A massive earthquake hit Haiti on 12 January 2010 around 5pm, leaving an estimated 3,000,000 in need of humanitarian aid. At the end of April 2010, I received an invitation to be a part of a team to lead a pastors retreat in Port au Prince, Haiti sponsored by Churches Helping Churches. We had 1 month to plan and pull together all of the details! The goal of the retreat was two-fold-first to renew, encourage, and strengthen Haitian pastors with the gospel, and second, to equip them to care for and counsel their people with the gospel once they returned to their towns. I had the privilege of co-laboring with Pastor Mike Wilkerson and Justin Holcomb from Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA and Pastor Paul Randolph from Davisville Church in Southampton, PA. The following is the first of six journal entries that highlight and reflect my time in Haiti. I am grateful for the men and women all over the world who prayed for this first-of-a-kind event in Haiti.
Day 1 —Reality in Haiti: Sunday, 23 May 2010
I stepped into SEATAC airport in Seattle, WA already tired and fatigued after teaching a Doctoral level class in Marriage and Family Counseling at Northwest Baptist Seminary in Tacoma, WA for 3 days straight for a total of 24 hours. God blessed my time as the students gained a better grasp of the gospel for their own lives, family, and ministry. I prayed that the Haitian pastors would experience this same transformation but I knew that we would have extra challenges with teaching through translators.
As I made the transition from one ministry event to the next, I was faced head on with the real weight of what awaited our team in less than 24 hours. I found myself dreading what I would experience in Haiti-the hot tropical climate in an unknown culture filled with devastation, all without the comfort and conveniences of home. I had to remind myself of God’s provision and protection (cf. Ps. 23, 27). I slept surprisingly well on the red-eye flight from Seattle to Miami, where we saw a number of relief workers-a Christian group from North Carolina, a team from Lubbock, TX, a medical team from Atlanta, GA, and members of the Norwegian Red Cross. My excitement grew as I saw all of these people heading to Haiti to love and serve those in great need. Our connecting flight arrived in Haiti around 10:45am. Game time!
Once we arrived, we stepped into the heat and humidity and we were greeted by the loud and festive beat of a Haitian band. We walked outside across the tarmac to the customs area to pick up our baggage and headed outside to find Thomas Kim, the Executive Director of Churches Helping Churches. We waded through a swarm of people looking to carry our bags for a tip and we made our way to the car. First stop was to “Mega Mart” to buy 150 air mattresses for the Haitian pastors to sleep. The container filled with all of the conference equipment-a huge tent, 200 cots, and resources for the pastors were sitting in a shipping container held-up in customs since the end of the previous week. This was a real example of the spiritual and physical battle surrounding the conference! This shopping spree took us to one of the few places in Haiti that was air conditioned and was filled with NATO soldiers from Korea and Sri Lanka, as well as locals.
Next Wah-Wah, an Old Testament professor at STEP seminary, the co-sponsor for the pastor’s retreat, took us on a quick tour of downtown Port Au Prince, where we got a closer look at tent cities and buildings demolished by the earthquake. During our tour, Wah-Wah shared an incredible testimony of how the Lord delivered him from a life of witchcraft at the age of 20 and provided for him during the persecution that followed. He also shared that he slept in a bed for the first time when he was 20 years old in the home of missionaries. We learned that most Haitians grow up sleeping on the floor.
We finally arrived at the seminary campus, embedded in the heart of town, where we enjoyed a light lunch
and met Jacques and his family. Jacques serves as the New Testament professor at STEP. After a quick afternoon nap to recover from the red-eye flight, we had a delicious curry stew with goat meat over rice! We then had a planning and prayer meeting to work out the last minute details and make-shift changes due to the lack of tents and cots for the pastors, which impacted how late the conference could go each night. The prayer time was so helpful as I was reminded that we were getting ready to step into the lives of real people with real needs and that we needed our real God to pour out his grace, wisdom, and love over all of His people! We went to bed that night thankful for a good day after spraying the window screens with bug spray-which became a nightly ritual!
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Robert, thanks for taking the time to record this. I am greatly encouraged by reading how our God is at work in Haiti and in your ministry. Blessings.