Why Can't Haitians Grow Enough Rice to Feed Themselves?

Why Can't Haitians Grow Enough Rice to Feed Themselves? I get asked that type of question a lot.  I am going to defer the question to the former President of the United States, Bill Clinton.  In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2010 Bill said:

“Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. . . I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.”

The deal was that Haiti could not charge a tariff for imported U.S. rice that got the nickname "diri Miami" or Miami rice.  On top of that, the Haitian government could not use U.S. aid money to subsidize Haitian farmers for their rice in order for their price to be competitive with the imported U.S. rice.  In a matter of 4 years the Haitian grown rice market was essentially demolished.  In the deal we were going to help them develop a mango export market so they could join the international trade community.  It hasn't happened.  This was not a new approach.  We did the same thing to the Haitian and Dominican sugar cane crops. We took a team over to the DR to work in the sugar cane fields providing medical care to the Haitians living in the middle of 1,000,000 acres of sugar cane that can't be cut and sold because of subsidy deals with the U.S. and Canada.

Did you know that Hillary and Bill got a trip to Haiti as a wedding present from a friend.  They spent some time in the little country while Baby Doc was the dictator.  Maybe that's why Bill is so distraught over the repercussions of his policies in Haiti.  It's not a political party issue though.  It is standard U.S. domestic policy for the last 40 years.

Anyone that has been to Haiti with us on trips have seen the trucks loaded to the gills with rice coming in from the U.S.  In a funny side note, the rice is vitamin fortified but I have never met a single Haitian that cooked the rice without washing it twice even though the bags say NOT to wash it or you remove all of the vitamins.

American rice buying and selling has become a major part of the Haitian economy.  We try to send money to buy rice there instead of filling the boxes here to send down.  At least the money is going into the economy, unlike the aid money from the earthquake relief.  Did you know that out of the $360 million the U.S. allocated for Haiti after the earthquake that $120 million was reimbursed to the U.S. for military support we sent down?  $151 million went to U.S. based aid organizations.  A piece of the rest maybe somehow actually helped the people that we know.  There was a soccer stadium built and a bunch of hotels for the tourist industry that is supposedly going to start booming.

I say all of that to say that we as Christians can't rely on the government, foreign or domestic, to do the job of the church.  The church's job is to love people and help the oppressed.

Isaiah says the purpose of religion and commitment to God is this:

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Are we doing that as the church?  Are we doing all we can to break the bonds of wickedness or do we get too caught up in complaining about government not doing things our way?

Do we share our bread with the hungry or do we complain that we already pay too much in taxes so we don't have to share with the needy because that's welfare's job.

When's the last time that you or I got personally involved in helping a person being set free from oppression or bondage?

If Isaiah says that's the job of religion, what are we doing?  Somebody else's problem?  Send $10 to the Red Cross by
text so I can forget about it?

We share in the responsibility of the oppression.  We also share in the opportunity of the liberation.  We can work together to be the hands and feet of Christ loosening bonds and giving bread to the hungry.  We just have to allow God to use us.  We have to slow down enough to know He is trying to use us.

Don't blame the Haitians for their lack of rice or the homeless man downtown for his homelessness.  Instead consider your opportunity to pour yourself out for someone else.  Don't fall for the fool's trap of being distracted by an argument or apathy.

I just don't think "It was against my party's policy position, Jesus, so I really shouldn't be held accountable" is going to fly when we stand before our God.

One Nation Under God

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Originally composed by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and then formally adopted by Congress as the pledge in 1942, we all grew up reciting it in school.  It was about third grade before we realized it didn't say 'invisible'.  It seems that somewhere along the way we have lost the allegiance portion.

There seems to be factions in our culture bent on defying "indivisible".  There seems to be a tide towards division and separation:

Rich vs. Poor

White vs. Black

North vs. South

Gay vs. Straight

Elite vs. Common

Washington vs. States

Politicians vs. Americans

Christian vs. Non-Christian

Socialists vs. Conservatives

Immigrants vs. Natural citizens

These groups have always been a part of our society.  Diversity is truly one of the attributes that makes America so great.  The difference is, for the last 300 years we have been the best in the world at putting our differences aside and rallying together for the good of the nation.  We have not allowed our differences to defy our allegiance.  We have had our struggles to overcome in these areas but part of our identity has always been to strive for the good of the nation.

