Haitians are an awe inspiring people. I’m sitting on the balcony of the house we’ve been blessed with to house our staff and teams listening to a church service entering its fourth hour of worship just down the hill from us (I’d be there, but was sick yesterday and needed the rest this morning). The sound of hundreds of people shouting ‘Hallelujah’ washes over me like water to my soul and echoes around the neighborhood. That’s not the amazing thing though – it’s that before the earthquake, Haiti was hard soil for the gospel, and now no matter what day you drive through these communities you see and hear church after church praising God just like that, day after day, several times a day, because so many just congregate to do so at any given time. Thousands have turned to God after centuries of worshiping everything else, and they do so in a completely abandoned manner. They love simply, and they love much. And, such as things go in the upside down manner that God’s kingdom tends to be, all those that are coming to help Haiti are in turn being blessed by God through the Haitian people. If I let myself think about it, I can’t really believe I’m out here and seeing all this.
The physical needs of Haiti are overwhelming though. There are blocks of ruined buildings, and blocks of relief tents, including on the median in the middle of busy streets, that you know have little to nothing inside but the people who occupy them. Rubble that’s been cleared from the street is just piled on the sidewalks, so as you drive you’re literally driving through piles of the ruined pieces of a nation. At times it’s confusing – you will see what looks like a pile of rocks and dust with a broken roof on top of it that used to be a home next to what appears to be an untouched shack with obviously inferior construction. There are entire neighborhoods that look largely intact, in between neighborhoods where no two bricks are still together. How the ground can move like that and leave something standing I cannot fathom, let alone how those two extremes exist next to one another. Those who have homes in good condition are sleeping under tarps in the street, so great is their fear of entering a building now. People are resorting to drinking water they know might kill them just to hold on a little longer, so great is their thirst. Everyone is hungry, everyone is thirsty, and children are wasting away in their mother’s arms. And for 9 out of 10 people, all I can offer are prayers, and though I know that’s what I’m called to do, and for a reason, and that I trust God, not being able to feed someone dying of hunger never gets easier.
We have food going out by the truck load, we’re arranging water supply trucks to come to church compounds where people are living in groups of hundreds, we’re setting up tarps as makeshift roofs, and we have basic medical supplies to help with the daily afflictions. All that, and we can only help a few. You never realize how much a human being needs to survive until it’s life or death every day. But God is here. I walk down streets and alleys praying and I can feel Him moving. I see Him orchestrate unbelievable circumstances and series of events just to have a particular person prayed for that would otherwise be ignored. I see what He’s doing in the hearts of the people that have come to help – this is a two way street of blessing God has established between Haiti and the world – when they choose to be changed by what they’re seeing. All of this I’ve seen, and all of this I’ve done. I’ve been here 4 days.
