The Power of Belonging

I was met at the back of the bare concrete block church by a sea of lime green shirts. Our fishermen and the women in our women's group all had on their New Vision Ministry T-shirts and black jeans we had helped them get. They were also all wearing white latex gloves Roger had found in our medical supply box at the fish house. It made them look strangely official. They were all serving as ushers. In the front of the church was Marcus' coffin...draped with his lime green T-shirt.

I was called in the middle of the night to tell me Marcus had had a stroke. Stephen and Autumn took him to the hospital where he died the next morning not long after I visited. He was one of our guys. He left behind two precious girls and a wife.

I gave the family strong encouragement to immediately take the body to the public morgue in St. Marc. I told them I would help with the funeral but I would not cover the cost of a private morgue. I thought they took my advice.

Two days later the family comes to me to say that a private morgue picked up the body from the hospital and had assured them they would do the funeral for cheap. Now the director of the funeral home was demanding $20,000 Haitian or about $2500 usd for the funeral. This was from a family worth about $200.

I helped the family with the money I would have paid for the simple funeral and then bought Marcus's bwafouye (canoe) from the family to do a memorial for him at the fish house. The family continued to come to plead for more money for two weeks while they sold everything they owned and borrowed money from everyone they could find to pay the morgue. I hate that system.

Finally they got $15,000 Haitian and the funeral home agreed to bury him. That is where the funeral picked up. They had a big wake the night before in which everyone present gets to drink and party at the expense of the mourning family. If the crowd feels the family did not produce enough liquor, beer, and sodas, the crowd starts throwing rocks at the family and the house. It is a very stressful time for an already stressed out family.

The funeral service was preached by a Christian pastor to an uninterested crowd. Everyone just stood and talked until he finished at which time the funeral home workers came forward to get the coffin. That is when the show began. Before anyone touched anything all of our women and guys posed in front of the coffin for a picture with their official uniforms.

As soon as the coffin was touched, dozens of women began to scream at the top of their lungs and wail. Four of our girls took the T-shirt off of the coffin and carried it one at each corner at the front of the funeral procession right behind the marching band as we went down the road in the pouring rain.

The procession lasted about half an hour until we reached the family's house. The criers cried and screamed the whole way. But now they turned it up a notch. Women began falling onto the ground and rolling in the mud screaming. One girl in particular kicked and screamed so much that the funeral officials who are responsible for getting them could not pick her up. She hit and kicked until she finally rolled off of the mud path into the water filled ditch in her best white dress. I don't understand all of that but everyone else acted like it was normal and since I was the non-Haitian in the whole processional I acted like I was used to it too.

We finally got to the tomb that had been the tomb in which Marcus' mom, aunt, and cousin were buried. They just pushed the remains of the old coffins to the side and shoved him in. Then a mason was there and ready to seal it up.

All of our group was then gathered together for a photo in front of the tomb with their matching shirts. My first group photo at a burial site.

We then visited the widow as she sat in the floor of the family mud house and each one of us passed through and kissed her. Everyone then was offered one more beer and it was over. All the crying and screaming ended as soon as the coffin was in the tomb.

It was so evident that our women and the fishermen were in a position of respect just because they were part of our group and had a T-shirt. They had a whole new self esteem. I can't wait to see how they respond when they realize they are a part of the family of the one true God.

Freedom vs. Bondage

The fourth of July came and went here without fireworks or fanfare. Haiti's Independence Day is January 1st. In 1804 Haiti became the first black independent nation. The US did not support this newly free nation out of fear that our own slaves may revolt and our white independence would in some way be threatened. In the years that ensued Haiti began to fall from the most wealthy Caribbean nation known as the jewel of the Antilles to the economic mess we all know of today.

The freedom the Haitian slaves fought so hard for did not result in freedom from the depth of bondage that they had dreamt of. Today the average Haitian is only free in theory. The bondage they endure is something we as Americans can't really fathom. The life of the people we encounter everyday is the epitome of the slavery described by the apostle Paul in the book of Romans. It is the slavery to the desires of the flesh. Our daily mission is to help our friends and aquaintenances here understand the true freedom available to them through Jesus Christ.

