By Tory Ruark. Short-term Mission Director.
Monday, October 18, 2010
I can’t believe I have been home a week and have not gotten a post up on here yet. I am so bad. I came home and hit the ground running with kids in school, church, soccer practice, a fundraising banquet, and so on. It is a reminder that life goes on here whether I am home or not—a common theme from our team get-together last night. The truth is, life goes on in Haiti whether I am there or not too.
Many people returning from short-term mission trips have a hard time accepting life at home after their trip. And legitimately so. There seems to be little hope for the country they were in, or they feel their trip was of little significance. I am no stranger to this feeling, yet this time, I came home with a different feeling. I came home with a feeling of hope and a feeling of satisfaction.
Our group, as are all DELTA teams, was involved with Missions Door missionaries and the Christian Center for Integrated Development (CCID or SKDE in Creole) which they helped start. This network of churches is dedicated to evangelism and long-term change in the lives of Haitians. They do not believe in saving a soul and forgetting the body and they do not believe in giving a man a fish when he could learn to fish. I am excited and confident that God has partnered us with the right men and the right ministry for “such a time as this.”
The prior blogs will tell you that we were working on some finishing projects at a church, doing a children’s program, and helping run a community health clinic. Some of the highlights from the final part of the trip were:
- Six children prayed with Pastor Francklin to receive Christ on Thursday when he shared the Gospel with the kids at our program. The interesting part about it was that, as he was having children come forward, he sent two of them back. Since I don’t speak Creole, I can only assume that he knew they were either church kids who already knew Jesus or that they were not sincere. That is the beauty of working within the church and not coming and doing our own thing.
- The tile project at the church was finished and the church will move out of the tent on the street and into their church! Our hard working men really had to humble themselves and serve the Haitian workers, but the rapport built with the workers was totally worth the patience, humility, and dedication they showed.
- We got a chance to work out at the Village of Hope where they are building 20 homes for people who are homeless because of the earthquake. They have plans to build 500 but only funding for the first 20.
- In a world where it can be so hard to see God at work, we got to see Him right in our own team. It was amazing to see how God placed each person on the team for a specific purpose. Nobody wondered about their role or why God had them there. We were only together for 10 days, but I think all of us miss each other like family.
Haiti is still a broken place with little or no government presence, no plan, and a hodge-podge of NGO’s that may or may not be actually helping. But we all come home with hope because we have seen what the Missions Door missionaries are doing through the CCID. They have a plan for helping people ranging from church outreach, to community centers, to building homes, and even to agriculture coops. Not only have we seen the plan, but we got to participate. Praise the Lord for the opportunity to participate in what He is doing in Haiti. Please continue to pray with us for the people of Haiti.
