After we loaded our bags into two vehicles, we made our way through the city of Port Au Prince one last time as we headed to the airport.  I was excited to be on my way home but I tried to soak in one last visual experience of the poverty stricken, earthquake riddled country.  The trip to the airport also included learning more about Wah-Wah’s story as a student, how he met his wife, and how he came back to Haiti to serve as a professor and Dean of Students at the seminary. We finally arrived at the airport and our Haitian friends gave us one last bit of instruction … don’t let anyone touch your bags! Enough said.

We quickly passed through one security check, then zigzagged through the line to check-in. All of us enjoyed the air condition in the airport as we waited in line and made our way through a second security checkpoint to our gate. All of us on the team began to say our good-byes, realizing that once we hit the states, we would scatter to Washington, Florida, New Mexico, Kentucky and Illinois.

The flight from Haiti to Miami was a blessing as I sat between an Army soldier stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti and a non-profit business owner who has devoted her life helping the Haitian people find jobs.  The conversation was filled with talk about God, His gracious and saving work accomplished through His Son Jesus Christ, and the need to share the gospel.  I also marveled at God’s creation as we flew over several Caribbean islands embedded in a sea of deep blue and emerald green waters.  I always flash back to my days in the Navy when I experienced the beauty of the vast ocean, whether on an old destroyer, cruiser, or a super aircraft carrier.  God has blessed me with diverse life experiences that He has used to grow and change me. Praise Him!

We arrived safely in Miami, made our way through a crowded customs area and had just enough time to board our connecting flight to Chicago.  By the time we arrived in Chicago, fatigue was setting in from the weeks of preparation in the midst of the challenges of pastoral ministry, the lack of sleep and the demands of the conference, to the spiritual battles we faced before and during our time in Haiti. I finally had a chance to grab some long-awaited American food, ate half of my chicken wrap, then started feeling sick.  I felt miserable on my flight from Chicago to Louisville, wondering if I needed to use the bag located in the seat back of the plane L.  The Lord sustained me as I was reunited with my precious wife Karen, but on the ride home, I kept saying, “I’m soooo tired.”

I praise God for the unique opportunity to minister with a team of pastors from across the country to pastors who lived in totally different country. Despite the ethnic and culturally differences, we are all one family, who share the same faith, hope, and love in Christ! We all recognized that God enabled us to participate in something that was above and beyond what we could ever ask or think (cf. Eph. 3:20).

For all who prayed for us during this extraordinary week, THANK YOU! I end this journal with one of the only Creole phrases I know.  I shared it with the Haitian pastors and I will share it with you as well …   Jezi renmen ou … Jesus loves you.

Location of STEP seminary classroom building destroyed by earthquake where one student died

I woke up around 3:45am by a loudspeaker that amplified the drone of a Haitian man whose message was delivered in a militant-like cadence.  It was hard to go back to sleep because I thought I heard the jeer of a crowd, which caused my mind to imagine a rebellious uprising taking place right outside the seminary walls.  The loudspeaker finally died down after about 30 minutes and I fell back to sleep. I woke up around 5:45am by the ritual rising of the tropical sun, the raspy crows of roosters and the charcoal smell of the open-fire kitchens.

Immediately after waking up, the Lord reminded me of my craving for comfort, but more importantly, He reminded me of who He is. Forgive me Lord for seeking comfort apart from You, the God of all comfort (cf. 2 Cor. 1:3-5).  I was humbled and encouraged at the same time! After re-learning this lesson for the “upteenth” time, the Lord provided a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs, which I thoroughly enjoyed!  Later that morning, some of the other pastors said they heard the commotion of the loudspeaker during the middle of the night and some Haitian pastors told them that the noise we heard was a Christian prayer vigil.  Haitians are known as a praying people and churches take turn leading 24-hour prayer vigils.

In the main teaching time in the morning, Jean Dorlus, the president of STEP, taught a critical session on God sovereignty and natural disasters, which helped to remind the pastors of a biblical view of sin, suffering, and the goodness of God.

After lunch, Wah-Wah took us on a quick tour of downtown and a major tent city located in the main square.  Energetic kids were running around, faithful women were cooking outside the tents, weary men and women were hanging out along the walkways while children were being washed in tubs of water. I was surprised that this particular tent city was so organized and clean given the circumstances. We were told that NATO forces help manage and control these tent cities.  Despite the first-hand experience of walking through the tent city, I struggled as a visitor to connect with the Haitians’ reality of being forced to re-locate to such living arrangements.  I am sure that if I spent the week in a tent city, my perspective would be different.