Just last night we lost another friend to a motorcycle accident. A young man that had been to our home on several occasions through the basketball outreach of Philip, Logan, and Wesner. He left a disco drunk last night and crashed his motorcycle into an on coming car and killed himself and his young cousin. Luke had been his friend and we had shared the truth of the gospel with him at our basketball banquet last year to no avail. Just like you and I in our preconveresion state, he enjoyed his sin and rejected the Light. He chose bondage and slavery over freedom and eternal joy.

I shared frankly at our Celebrate Life women's ministry meeting last week at the fishing village. These women are the ones we found living in shredded tents with their kids by the river. We rented them all homes and now have them working in our senior feeding program. I shared with them about the plan God has revealed in His word about how to live in freedom. Most of these women have multiple children from different men and many of them have lived a life of prostituting themselves for food for themselves and their kids. As I shared the model of one man for one women for a lifetime they could not bring themselves to believe that model is for them. I tried to convince them that at this point in their lives they need to stop looking for a man to sell themselves to for food and shelter. I tried to get them to begin instead to seek God and wait for Him to send the man He has for them. One of the women objected that she can pray all day for God to send her a man but she can't wait if she can't get food for her babies. Bondage. Slavery. I tried to explain that now they have houses. Now they have jobs. Now they have food for their kids. And these things did not come from a sinful relationship but as grace from God their father. As a proof of God's perfect planning, there was a short term missionary here visiting and she had the testimony of a life just like these ladies live. She shared with tears how God had delivered her and how he could deliver them too. Only the Holy Spirit has the power to reveal the truth and we can only pray for deliverance.

One of our fisherman has been delivered. Junior is one of my favorite guys. He was living the typical life of alcoholism and womanizing. One day he came to me and grabbed me in a big hug and said that he did not understand God or anything but he knows God picked us up out of North Carolina and put us here to change their lives. It took about six more months of sharing but now Jr and his wife are converted Christians and active in their church. Now he wants to learn to read so he can read his Bible with his family. Freedom.

No matter where we live the eternal issues of freedom and slavery are always the same. Christ bought our freedom through His death and resurrection but we all must choose freedom or live our entire lives in bondage. The chains may look different. Here chains are dirty and smelly. Poverty, oppression, prostition. In America the chains are shiny and polished. Big houses, nice cars, soft church pews. But in the end they are all chains. They hold us in bondage and often we deceive ourselves into believing we are free. It grieves the heart of our Father to think he offers us freedom and liberty and we chose bondage and chains because we are comfortable that way. Let's chose freedom so we can share it with others before more people like our young friend Wade die and are dragged to the depths of eternity by their chains.

Two Years and Counting

June 22, 2009 we pulled out of our driveway of our farm on Bakers mountain in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina. It was the beginning of a journey that really has been more exciting than we ever would have imagined. I wanted to give a brief update of how things are going.

I came as an optometrist planning to have a little clinic doing eye care and helping the pastor we had been working with through the years of back and forth trips. God obviously had other plans! It's not fair though because He knew about the little event on January 12, 2010 - the 7.2 earthquake that destroyed much of the country and killing 200,000 people. Had I known about that in advance, maybe I would have had other plans here too!

Celebration Children's Home is our orphanage that houses almost 20 orphans, abandoned, handicapped, or neglected children. These little ones have been instrumental in changing our lives. Our vision is to develop a home where children can be united with loving adoptive families. The home is housed in a former apartment building that we have converted and also serves as our headquarters for the ministry. We call it The Mission and we employee about 20 Haitians that work with us there. That facility also houses long term missionaries that come for extended periods to serve with us.

In a country where only about 50 percent of kids get to go to school we get to pay for almost 100 kids to go to school through our child sponsorship program. We meet monthly with these kids in our Celebration Kids Club. We are working on getting that program more organized so that friends back home can be a part of changing the lives of these young Haitians.

