Sunday in Haiti

Sunday in Haiti

We started our day with a tour of Mission of Hope’s main campus, as our MOH intern shared the history of MOH, many of their current programs, and walked us through their campus.  At the bottom of the hill, we ended up at church.  Those of us who have been to Mission of Hope before always look forward to church in Haiti and the power of the experience.  It always amazes our new team members that people whose lives were deeply affected by the earthquake and struggle through with tremendous poverty are always so joyful and so thankful.  They pour out their hearts and souls in worship and speak so often about their complete dependence upon God.  One of the things that usually has a significant impact upon our team members is how much the concerns and wealth of our world crowd out a deeper faith.  

After lunch, we traveled to the MOH’s other two developments in Bercy and Leveque.  When I first visited Bercy in 2010, there was nothing there but a vision of a property that could bring life transformation to Haiti.  It has been simply amazing to see that vision become a reality in so many ways.  Today, there is a school educating hundreds of Haitian children, a clean water source, guest homes for missions teams, the beginnings of a conference center, new housing for MOH staff, and crops testing new growing techniques.  Part of the vision is for Bercy to become a center where Haitian farmers can learn about more efficient farming methods and to receive support to increase their crop yields, which will enable them to better support their families and for Haiti to become less dependent upon foreign grown food.  This is a beautiful piece of property along the Caribbean, given to MOH by the Haitian government because of the positive impact they are having upon Haiti.  There are many additional plans for incredible uses of the Bercy property.

After Bercy, we traveled to nearby Leveque to see the community that started in 2010.  It was so powerful for our group to walk up the hill and look down upon a thriving community where the houses are mostly hidden by all the banana trees, plantain trees, and other food sources people are growing on their properties.  After learning about our team’s history in Leveque, our group was especially struck by the contrast between prior pictures and the current reality in Leveque.  In addition to the amazing progress in Leveque, the roof is now on top of a fully functioning church.  In addition they MOH has also built a school on top of the hill, which is currently educating 250 children from the community.

It was a great day to experience Haitian church, catch the vision of MOH for Haiti, and see the amazing progress MOH has been responsible for over the past few years.  We are excited to take a special trip tomorrow to Kenscoff, which is about two hours away.  We will be traveling into the mountains to work at a crèche (an orphanage for children who are in the process of being adopted).  We be planting trees and loving on the precious children in the crèche.  

I close tonight with a reflection from Tessa about an experience from Saturday:
“Hi everybody!   I just wanted to share a little story of something that happened yesterday while we were washing clothes by the river. I kneeled down in a pretty muddy area to start washing the clothing.  A women walked by and said something to the women I was working with in Creole that I didn’t understand. The women looked over the top of the bucket and saw the mud I had been kneeling in.  She handed me a shirt to kneel on, I thanked her, kneeled on it, and kept washing.  About 15 minutes later some little boys came walking by me and began to yell at me in Creole.  They were pointing at my legs so I immediately thought that they were yelling at me for kneeling on one of their shirts.  I pulled the shirt out from under me held it up and looked at them.  They began to shake their heads, still pointing at my legs. I realized that they weren’t even thinking about the shirt.  They had seen how dirty my legs were and wanted me to clean myself off in the river before I continued.  Just the fact that these children, who didn’t even know me, were concerned about some mud on my legs really humbled me.  It showed me a lot about the Haitian people as a whole.  They care so much about one another and the rest of the people in their community.  They watch out for each other.   It was such a beautiful thing to realize that from being there for only about a half hour these people had accepted each and every one of us in.  They show so much love and affection for people they don’t even know.  It’s so amazing.   I wish things were more like that back at home.”