Haiti H2O

We wil be posting updates and photos to the Haiti H2O fasebook page.  You dont need to be a member of facebook to view.

Here is the Link.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Haiti-H2O/250759747708

In 1997, Sarah and I led our first team to Haiti. We were going to build a school in the remote community of Baissin Caimman. There was no electricity, no running water; in fact, there was barely a two-track road cut through the brush to get there. We worked hard that week – mixing cement by hand and stacking cement blocks, and cutting rebar with a hacksaw. I practiced my Creole as I gathered rocks for the school foundation with the children. Onelle, a 9-year-old boy with a brilliant white smile and very soft demeanor, became my teacher.

I would ask him in Creole, “Kisa sa ye,” which means, “What is this?”

“Gwo rouche,” he would respond: “big rock.” And then ask “An anglais?”

“Big rock.”

I learned the name for everything I could point at. It was this week that I also started learning Haitian proverbs — the oral wisdom that has been passed down since the days of slavery.

“Mes anpil, shy pa lou.”

“Many hands make the work light”

I thought we had a very successful week. We put up 1,000 cement blocks for the first three-room school building in that community. We Americans like to do things, and we were certainly doing things. Pearl Jam captures this spirit of doing in their latest song, “The Fixer”:

When something’s dark, let me shed a little light on it

When something’s cold, let me put a little fire on it

If something’s old, I wanna put a bit of shine on it

When something’s gone, I wanna fight to get it back again

Later in the week, we met the widow who lived right across from the new school building. Through our interpreters, she told us how she and a few other people had met for years each Sunday under the shade of the tree where we all were sitting. These older members of the community were too worn from a life of hard work and heat to walk the five miles to a neighboring church. So they met together, sang and prayed that some day there would be a church right here in this community.

I can remember my ego deflating, in that instant, like the soccer ball we’d kicked into a thorn bush earlier that day. I thought I’d organized the group and initiated this new project for these people in this poor and forgotten country. But as we sat there listening to the history of this area, I thought, “I am just a tool.”

God was already present in Baissin Caimman. I was just one of the many many people – one of the many tools in this grand project – able to join in the work of establishing a church, a school and a clean water source. But this was also liberating. All my naïve notions of fixing this poor country were aligned with what was already happening.

I know that it is the same God who is working in our lives and the lives of the Haitians. He is the God who has been working to redeem his people. Being orientated with that truth has helped my perspective and built a foundation for us to come along side and work together with the people in that community.

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:19)

I had a chance to speak to a predominantly African American church today about Haiti. This church rests in a poverty-stricken area of Pittsburgh and they contacted me regarding the earthquake in Haiti.

Our organization, Haiti H20, is sending down funds to our Haitian partners who are on the front lines of the increasing need in Haiti. They are in positions of leadership within their communities and able to direct food and water to families and individuals who are being impacted by the earthquake. This church has $1,000 left over from last year’s budget, and even though they need a new roof and face the ongoing needs and challenges of their community, they want to reach out and support the people of Haiti.

In the shadow of millions being raised by national organizations, this may not seem like much. Often, it is our perception of what we don’t have that informs our understanding of wealth. I have heard experts say that for 20 billion dollars, we would be able to provide impoverished people around the world with nutrition, clean water and basic healthcare. Ironically, this is the amount Americans spend on ice-cream per year.

If 92% of the world does not have a car, then if we have a car, we are perceived at least by them as being rich. It doesn’t matter what the condition of the car or the make; if a car sits in front of my house, I am one of the lucky 8% who owns one.

Do I have clean water? RICH! Approximately 800 million people went without food yesterday,and around 300 million of them were children. Do I have food in my home? RICH! If we have WIC to assist with food, RICH! If we have food stamps, RICH! If we have insurance for our homes, RICH! If we have access to health care, RICH! If we have free education for our children…and the list goes on and on.

Here in this church is a community scarred by the loss of several of its own youth, shot dead in gang violence. I experience a community who, by the standards of others, would be considered an impoverished and ghettoed area of Pittsburgh. And yet I discover a community rich in spirit, generosity and love, a congregation bound together by their story who yearn to share what little they have with those who have even less.

I am very grateful for the Hollywood stars and their efforts to organize telethons for Haiti. But after experiencing the generosity of this tattered and torn Pittsburgh community who gave from out of their poverty, I emerge hopeful and encouraged with a new resolve for responding to Haiti.