Pastor Cesar has almost 1500 kids in 8 schools that we support. We pay and train the teachers and now are getting to the point that we are feeding all the kids a healthy meal ever school day.

Our most impacting work - most impacting on me if not the Haitians- is our work in the local fishing village. We have 13 fisherman that we are helping to develop their fishing businesses as well as discipling them. We are there almost every day and have weekly meetings and Bible study. Also in that village we have 13 women that we took out of tents by the river where they were living after losing their homes to a flood. We rented them all houses and have them working in our community development program. Three days per week they come and cook food for elderly shut ins in the area. They also participate in weekly meetings that include training on hygiene, family planning, literacy and other issues from a Biblical perspective.

Refugees from the quake live in tent villages throughout the country. In our town we have taken the last families out of that camp and helped them rent permanent housing. We are currently working one on one with them to help them come up with a business plan for providing for the family in the aftermath of this disaster. We have set a few up with wedding dress rental businesses, cosmetic sales businesses, small food stands, dry goods stores, and other small business ventures. As with all our projects we also follow up with teaching and training of Biblical truth teaching on how to live.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, we also do eye care and medical care. We have the only permanent eye clinics in our part of the country. This week we even have team of general surgeons here doing hernia repairs, tumor removals, and other much needed surgeries. What a blessing!

In the midst of all of that we are also trying to raise our 5 American and one Haitian baby that live here with us. School is our biggest challenge at the moment. We have discovered that homeschooling here is so hard due to our daily challenges. We found a mission school in St. Marc but they are needing teachers. If you know anyone interested in coming to teach for a year let me know.

So they we are in a nutshell. I am sure I left some stuff out but those are the high points. Keep us in your prayers and come to see us. We live in a hotel and we will leave the light on for you.

Hero Makeover

My father is my greatest hero.  He set a high bar for me to shoot for as a husband, father, and spiritual giant.  He taught me everything I know about how to stick it out in tough times and come out the better for it.  When I grow up I want to be just like Dad.  He is sitting now by his mother's deathbed with faith and humility that is a testimony of faithfulness.

My other heroes in life have varied as the seasons of my life have passed.  As I mature in my Christian faith, I realize that many of the heroes of my past were not the best role models to follow.  In the years of my life when I was consumed by the American dream of sucess and comfort, most of my heroes were the men that had reached the heights of worldly sucess for which I strived.  One such man was the most sucessful businessman I personally knew.  He had been very blessed by God and truly seemed to have it all.  I only knew him from a distance but desired to be just like him.  While I was prayer leader at our church he once flew us in his jet to New York City to meet Jim Cymbala and attend a prayer meeting at The Brooklyn Tabernacle.  I wanted to be able to do stuff like that for people.  What a life!

May 31 marked two years since I walked out of my optometry practices and businesses.  It marks the day the whole world changed for me.  Even my heroes changed.  The American dream and living in bondage to the deceitfulness of riches were becoming a thing of the past.  I embarqued on a journey that would take me to places both bodily and spiritually that I never dreamed I would go.  In just two short years I have seen God in ways I never dreamed possible.  I have learned more about myself and the Kingdom of Heaven than I ever would have imagined.  But it has not been easy.  There are days I want to jump in the ocean and swim home to America!  There are times when I lose sight of the end goal of pleasing God and I only want peace.  But that is when God steps in and reminds of where we are headed.

On a hot day about a month ago I was in Port au Prince with Joy buying supplies for the mission.  We had been struggling with several things in the ministry and in our family and needed a big dose of grace.  Then my phone rang.  It was my hero businessman.  He never called me when I was living in America and I secretly covetted his life.  I didn't even know how he got my number.He began to tell me how God had been working in his life and showing him things he needed to change.  He had been reading some books and studying the Bible and God had shown him that his life of indulgence was non-Biblical and that he needed a radical change.  He said God put us on his heart and he wanted to know if he could come down to visit so we could talk.  I was blown away.  My God loves me so much that he took the inner thoughts of my sinful heart and rearranged things in such a way as to unequivocably show me that what He had told me was true.  The path He had put us on was the true Way.  He showed me unmeritted grace and helped me see He was there.