During the closing session of the conference, Dr. Dorlus preached a compelling message calling the pastors to love their neighbors in word and deed, to equip their people to do the work of ministry, and to send out leaders to plant churches. Afterwards, the Haitian pastors were given a certificate of completion-a big deal in the Haitian culture.  As part of a Haitian ritual, I stood in a receiving line with the others teachers to shake the pastors’ hands and bless them after they received their prized certificate. The conference was now officially over and the pastors lingered to share one last blessing and to exchange email addresses. We were all blessed by their gratitude!

We enjoyed a late but nice dinner around 8:30pm of fried plantains, goat meat chunks, a hush puppy-like dish and pineapple upside down cake.  The pastors headed home in the dark Haitian night after being away from their families all week.  The American team gathered for one last debrief.  We were all tired but extremely thankful for the privilege to minister to our Haitian brothers. We praised God for His faithfulness and for enabling the gospel to do its transforming work in our hearts and in the lives of the Haitian pastors.  We were amazed how God lavished his grace and wisdom upon us as he allowed us to get a glimpse of His vision, to witness the conference become a reality and to take part in a God-sized event that will have a lasting impact on the pastors and people of Haiti!  We ended our debrief with an extended prayer time. (Please read Thomas Kim’s summary of the Churches Helping Pastors conference).

To top off our last night, the electricity went out around 11pm right before we finished packing.  I struggled to fall asleep due to the heat but finally fell asleep around 1:00am as I kept clinging to the God of all comfort!

During my first teaching time, I decided to illustrate my teaching points with a marriage reference-discussing the dynamics of the heart and the dynamics between an angry husband failing to love his wife because of his wife’s disrespect and lack of submission to his leadership.  After covering the teaching material, I opened the floor for questions and a pastor immediately asked why I decided to pick a marital issue. I told him I wanted to show them that the counseling approach and skills we were teaching them not only apply to helping those deal with grief or post traumatic stress, but they can use the same approach to minister the gospel in any aspect of life, to include marriage.  Later that day, the same pastor who asked me the question brought a fellow pastor who was struggling in the exact way I described in the training session.  I was blown away by how God works … praise Him!

The rest of the day was highlighted by an energetic Q&A session where the pastors asked thoughtful questions about Christian counseling versus secular counseling, how to minister to children in their grief, how to equip members for gospel ministry given they are the only paid staff, note-taking during counseling, how to teach church members about love in tangible ways, and how to minister to those dealing with anger, confusion, and fear-especially fear of going back into homes or other buildings with concrete roofs. Whew!  The pastors seemed to get a lot from these Q&A sessions.

Lunch was a choice between whole fried fish, heads and all, or goat, along with rice and beans and a delicious grapefruit casserole.  I chucked because I remembered seeing Wah-Wah off load several “hog-tied” goats from the back of his pick-up truck earlier in the morning.

All throughout the day, as I kept wiping my sweat with a makeshift handkerchief, I found myself longing for home-eating familiar food, living in a plush and air-conditioned space along with a warm shower.  God was revealing what I hunger and thirst for and my incessant desire for comfort.  I was reminded how much my lust for comfort shaped my self-centered perspective.

I sprayed the window screens once again, laid down in bed while sticky and sweating, and thanked God for another day and for seeing us through our final day of teaching, at least for us as the counseling team.

I passed on the goat stew and onions over rice for breakfast, knowing I had to preach later in the afternoon.  This was a big day of teaching as we planned on encouraging and reminding our fellow Haitian pastors of God’s gracious gift of faith, hope, and love through Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross.  We prayed that God would use this second day of the conference to deepen and widen the pastors’ understanding of the gospel for not only for their everyday lives but in their time of need in light of the earthquake’s massive destruction. We prayed for the pastors to be renewed and strengthened in the gospel so that they would be able to go back to their towns to minister the gospel to their people in deeper and more relational ways.

The morning started with a surprise as Thomas Kim, the executive director of Churches Helping Churches shared with all of the pastors that today was my 50^th birthday and they all sang Happy Birthday to me-I think it was in English?!  God blessed the entire day of worship as the Haitians belted out hymns from memory, despite the different denominations represented.  When I commented to one translator that all of the pastors knew these hymns by heart, he explained that with the extreme poverty, each family would purchase one hymn book and they would bring it for their Sunday gatherings, but everyone in the family would end up memorizing the hymns-this was a beautiful example of how poverty yields a beautiful blessing!  I was so moved by the worship as the chapel “shook” from the thunderous and passionate singing as every pastor sang with great conviction in spite of their extreme suffering. In like manner, during Pastor Justin Holcomb’s sermon, we felt an actual aftershock that lasted for only a few seconds-this slight tremor gave me a sober reality check of what the Haitian’s experienced-I can’t imagine! But the pastors didn’t run or react, so we took our cues from them!

