Last Wednesday I returned home from a six-day trip to the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Many of you were a part of the prayer and financial support that helped to send me there and enable my team and I to minister to people who are in the midst of a tragic situation.
Ten of us met in the airport in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. While still in the DR’s capitol city we met with a friend of AIM. Jack Larson started and heads up Mission Emanuel, an organization that encompasses a school, community center, and water treatment plant in Santo Domingo. He took care of us our first night away from home, helped us get set up with phones, and sent us on our way in the morning with 5,000 bottles of clean drinking water to take to refugees a the border.
By the time we arrived to begin work, a team of some friends of ours had been in the Dominican making contacts for a few days. They introduced us to a church in a Dominican border town called Jimani. The church was a temporary home to several other missionaries passing through. It was also a permanent home to about 30 orphans. The people running the orphanage and church had been cooking 20 gallons of chicken soup every day since the earthquake in their neighboring Haiti. They were tired and their home was in direpair.
When we arrived our new friends offered us a place to sleep in their church. We helped them cook soup and serve people around the town — the infirm and their families at the hospital, families who were living on sidewalks after fleeing destroyed homes. We helped them clean up their home and find some rest.
After we had been at the church/orphanage for a day and a half we found a ministry contact fifteen miles across the border into Haiti. The next day we climbed into the back of the truck that was our transportation for the week and we made our way to Bon Parisian, Haiti. There we worked with a large church and ministry center. The first day we were there we split our team into two groups. One group worked in a storage room, organizing food and supplies into piles to be distributed to pastors around Port au Prince who would then distribute it to victims of the earthquake. My group met people in who were staying in the ministry center to talk and pray with them.
The second day we were at the ministry center we worked for the first part of the day organizing much of their own food into single-family bags to be distributed to the people who were coming there for help. The second half of the day I spent with a couple of our Dominican friends organizing a tractor-trailer full of medical supplies. The ministry center also housed a hospital and clinic and saw about 200 people that second day. I was happy to be able to organize the medical supplies for the medical staff that was giving their time to help people in need.
We spent almost the entirety of the next day riding back to Santo Domingo, where we stayed one more night before flying back to the states the next morning. We had a great team of World Race alumni. We had fun together and were able to encourage each other greatly in the time we spent together. Stephanie introduced the team on her blog here.
Over the next few days I’m going to try to share with you more of the thoughts and feelings I’ve been processing through since visiting and returning from Haiti. Your prayers and support are invaluable as I continue to follow the Lord to bring hope to a dying world.Remember, you can receive an email each time I write a new blog by clicking the “Subscribe” link on the upper-left part of this page and entering your email address.