My hero and now friend did come down and spend the week with us.  He shared unashamedly how God was breaking Him and setting him free.  His testimony was one of the most powerful I have ever heard first hand of God through His spirit revealing truth to one of his children.  It was a great week.  I learned so much and received great wisdom from a wise saint.  He is now more of a hero in my eyes than he ever was.  Not because of what he has or has done, but because of who he is becoming.  He has now made my short list of heroes with my dad, pastor Ruffin, Bill Stafford, and Aquaman.

Pirates, Fishermen, and Patient Seekers

I was passing a TV today and saw an advertisement for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie.  As I look out our hotel window where we live I see the Caribbean Sea, I can't help but think about the pirates that cruised these waters in years past.  As a major sugar producing colony, Haiti was a major working grounds for pirates that hijacked the many merchant ships that cruised these waters.  Pirates were not good people.  They were very hard men that were theives and murderers that lived tough lives.  They were not the glamorized heroes like Captain Jack Sparrow.   They lived very superstitious lives where they created their own religion to explain the world around them.  I think about how many of those men spent their lives trying to cope with the guilt of the lives they lived.  How many spent their lives drowning the guilt of a life of sin in rum that flowed through the islands here?  How many ever found the truth?  How many ever learned there was a loving God who died to forgive them of ALL of their sins?  How many found the peace that I found when God delivered me from the horrible life that I lived prior to my surrender to the Lordship of my Lord?

As I think about these men that will spend eternity seperated from God in a real Hell much worse than the feared afterlife that plagued their nightmares, I think about men like our fisherman.  Men that live lives plagued by alcoholism, polygamy, fear induced from voodoo beliefs, and the guilt from knowing they live a life of deciet and lies.  I think of men like Roger and his brother Lifrans that I get to work with everyday processing fish and trying to find ways to reach out to the community in which they live.  They know they are sinners.  They know that the God that I serve does not approve of the lives they live but they are so entrenced in false religion that they can't believe that the same God loves them immensely.  They don't truly understand why in the world I would chose to enter their village and pass my days with Luke and our family trying to make their lives better as we teach them about truth. 

Then there is Ayiti.  Ayiti is a grounds keeper at the hotel where we live.  His job is to sweep the unused tennis courts everyday and pick up trash that blows in from the sea.  Ayiti came to me a few weeks ago sick.  I examined him and found he had a severe ear infection.  I gave him antibiotics and drops (eye drops that I had him put in his ear) and he got better.  He was so grateful that I took the time just to talk to him and check up on him daily until he got better.  He started making it a point to catch me everyday as me and Joy go for our morning walk to just check in with me.  Then about 2 weeks ago he started bringing me everyone he could find that is sick.  He does not bring them to me during normal hours.  He knows I work long days so almost everynight as we are getting our kids ready for bed, Ayiti lightly knocks on our door with the day's patients.  Last week it was a hotel worker with a bad stomach infection that was keeping him from eating.  This weekend it was 3 workers from a little road side restuarant across the street with a severe skin fungal infection.  Tonight it was 2 security guards.  One had a headache and one with a bad back pain.  Ayiti has made himself our personal triage nurse.  He brings the patient to me and thoroughly explains their symptoms and then asks me to examine them.  The  term "EYE" doctor does not really register with my new friend.  He has found a place where he is important.  He is no longer the bottom of the employee social ladder.  He now has an important position of helping others.  Ayiti is not yet a Christian but he knows that I never turn anyone away and that I treat them all with love and respect.  He now spends the time after he finishes work going around looking for sick people.  He is trying to find a way to make himself a "good" person.  I try to share with Ayiti that he needs God.  He is not yet ready to truly listen but he knows that something about us is different.  That is why we are here. 