I am reminded of the aerial bombing videos sent during the Gulf War that we watched as a family in our “living room.” The blurred buildings viewed in infrared, outlined with a set of cross hairs set along its shape. Then BOOM! A cloud of dust, lives lost, and a new target on the screen.

What I didn’t see were the children and women impacted. I didn’t see the families in pain and chaos from the devastation of lost relationships and hopes. There was a disconnect, an interruption of the backstory to what I was watching on my television screen.

What brought this to mind was my recent scanning of the Internet for new videos and coverage of the earthquakes in Haiti. I see the masses wandering and looking for help. I can even view the stories of the lives impacted. I don’t just see the ruin of buildings; I can hear and view the stories of brokenness of the Haitians on my 17-inch Mac.

But the disconnect is back. Beer, pick-up trucks, cheerleaders, stuffed burritos, Whoppers, Viagra, 4th down, what was Farv thinking! mmmm dollar menu and McD’s, more tough trucks (that they could really use to haul all that rubble in Port-au-Prince)…and “Oh, there it is!”

Text 10 bucks to Haiti. Text American Red Cross. Mission accomplished. Now back to the game.

How to keep this on the front-burner after all the lights shut down and CNN takes leave will be a challenge for many who are interested in relief to Haiti right now. It seems that the best I can do is not to “add” Haiti to the disconnected universe I live in, but rather to cut out the peripheral fluff that secretly whispers sweet nothings into my ear.

Have you ever seen the movie Jurassic Park? There’s a scene where Malcolm, the brilliant mathematician who specializes in chaos theory, reacts in horror as he is shown the dinosaurs for the theme park.

“Don’t you see the danger, John, inherent in what you’re doing here?” he asks. “You stood on the shoulders of giants to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you knew what you had, you patented it, packaged it, slapped it on a plastic lunch box, and now you want to sell it.”

Direction is everything, distance is secondary.

We just returned home from Haiti. We certainly covered a lot of distance over the past six days, but I am more encouraged than ever by the direction Haiti H2O is facing.

We have strengthened our ties with the Haitian communities in which we serve. By partnering with and depending on local communities through the leadership of their churches, we see how lasting change can happen. As we visited Bassin Caiman and St. Martin, folks asked us about our families, about churches who have visited in the past, about Luther and Carol Hansley (the missionaries who first introduced us to Haiti) and the Bradbury family (our board president who spent six weeks in Haiti with his family this past summer).

As we slowed down, sat and drank cups of coffee together, we talked about those who have gone before us. And I was reminded of that scene in Jurassic Park.

We are connected by a rich tapestry of people, experiences and a loving God who cares about justice, mercy and right relationships (Micah 6:8). Our trips to Haiti are an integral piece of giving these people a hand up and not a hand out.

In addition to the communities we are presently working with, we visited two new areas. The HCDF (Haitian Christian Development Fund) is located in Fond-des-Blancs, and a 26 year ministry of Jean and Joy Thomas, who worked with John Perkins and The Voice of Calvary. We talked not only about water, forestry and building projects, but about the quality of education once the schools were erected. In Haiti, the default method of teaching is rote memorization. We learned how they trained their teachers to create a new method which encourages independent thinking. For Haiti to dig itself out of the present economic and political abyss, they will need a generation of new thinkers and activism to lead the way.

We visited Plain Matin, a new community we are considering working with. Plain Matin is about two hours north of Les Cayes on very rough road. We saw tell-tale signs of malnutrition, bloated bellies and a red tint to the children’s hair. It is a definite area of need where the pastor receives no salary from the congregation. As we sat in his house talking, we asked about the coffin sitting in the corner. He replied, to our relief, that he makes ends meet by carpentry and was hoping to sell it.

There is so much physical need in Haiti, but the hope of the people that we have been working with for the last 12 years strengthens my own faith in the God who has the hairs on all of our heads numbered (Matthew 10:30).

The work we are doing will take time, and will not be flashy, but if God is in it, we are confident that it will succeed. Thank you for your support as we continue down the path God has set before us

Having participated and led short term mission trips for over 20 years, we realize that one thing remains the same. Impoverished nations face a reality of infrequently-met needs. Occasionally, these gaps are filled by mission groups looking to “plug the holes” that, in return, provide the participant with a sense of immediate results. Yet after years of participating in such service endeavors, we wonder if we shouldn’t be asking different questions. It seems that, in order to be part of a sustainable mission transformation, we must address issues connected not only with service, but also those relating to justice. Sadly, many organizations fail to address the systems that perpetuate the ongoing needs they seek to fill. In order to look differently at this pursuit, there must be clarity about the difference between service and justice.