I had the privilege of preaching about God’s love on my birthday!  My sermon, entitled, “Great Love in Great Suffering,” was taken from 1 John 4:7-21.  I prayed that the Lord would help His people to see and understand His love for them and to remind them that His love is based neither on their subjective feelings or perspective, nor on their life circumstances. In fact, God’s love is not defined by us in any way. But by His Spirit, we know God’s love (vv. 7-11), we live in His love (vv.12-16), and we grow in His love (vv. 17-21) as we live in Christ.  God’s love is declared most personally and concretely in the suffering and sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ:

⁹This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:9-10)

During a Q&A time that followed the teaching sessions, a pastor shared that he had taught the 1 John 4 passage many times, but he never saw the connection that his failure to love made him a hypocrite.  He went on to share that the Lord convicted him deeply about being a hypocrite-he was referring to the point I made that growing in God’s love drives out hypocrisy (cf. v. 20), “If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” He shared very openly and honestly that he was bitter against a friend who distributed relief aid to surrounding churches, except to him and his church.  I praised God not only for the Spirit’s conviction but also for compelling the pastor to share transparently before his fellow pastors.

Mike Wilkerson and I skipped dinner as he debriefed the small group leaders.  As the meeting progressed with many questions and demands for training, I began to question whether we promised too much in the area of equipping the pastors for gospel counseling, given that we had limited time, resources, and the inherent challenges of translation over a span of only two and a half days.  I expressed my discouragement and burn out during our debrief meeting with the American team, knowing that I still had to lead two practical skills training sessions the next day. But the Lord faithfully restored my perspective and sense of hope during our prayer time, along with a good night’s rest during a cool night.  God reminded me that we live in the midst of a relentless spiritual battle and that I need to keep clinging to my Christ.

God was working powerfully as we saw Him breaking down the stoic culture of Haitian men through two specific ways. First, the Haitian pastors who agreed to lead the 25 small group arranged by regional clusters agreed to lead their groups with honesty and openness regarding their struggles since the earthquake. Second, when Paul Randolph was listing the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress in the first session, the pastors were openly acknowledging their struggles through a show of hands.  Pastor Luke shared about his suffering as he lost both a son and daughter on the same day through the collapse of two separate educational buildings.  His son was the only student who was killed at STEP seminary and his daughter was killed as she attended classes in a downtown building.  God used Pastor Luke’s testimony to personalize the grief and pain in my heart and mind-suffering in Haiti was no longer a concept, but real grief was now connected to a real person, up close and personal.

The pastors scattered into their small groups after each teaching session. They enjoyed getting to know fellow pastors in their own region and unpacking the teaching sessions. One pastor said he enjoyed the small group time because he was able to share openly with other pastors who could relate to all he has been through as he has been pouring out his life to others in his church. We took advantage of the time we had to hang out and chat during our lunch and dinner times to get to know the Haitian pastors.

The team debriefed at the end of the night. We praised God for the beautiful work He was doing not only in the Haitian pastors’ hearts but in us as well.  The day started out with many unknowns but it ended with many reminders that God is good and faithful, and His people are precious regardless what part of the world you find yourself.  We sprayed the screens once again and fell asleep to the night sounds of 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!

This is the counseling task force that will teach and equip atChurches Helping Pastors in May, where CHC will provide a week-long retreat for the beleaguered Haitian pastors. The team is Robert Cheong from Sojourn Community Church (Louisville, KY), Justin Holcomb from the Resurgence Training Center (Seattle, WA), Paul Randolph from Insight Christian Counseling, Mike Wilkerson of Mars Hill Church’s counseling ministry (Seattle, WA), and one Haitian pastor…

Please pray for:

• An effective, gospel-centered counseling curriculum to be delivered to the Haitian pastors
• Sensitivity to the Lord as he is the counselor who will ultimately minister to people
• Haitian pastors who will receive this teaching
• People of Haiti who will receive this counseling from pastors

Sojourn’s vision to see the gospel transform everything-ourselves as individuals, our church, our city, and the world-is not just Sojourn’s vision; it is God’s vision! This vision of change is the mission of the gospel. Christ is working in powerful ways to build His church and to advance His kingdom in this dark world. You might ask, “What does have to do with counseling?” Everything! At Sojourn, counseling flows from the gospel and is seen as an integral part of gospel mission. So the mission of the gospel IS the mission of Sojourn counseling. You can’t separate the two. In fact, we intentionally refer to counseling as “gospel counseling” to make this very point.