Every day we work with our orphans at the mission. We provide medical and eye care to some of the poorest people in the world.  We feed children in the schools.  Pay for kids to get an education.  Help the fisherman catch more fish and then learn how to sell them and invest in their community.  We train the women in our housing program to take better care of their kids and they are learning to cook food on our propane stoves to feed homebound widows.  With all of those programs and the hours invested weekly, the ONLY thing that matters is when one of our people starts to believe we love them.  The scriptures come alive as we see why Jesus said forget everything else and Love your God and Love others.  True religion.  Love God...Love others.  In America and on the mission field we make it so complicated.  We have to remember that we feed, educate, train, house, and heal BECAUSE we love.  We don't do it to get the right to share the gospel of Jesus.  We don't do it because we feel sorry for them.  We don't do it because we are trying to earn God's favor.  We do it because GOD has placed a love in our hearts for our people.  BECAUSE we love them, of course we share the truth of the Bible and the Living God.  We could never say we truly love them if we did not care about their greatest need... to know God and Love HIM.  

The hardship comes when we do all we do and NOT see people understand their need for God and they continue in their sin and hatred of truth.  It hurts so much when we try to reach out and only get people to listen when we have food or clothes or medicine to give.  We have not seen sweeping revival and hundreds come to knowledge of God but that only makes us more desperate.  But when Ayiti comes to my door with his daily patient I simply have to remember that MY job is to love them and share the truth.  GOD's job is to open their eyes and bring them to an understanding of their sin condition. 

Pirates, fisherman, patient seekers, me, and you.  We all need and want the same thing... to know the anser to "why am I here and how do I make my life count".  All the answers are made available to us in God's word but we spend our lives WORKING and STRIVING and often miss the opportunities to just love people and find our place. 

Hard Life in Hispaniola

Processing Sugar Cane

Joy with some of the kids in the batay

Hispaniola was discovered by Christopher Columbus and colonized before the mainland of North America.  Today it is divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  We live in Haiti but this week we took a trip to the DR.

The difference between Haiti and the Dominican are like night and day.  The Dominican has modern cities and visible infrastructure.  It is a major tourist destination and many ex-patriats retire there or move there from all over the world.  The land is beautifully lush and forrested.  The only thing that really seems similar is the depth of poverty in which the Haitians live. 

Houses at Amistad Batay

Haitians flee to the DR to escape the conditions of Haiti only to find themselves in a prejudice society where Haitians continue to live tough lives for the most part.  We have met a few Haitians who have found good jobs and are thriving.  It is a huge blessing to talk to them and see how blessed they are.  But this is still the extreme exception and not the rule for Haitians here.

Patients In Clinic

Luke Working in Clinic

Jacy Giving out Glasses and Josie Giving out Lollipops

We took our bus and made the 9 hour journey from Port au Prince to Santo Domingo in a quick 14 hours.  We had issues at the border- of course- got scammed a couple of times- of course- but made it finally.  After one night in "La Capital" we headed to the north coast.  Six hours over the mountains to arrive in Puerto Plata for 5 days.  We are here with all 6 of our kids including Justice- whose papers that took us an extra month to get but have not even been looked at yet.  We also brought Dago, Wesner, Baz, Madame Raymonde, and Jarrod- a PA friend from TX. 

Clinic Under a Mango Tree

Loving His New Specs- He's Smiling on the Inside

Uncut Sugar Cane Fields Due to US Subsidies

We got to spend two days doing eye clinics in Batays around Puerto Plata.  A Batay is a settlement in the middle of the sugar cane fields where the workers live with their families.  The conditions are horrible.  No septic, no electricity, limited water, and no security.  The two batays in which we worked were even worse off.  They are located in the middle of a plantation that a Cuban family owns.  The family owns over 1 million acres of sugar cane fields in the DR and are paid subsidies by the U.S. and Dominican governments to NOT harvest the cane anymore.  Because of that, the people living in the Batays are out of work.  The kids that are born here are not given birth certificates which makes it practically impossible to go ever go to school.  We were given a glimpse into yet another facet of the difficulty of the plight of the average Haitian.