When national leaders, media, rebel rousers, and academia are spewing and perpetuating anti-America rhetoric bent on exacerbating tensions between all groups, it leads to an overall loss of national moral.  In a time of ISIS, Iran, North Korea, Putin, and cartels is it good for us to lose our sense of nationalism? Many in our nation seem to think so.  I vehemently disagree.

I think it's time to start back saying the pledge and teaching what it means or there will be liberty and justice for none.  In the words of  John Dickinson in his revolutionary war song The Liberty Song first published in the Boston Gazette in July 1768:

“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!”

From Witch Doctor to Wake Up Call

He wanted to be a witch doctor.  In his remote village of Haiti, the witch doctors were the ones with the influence and power.  They were the ones that seemed to have the answers about the spiritual realm.  As a young boy, he would dress up and play like he was the witch doctor for all of his friends.

Then at age 10 he started having seizures.  Before his 12th birthday, while visiting an aunt, he had a seizure and fell into the cooking fire.  Most of his body was covered in 3rd degree burns.  By the time he was taken to the distant hospital 3 days later, he was severely infected and not expected to live.  In a last ditch effort to save him, the doctor amputated both arms.  He survived.

This is Kesmy's story.  We met him in Haiti but really just got to know him well over the last couple of weeks as he stayed with us in our home.  He is in his second year of getting his masters degree in theology from Wheaton in Chicago.  He is my hero.

I am sorry for complaining about my first world problems.  I am sorry for worrying about things that don't matter.  I am sorry for allowing insignificant issues to get to me.  I am sorry for being distracted from my purpose.  I am sorry.

God is so good to take the time to bring into our lives what we need to reawaken us.  We often get lulled to sleep by the steady beat of the world around us.  The tick of the time clock.  The chime of the church bell.  The hum of humanity around us.  Kesmy was my wake up call this week.

Thank you Kesmy.  Thank you God.

Where is GOD When Evil Runs Amok?

Why doesn't God do anything about evil?

Why would God let this type of Christian persecution happen?

When those 21 Egyptian Christians- yes CHRISTIANS- called out to God on the beach in Libya, why didn't God send in an angel army to help them?

If God is so good then why does He let such bad stuff happen?

Is God too weak to stop evil or does He just not care?

These are the types of questions that come up during these times of blatant evil expression.  When we see evil paraded on the world scene we begin to question our beliefs and often our faith is shaken.  So what should our response be?

First, God is aware of what is going on.- God is omniscient- He knows.
Second, God has the power to do anything...ANYTHING- God is omnipotent and sovereign
Third, God is good.- God is Holy- God does nothing that is flawed, tainted, or incomplete.

The bottom line is that God IS doing something about the evil we see displayed on the world's stage before us.  God has been dealing with evil since He told Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  He was preemptive then and he is proactive now.

We must see that God's plan for mankind involved giving him a free will to choose God.  Otherwise, God would have been limited in receiving of glory.  By allowing mankind to CHOOSE to follow Him or rebel, God was creating a situation to demonstrate the fullness of His character: loving, forgiving, long suffering, patient, kind etc.

If man had no choice and an alternative to pure goodness never existed- aka. evil- then the God of mankind would not have means to express the depth of Himself to His creation.

But, that choice by God to allow an alternative to pure good, in a way restrained God.  He can do anything.  He is bound by no laws, constraints, or dictates EXCEPT His own character.  Just as God cannot sin because He is Holy, God also cannot violate His own character because He is faithful.

That means, since God chose to give man a choice, He chooses to live with allowing those choices even though it brings pain, death, sickness, dissension, and enmity towards God Himself.  Those things are manifested as man living out evil.

BUT, God does not simply allow those forces to go unchecked.  Ejection from the Garden of Eden, the great flood of Noah, the tower of Babel, Jesus' birth, and ultimately Jesus' return to judge all evil are all parts of God's plan with dealing with evil.

On a more personal scale, God also fights evil in the world everyday.  The book of Romans teaches that as long as God has men and women of faith that are filled with the Holy Spirit, then evil will remain in check and subdued.  To the extent that men and women of faith do NOT walk in that spirit of power, evil has freer reign.

Ergo, God is doing something about the evil in the world.  YOU.  ME.  His church.  Christians.  God's design is that we are His instruments of good in a world that is inherently predisposed to pursue evil on a grander and grander scale.