So what is gospel counseling? Gospel counseling is a way of loving one another as we listen, explore, and understand the struggles of unbelief in one another’s hearts in the midst of life and suffering, while showing how Christ and His gospel truths apply in deeply personal and specific ways, so that we can live out the gospel by faith in community, by grace and the power of the Holy Spirit. Counseling carries out the two-fold mission of the gospel by building up believers in the church in love and by evangelizing unbelievers in the world which then advances the kingdom.

Sojourn Counseling has a four-prong approach: (1) compassionate care for those in the church and neighborhoods, (2) intentional equipping of men and women to live out the gospel and to help others to do the same, (3) loving engagement with those who preach and practice a different “gospel” as they counsel others, and (4) humble networking with churches across the world to learn and grow together so that we can better serve the bride of Christ.

So why is this vision campaign, and specifically, Commitment Sunday, important for Sojourn Counseling and the church as a whole? The answer is simple–gospel mission. The gospel is all about sacrifice and service. Give your time, your talents, and your resources to this glorious mission. We are called to step up and step out into mission because our King Jesus is on mission:

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matt. 9:35-38)

God is strengthening and unifying his church in the area of counseling. For too long, churches have shirked its responsibility in caring for its members as they struggle with life. Churches have allowed the modern therapeutic world to diagnose and deal with the problems of life and as a result, ministry leaders have lost perspective and confidence in helping those in need.  But a growing number of churches are seeing how the Word of God speaks directly to the issues of life and how the gospel transforms lives through the face-to-face, life-on-life ministry of the Word known as counseling.

God has been stirring the hearts of leaders in the biblical counseling field with a common mission to strengthen local churches, educational organizations, Christian counseling centers, and other Christian ministries by promoting excellence in biblical counseling as a means to accomplish compassionate outreach and effective discipleship. Such synergy has resulted in a developing group called the Biblical Counseling Coalition, which is gathering for a summit meeting in Chicago on May 3-4, 2010.

Sojourn Pastor Robert Cheong has been invited to take part in this exciting meeting. Please pray for God to pour out His wisdom and grace to all those involved and for God to unify the leaders with vision and mission. Listen to an audio interview with Pastor Robert about the Biblical Counseling Coalition and about Sojourn Counseling’s Informational meeting next Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 6:30pm at the Mid-town campus. Register for info meeting to see how you can serve in Sojourn Counseling.

Why does grief bring such a heavy burden arising from the ashes of bereavement?  Why the accident?  Why the terminal illness?  Why the natural disaster? Why the finality of death?

Why does grief come in waves of anguish and pain? Grief has a way of leaving us feeling fragile and unstable.  All you want to do inside is withdraw from friends and even loved ones.

There is nothing you can do to prepare or plan ahead of time for your moment of loss.  Death has no warning signals.  It is unpredictable and unexpected.  When death comes, it can cause our lives to move in slow motion, resulting in numbness towards life.

God’s Word has no better word for death than “enemy” (1 Cor. 15:25-26).  Death is at war of everything beautiful and precious about life. The outcry of our hearts that death is wrong and unnatural is absolutely right and true. Death exists because of sin (Rom. 6:23). When Adam and Eve acted as king and queen of their own kingdoms, they abandoned God’s Kingdom and forsook God’s ruling love in their lives.  Everyone in humanity followed their footsteps (Rom. 5:12).   Thus, death became a reality.

But death and grief do not have the final word, but life:  resurrected life in Jesus Christ!  The gospel reminds Christians that Jesus Christ died the death we should have died and lived the life we fail to live.  Christ rose again so that death would be defeated.  When we hear the deaths of loved ones and the lives lost in earthquakes, it reminds us that death still lives.  Yes, death is our last enemy, and death will be defeated once and for all.  Christ’s bodily resurrection and supremacy guarantees this.

So preach to yourself that Jesus’ resurrection and life have the last word.

Preach to yourself that Jesus has already paid for your sins and you’re forgiven.

Grief would want you to seek and escape to other temporary comforts: old photo albums, material things, memorable stories, and distractions (tv shows, facebook, twitter, exercise, food, relationships).  They all provide some brief comfort but none can satisfy you except Christ alone.

Pray and believe that Jesus would be your true source of comfort.

Christ knows your pain. He experienced death Himself and conquered it.

Because Christ lives, you also will live (Jn. 14:19).