Joy Visiting the Villagers

The clinics were great.  We saw hundreds of very grateful people.  The people here are thankful for help and their attitude is different than the people we encounter daily in Montrouis.  The people here, young and old alike, just want work.  They are not surrounded by humanitarian groups doing free distributions of everything from food to condoms like we see in Haiti.  The people are not trained to seek out the white people to meet their needs.  They know that if they can find some work, then they can make it.  It was refreshing to see that attitude even though the work is so sparse for uneducated and often hated Haitian immigrants. 

Joy Doing a Little Shopping

We return to Santo Domingo tomorrow to start looking for sources for supplies we need for The Mission.  We are also planning to talk to a pastor in the south of the island that works in many of the Batays there and hopefully be able to go and see a working plantation and see how we might be able to help in the future.

Then we return to our home on the other side of Hispaniola. We plannded the trip to be a time of retreat for our staff, relaxation for our family, and an exploratory excusion into the lives and plight of Dominican Haitians.  It has been all of the above. We are reminded why we have been called to reach out and share the love of Jesus with some of the most awesome people on earth.  What an honor!

Resurrection Parade

Early Easter morning we got all of our kids from the mission and went for a Resurrection parade.  The kids had made banners and took instruments and we marched up the hill behind the mission making a lot of noise in the name of the Lord.

Jacy Klaire making sure Nakisha did not get left behind

After the parade we made our way back to the mission for a worship service and teaching time.  We are so blessed by the kids God has sent our way for the mission.  We have 19 kids now and each one is a special blessing from God.  There are 10 boys and 9 girls.  They include true orphans, abandoned children, and handicapped children.  Each one has a story of how man and sin corrupt and destroy.  We have kids whose parents were murdered by voodoo.  Kids whose parents died of preventable disease.  Kids whose parents abandoned them because of poverty and injustice.  It makes it hard to remember at times that God is truly sovereign and in total control.  We tend to wonder where God is when evil seems to be able to run so rampant.  But then we remember that God has told us in the Bible that injustice and corruption and hardship are repercussions of living in a fallen world.  We are doing a study with our staff and it reminds us that God chose to give man a choice of sin or righteous obedience.  The choice of sin leads to destruction and there are always innocent bystanders...like our little Nakisha, or Jeffnika, or any of the other angels in our home.  It does not take away from the fact that God is completely loving, and completely good, and completely powerful.  He has a perfect plan for each of our lives and if we choose to follow Him and seek Him we can find and live out that plan.  When that happens, we find peace even in difficult times.  We find joy even when happiness evades us.  It allows us to see that God really does have a good plan even for these kids that qualify as the "least of these".  On Resurrection Sunday, we are reminded that the Cross is the key to that understanding.  Only through Jesus can we really begin to see the world the way God does.  Without Jesus coming and dying for us, we could never see the world the way God does and have a desire to see God glorified even in the darkest of circumstances.

The Girls

Michelet and his New Wheels

The Boys

Craft Time

Our Kids in Craft Time

When things get discouraging, God seems to always come through with a source of encouragement and insight.  We have spent 3 months trying to get things together to go to the Dominican Republic for a time of seeking sources for supplies, resting, and partnering with a Dominican mission to do eye exams at an orphanage and street mission.  We had everything packed to leave Monday and the papers did not come through.  We spent the day getting more paperwork done and planned to leave today.  Then the papers were rejected because one of the notaries did not stamp it right.  So we had to get Justice's biological father and Dago together to go back to Port au Prince to redo the paper work.  Now we are waiting to see if we get to leave tomorrow.  But when things get frustrating we have to remember that the life of a Christian is a life of death to self and all rights and expectations.  We have to remember that God has graciously chosen us to be a part of that 'good' plan for each of these little ones, and for that we are truly grateful.