So the question shouldn't be what is GOD doing about it.  The question should be what am I doing about it.  What am I allowing God to do with ME to fight evil?  What am I allowing God to do through my life to express love to the hurting, sick, afflicted, lost, confused, frustrated, despondent world around me?

Am I standing up against the evil represented by ISIS?  Am I making my voice heard in memory of the martyred and in protection of the endangered?  Am I broken in prayer?  Am I grieved of spirit?

The day has come for God's people to be the force He designed us to be to fight back evil.  It's time for us to be the "boots on the ground" in the spiritual battle.  It's easy to blame God.  It takes more courage to put the blame where it belongs, on ourselves.

Raising Kids Ain't Easy

Raising kids ain't easy.  As parents we constantly battle with decisions and plans as we try to find fulfillment in our own lives without messing our kids up too badly in the process.  There is so much pressure sometimes.  Then when you do make a big decision: do I take the job, do we move, do we have more kids, do we buy that house, etc. we constantly question whether it was best for the kids.

"Get food for (?) people don't got none food"
Working on the grammar but love the heart!

When we decided to sell out and move to Haiti, it did not sit too well with our older kids.  They were high school and college ages and in complex situations themselves.  We felt torn between doing what we felt we should do and doing what seemed "best" for our kids according the world's standards.  Many sleepless nights were spent in prayer and seeking God's direction.

It was tough!  We cried and struggled through many nights in Haiti.  Phone calls and skype often ended in pain.  But we knew we were doing the right thing.  We knew that God's plan is not best for me and bad for them.  We had to believe that by faith, because on the surface it did not appear that way at the beginning.  But God is faithful.  With time, each of our older children came to Haiti and were impacted by it.  All of them came to place to realize that God had worked things out perfectly. 

Looking back, we see how God used all of that to make ALL of us better and stronger.  All three of those kids in college make us so proud we don't know what to do.  Not because they are in college.  Not because they have it all together- none of us do.  We are so proud because they have a heart to give back and impact the lives of others.  They all get that life is not a race to the most toys.  Life is a difficult adventure where you navigate complicated relationships in order to impact as many people as you can for their good.  It's about helping people fulfill their destiny for which God created them.  It's a reciprocal process.  The more you pour yourself into others, the more you find who you are and what you were created to do.  Our move to Haiti helped our older kids see that.  But what about the  younger kids that we took to Haiti with us.  Many argued that they already had issues from being adopted.  We were told that they needed a stable environment that Haiti couldn't provide.  But we knew we were supposed to go.

So we went.  We spent 3 years serving God by ministering to the Haitian people.  It was hard on everyone.  Our kids reached school age and we realized that there were issues from the prenatal drug abuse.  We tried many different arrangements for educating them.  Nothing seemed to be working.  Finally we knew God was moving us back to the U.S. to meet their needs.  We didn't feel like it was a mistake to have gone.  It changed all of our lives, even if our impact there was not as far reaching as we had hoped.  But in our minds, we still sometimes question if our time there really impacted our kids possitively or not.  Then we get a glimpse into their hearts from something like the picture Jaxon drew for MLK day.

Jaxon is our 6 year old kindergartner.   He is  a special little guy that has already overcome some pretty big odds in his six years.  Looking at the picture he drew makes me very proud.  Not because of impeccable spelling or mastery of writing skills- although mine is not much better.  I am proud because it shows he gets it already.  The looks on the faces of the people with no food is eerily reminiscent of the looks on faces of the hungry in Haiti.  The desperate souls that came to us constantly in need of food and care.  You wonder if the kids even really got it.  By the looks of Jaxon's "I have a dream..." picture, Yeah, he got it...

Physician Heal Yourself

Sunday morning before the message at church I had a young lady come up to me and ask about Luke chapter 4.  Specifically she wanted to know about verses 23-24:

23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

She asked what was meant by "physician heal yourself." I explained that the people were having trouble accepting Jesus for the messiah since they knew him already as Joseph the carpenter's son in his home town.  The people wanted him to do miracles like he had done in Capernaum.  They did not feel he was authorized to correct them.  As one commentator put it "deal with your own defects before telling someone else to deal with their defects".  Some say it was a foreshadow of Jesus being called to come down off of the cross.

