helpless and heartsick in Haiti

This past week I was in Haiti with a team of 13 working with a ministry named Respire.  Respire is a non-profit that works with orphans, vulnerable children and restaveks to provide them with education and other things.  It is a marvelous ministry and the founder has a really inspiring story of how she got started.  A few years ago I went to Haiti 7 months after the earthquake hit.  As with anything, your memory eventually fades.

What I saw this time in Haiti was as heartbreaking as the last time I was there.  There is an 80% unemployment rate, practically no health care, malnutrition and preventable diseases are everywhere.  We spent the majority of our time at the school they had built loving on the children.  It was especially neat to see the teenagers on the trip blossom and have their hearts broken for orphans on the trip.  I said today in church that when I was a teenager all I cared about was girls.

Callie, a teammate on the trip, asked me the first or second night what the way forward is for Haiti.  I responded that I really believe the way forward for any developing economy is small business.  A student at Respire for a few weeks said he had done a parent assessment for a parenting class that he wanted to start.  He asked the parents what they thought they needed to become better parents and all of them responded the same; they need jobs.  Does it really take a survey to figure that out?  Personally, I think if you're going to take a needs assessment then you need to do it with an open mind and actually listen.  He already had his mind made up that they were going to do a parenting class, which is all well and good, except that it completely ignores what the people said their primary needs were.

As both an American and a male, my first reaction to any problem is to find a way to fix it.  The founder said she emphasizes to her interns that Haiti can't be fixed overnight and that she wasn't called to fix it.  She simply felt called to love on children and provide for them.  I believe Haiti can be fixed, but it will have to be fixed by Haitians themselves.  Well-meaning white people can offer help and expertise, but ultimately it's got to come from the Haitian people to take ownership of rebuilding their country.  My friend Ryan in Myanmar started an entrepreneurship school in Yangon where I'm going to visit him in a few short days.  His model is the best model out there in my opinion.  He has youth aged 16-30 take business classes for 3 months, then he sets them up with an internship with a local small business owner for 3 months during which time they're required to develop their own business plan; and finally he provides them with a micro loan to launch their own business.

I have a heart for doing something like that in Haiti, although I have a feeling I would make a much better right hand man than the actual founder of the school since that's usually the role I find myself in.  There's another organization in Uganda called Light Gives Heat that employs 120 women as artisans and sells their goods in America so they can have a steady income and provide for their children to go to school.  That is what I feel called to more and more lately.  So I'm going to go to Burma and check out my friend's model and see what I can do to help him and hopefully help others with similar things going on around the world.  Maybe instead of starting a school I could just be a teacher in one of them, that would be pretty awesome.  Who knows?  I'm open to anything at this point.

The last couple of days in Haiti I just felt so helpless.  I talked to Rita, one of the leaders of Respire, about how business could really help some of the people in the community and she agreed and said she would love to do something like that.  She then informed me that another non-profit got in a lot of trouble for doing just that in Haiti a while back because of red tape from the US.  They would have to make an LLC and wouldn't be allowed to work on the same campus as the rest of the ministry.  So there would be some obvious hurdles to overcome right off the bat.

In addition to that, the entire week I was heartsick for talking to my girlfriend Steffani.  We had spent the previous couple of weeks talking everyday since we were finally in the same time zone and man was it tough to not be able to talk with her for a week.  In fact, I downright hated that part of the trip.  I used to just not talk to a girl if I developed feelings for her and I'd get over it in a week or two.  Something is different now though.  I just want to spend time with her so badly it's awfully pathetic.  I pissed and moaned to some of the girls on the trip who just laughed and said I had gotten bit pretty hard by the love bug.  I love Steffani deeply and missed her more than I thought was humanly possible.

So, the helplessness and heartache caused me to be in what Anchorman Will Ferrell called a 'glass cage of emotion' haha  I think everyone reaches that point sometimes, where you just feel paralyzed.  I spent a large part of today catching up on world news and felt paralyzed again.  There are protests and police brutality in Istanbul, where I was last summer.  The Czech president or prime minister is resigning on Monday and that could lead to instability potentially.  This may not seem like a big deal to most people but I have dear friends who are running English camps over there this summer and I would hate to see them have to deal with any potential unwanted political outcomes while they're trying to focus on ministering to Czech youth.

Then, either out of necessity or desperation or both, I remind myself that God is sovereign over it all, and I am not.  All I'm called to do is pray about the situations that I can't change, and move forward in the ones that God chooses to use me to change.  Without the realization that ultimately God is in control of everything, we stay in that state of paralysis.  Only when we acknowledge that we are simply incapable of doing anything good on our own apart from the Creator are we able to then move forward.

Last week before I left, my great friend and pastor Ryan had a great idea for today at church.  He said they would send me to Myanmar but then I would turn around and send the rest of the church to their own mission field.  Honestly, I didn't spend any time preparing anything because we just returned from Haiti yesterday and I couldn't think straight last night.  I had a verse in mind but much beyond that I wasn't quite sure of what would come out of my mouth.  Before it was my turn to talk, I prayed that God would speak through me and I really feel like he answered that prayer.  I challenged our people to see their everyday lives as missionaries who are being sent to the people they interact with on a daily basis.  I said something along the lines of, "As you are sending me to Myanmar, so I am sending you to your places of work and home.  Spread the gospel to the people around you.  Minister to your family and your coworkers.  May you be a living example of the gospel."  It felt so right to say those words and the other ones that came out of my mouth.  Sometimes you just know when God uses you as His mouthpiece to call His people to a deeper level of commitment.  It's always an honor and a surreal feeling when the Holy Spirit is using you.

After church, I chatted with a bunch of friends that I had missed dearly and knew that I was leaving again soon so I enjoyed that thoroughly.  I also borrowed a book from a friend that I basically just met yesterday when she picked us up from the airport in Ft Lauderdale and drove us back to Sarasota and Bradenton.  Usually, borrowing a book is no big deal, I love to read and am often passionate about sharing what I'm reading with others.  This book was just downright embarrassing though.  It's titled The Marriage Builder by Dr. Larry Crab I believe.  This woman gave it to me because we had talked about relationships and what makes a marriage work.  Suddenly I have an interest in the subject so I decided I should probably learn about it from people who have been married for a long period of time.  So she suggested that book and lent me her old copy which was  no big deal.  Until people noticed that I, the guy who everyone at the church has only ever known as the single guy, was holding a book about marriage.  Naturally, I turned it over so people would stop asking me about it but unfortunately the title was at the top of the back cover as well so there was no escaping it.  Needless to say, my friends were in utter shock that I was interested in the subject but at the same time very supportive and happy for me.  When I told one friend that I actually kind of liked spending money on my girlfriend now her jaw dropped and she said with a laugh, "Aw, Justin's finally growing up."

Through it all, God is so good.  You come to the point where you realize His heart for orphans and the needy around the world is incredibly beautiful and you pray boldly for Him to bless you with a heart like His. You come to this point where you finally realize that even when everything is stripped away and all you're left with is God, that He truly is more than enough.  After a week in Haiti, you realize that you're the one who is truly poor because while many Christian Haitians may be unbelievably physically poor, they have a richness towards God that Christian Westerners could only dream of.