By Tory Ruark
(October 4, 2010 - Haiti) Imagine for just a moment that you are standing atop a green fertile hillside. To the left is the big city—just 30 minutes away—to the right is your town and right in front of you is a brilliantly blue sea. You are standing in the middle of a new subdivision with an architect and construction supervisor talking about the 20 houses that are under construction. Phase one of the neighborhood is 20 houses and all the lots have been marked off. Most of the foundations have been dug and the walls are beginning to go up on the first few.
THAT IS WHERE I FOUND MYSELF ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON. We were out visiting different projects being overseen by our on field partners and this was one of them. It filled me with hope to see almost 20 men employed building these 20 houses. When they are finished, the city government will choose the 10 most vulnerable families to receive a house and the pastors’ council will choose another 10. Together, they will begin living in community. We also saw schools, churches, and water purification projects completed or near completed.
Think about it. When was the last time you read a story about what was being done in Haiti? And here I was, hearing and watching water from a newly dug and piped well flowing into a cistern. How creative is Pastor Guillo and his ministry team? One newly constructed church is outfitted with a gutter system that funnels rainwater into a reservoir below the church floor that will provide water the bathrooms (a huge need by the way) and for a future water purification project.
Sunday was just as big of a blessing! We attended Friendship Baptist Church where we are working this week. The church of over 250 people meets under a tent in the street outside of the church property. Honestly, the tent takes up all nearly all of the street! Your Ford F-150 would not fit through the alley that remains—but still they gather. Men, women, and children in their Sunday best—they gather with a joy for the Lord that is not common. I can honestly say I have never sat through a service where I don’t understand the language and enjoyed it so much!
After church, we visited several more places where DELTA teams have been at work. One of those was Victory Baptist Church. This was the first church repaired after the earthquake. It is now finished and beautifully painted. The church operates a kindergarten and opened a brand new afterschool program for children in the nearby tent city in July. Actually, the last time I was here in July was the first week the program was open and they have over 100 children! This week is their first week at full capacity with over 300 children! The pastor and several of the young church leaders were there preparing but it wasn’t hard to get them to share about the program and almost impossible to keep them from worshipping and praising God. Let me tell you, it was a blessing to listen to their beautiful male voices sing in harmony! We sung several songs together and then closed our time by singing the hymn Amazing Grace. As I was listening to them I was hit by the irony of the descendents of former slaves singing a hymn written by a former slave trader. Only with God, could a wretch like John Newton write a song that would be used centuries later by the descendents of the very people he victimized to declare God’s glory!
The trip has been so full, I am just barely getting to today! Today we were working at Friendship Baptist Church. We have a couple of nurses who are helping in a mobile clinic for people in the community, some of the members of the team are leading a children’s program, and several of us are assisting the Haitian crew finish the final touches on the church. What a joy it was to see the men work! They were like artists performing their trade! And the children were such a joy! Pray for our children’s program as about 1/3 of them are not from the church. The story we are sharing is a five part story about how a Haitian family learns to trust God instead of Voodoo magic following a natural disaster and is extremely powerful (believe it or not it was produced long before the earthquake and has been approved by the leaders in Haiti).
One of my bright spots today was watching the kids play 5 on 5 soccer in the street after VBS. One of our team members had gotten uniforms (shorts, jerseys, goalie jerseys, and goalie gloves) and balls donated. I wish you could have seen how excited they were to put on the uniforms. They all stripped down and changed right there in the street! Pretty soon parents, teenagers, and neighbors had gathered to watch the game. It was such a neat moment. The kids were dressed and playing with all the same gear they see the players play with on TV! I was fortunate enough to catch the first goal on my video camera! It was perfect as I was able to catch the reaction of the “fans” and even the little boy who scored as he ran down the “field” with his arms out like an airplane celebrating, again, just like the players he watches on TV.