Sunday night I played Satan in a drama at church and so I had bought some white contact lenses to wear to add to my effect.  As soon as I took the contacts out on Sunday night I knew there was a problem.  My vision was very blurry in my right eye.  All day Monday things kept getting worse so I had a colleague look at it and started medication.

On Monday night, the epithelium of my cornea completely peeled away.  In other words my eye got messed up!  Extreme pain.  I spent the whole night hurting and thinking about all of the worse cases I had ever seen in my 15 years of practicing optometry.  It hurt too badly to sleep at all.All the worse case scenarios were playing out in my late night imagination.  In the middle of the night, this verse came to mind; "Physician heal thyself".  Easier said than done!

Early this morning I got Dr. Berg to check things out and we started some new medications and put in a type of bandage contact lens.  My eye is red, swollen, and ugly.  I have a booked schedule and it is not contagious so I am suffering through seeing patients.  I've tried to keep the lights low so the patients can't see exactly how ugly my eye is.  I can just hear them all thinking "Physician heal thyself" before you come trying to take care of me.

The experience has been good for me though.  I had forgotten how badly those drops burn when your eye is so inflamed.  Patients tell me all the time, but now I have more compassion.  I forget what it is like to spend the night in extreme pain just waiting for morning to get to the office for relief.  Patients come in that way all the time.  But now I can better relate.

It helped me see that verse in a different light too.  Jesus was the physician and he did heal himself. He had just left the desert being tempted by Satan- the real one not the one with the fake white contacts.  He had decided to leave the applause and the approval of Capernaum to take his ministry to the people that needed it instead of enjoying the fame and letting the people come to him.  He had broken away from family and loved ones to fulfill his destiny for the Father's kingdom.

So when I am tempted, He's been there.  When I struggle with decisions about ministry or family or where to go, He's been there.  He's made the tough decisions.  He's sacrificed to experience the Kingdom first hand.  He's been the physician and know's what I need.

I have decided that I would much rather spend my days imitating Jesus than running around acting like satan.

Three Rocks

Twa Men- Three Hands Monument in Port-Au-Prince

For those of you that have been to Haiti, the odds are you have seen the monument of three hands in the circle leaving the airport.  The monument was built during the Aristide regime.  The meaning of the monument depends on who you are talking to.

If you ask a guide that frequently brings in Christian tourists- I mean mission groups- they will tell you that the hands represent the Father, Son, and Holy spirit holding up the world and even Haiti.

If you are talking to an activist Haitian living in PAP they will tell you that it represents two hands from a Haitian and one from government, the other hand of the government is in your pocket.

The average Haitian though will tell you it has three hands because you can't do it alone.  We all need someone else to help us.  The saying in Haiti is "ou paka kwit diri sou de wo'ch"- You can't cook rice on two rocks.  It takes three rocks together to hold up the pot.  That is the way life is viewed in most societies besides ours.

In America, we believe we can do it all on our own.  We are so proud that we do not want to ask others for help or ever admit that we need it.  We base our success and achievements on our abilities and hard work. It's the "I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps" mentality.  Now I am a committed advocate of hard work and independence.  I hate entitlement and hand outs.  I am talking about something more basic yet essential than that.  I am talking about realizing that we were made by God to interconnect and help each other reach our full created potential.  When we arrogantly feel like we don't need others to reach our full potential, then any attempt by us to reach out to others to help them reach their potential will be condescending and superficial.

To be rich, I don't need you.  To be powerful, "I got this".  To achieve the American dream, "I am my own man".  To be successful I can rely on my intelligence, education, heritage, networking skills, communication ability, and inner drive.  To be what society says I should be, I don't need you.

But to reach my created potential as a Kingdom child, I need you.  I need people to speak truth to me in love.  I need people to help me be stronger in my faith.  I need people to keep me accountable as a father and husband.  I need people to encourage me on my down days.  I need people to celebrate my victories with me.  I need people to go into battle with me.  I need people to sit around and talk about nothing sometimes.  I need you.

By recognizing MY need for people, I am equipped to BE that person for others.  That is the key to humility being the basic foundation on which God builds us up.  Let's throw off the pride and self sufficiency that this society tries to encumber us with.  Let's commit to acknowledging our need of others so that we can help others reach their full created potential as Kingdom children.  It really does take three hands- and I only have two.