Our theology must begin to match our confession of, “God is good”. Why, if God caused the earthquake to happen, would a believer go about helping the situation improve and thus work in contradiction to His will? The same illogical, religious thought process is used when a person believes that it is God’s will for them to be ill. If God gave you that sickness or physical problem, why do you go to a doctor to get rid of it? Likewise, if you believe God brought about this earthquake, why would you want to work against God by helping to improve Haiti’s situation? Why would you feel grief, compassion, and love for Haiti if you think that God did it? If God did caused the earthquake, you should rejoice with each story of destruction, disease, and death that you hear about because then, and only then, would you be in-line with God’s will. But you don’t rejoice with the testimonies of death and loss. Instead, you feel the sadness and weight of the situation. You feel the awe of destruction. Why? Because your heart knows better than your theology, and even when the mind is blinded by religious teaching and heresies, your heart is not as easily duped.
Religious thinking brings us to the conclusion that God is responsible for things that He hasn’t done. But God is not angry with Haiti. He loves Haiti. He is in the relief work and the millions of dollars being given. He is in the cup of cold water. He is in the praises that are rising up from a people that have been ravaged by the enemy, despite the loss. He is there.
We love you, and thank you.
If you would like to keep giving to the relief effort for Haiti, you can give to Caleb’s ministry atwww.hosean.org
