by robertcheong on June 13, 2010
Waking up tired and sticky, the cold shower never felt so good! I was up by 5:15am as we took turns taking showers, packing, and cleaning up evidence of our stay at the guesthouse for the past 5 days. I applied one more layer of insect repellent from head to toe as we waited for Wah-Wah and Jacques to pick us up and take us to the airport. A sweet older woman, who served us all week, graciously brought us one last Haitian meal-fresh fruit and croissants!
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.
by robertcheong on June 11, 2010
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!
by robertcheong on June 9, 2010
I woke up around 5:00am thinking about how I will teach the pastors about gospel counseling, which requires both understanding the heart of a person and proclaiming gospel truths in specific and personal ways. The Lord was gracious to help me sketch out the details and approach for the two practical skills training sessions. After a tasty breakfast of Creole-seasoned cornmeal and a croissant with peanut butter, I spent the next hour and a half working with Frantz Morisset as he translated the small practical skills training guides.
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.
by robertcheong on June 8, 2010
Right after receiving a “Happy 50th Birthday” text from my precious wife, my good friend Pastor Mike Wilkerson was the first one in Haiti to wish me a happy birthday … he confessed that my wife reminded him to do so! I felt loved anyway! I was thankful to not only wake up to another day with Christ, but the Lord had given me 50 years!
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 50th 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.
by robertcheong on June 4, 2010
I woke up after a good night’s sleep to the smell of an open wood fire, roosters crowing, and goats bleating. Most Haitians cook outside since homes tend not to have indoor kitchens or bathrooms. By 6:45am I take a quick cold shower-no hot water available, spray on insect repellant from head to toe, eat a breakfast bar and we head out towards the chapel where the conference will be held. Conference registration is scheduled from 9-11am but pastors start to arrive at 8am. We quickly learn that we will have to “go with the flow” since there were a number of factors beyond our control-unreliable electrical supply, miscommunication, unplanned events and delays, and a container still stuck in customs. In other words, we needed to expect the unexpected.
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.
Waking up tired and sticky, the cold shower never felt so good! I was up by 5:15am as we took turns taking showers, packing, and cleaning up evidence of our stay at the guesthouse for the past 5 days. I applied one more layer of insect repellent from head to toe as we waited for Wah-Wah and Jacques to pick us up and take us to the airport. A sweet older woman, who served us all week, graciously brought us one last Haitian meal-fresh fruit and croissants!
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.
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).
