Hope

How do I describe Haiti?
First of all, there are the sounds.   Roosters crowing all morning long.  Cars and trucks honking continually, people yelling for a myriad of reasons, babies crying with no mom to comfort them.   Children yelling "hey you!  hey you!  hey you!" when we arrive with water.  Team members crying with sorrow, pain, and compassion as we mingle with people in desperate need.

Second, there are the smells.   Fires are continuously burning for various reasons -- cooking fires, burning garbage.  The pungent odor of sewage pervades everything in Cite Soleil, and the smell of sweat as people are carrying their water pails back to their homes and scrambling at the water truck.

Third, their are the touches.  Children tugging at our shirts wanting to be held.   Boys tapping us on the shoulder wanting to shake our hands.   Little kids taking our hands as we walked to their home.  Moms patting our backs asking us to lift water buckets on their heads.   Precious babies weighing like a feather as we held them in our arms at the hospital.

Finally, there are the sights.  Lines of people with buckets hoping to get water.   Row upon row of "houses" that are smaller than my living room, with a ragged piece of clothe for a door and crumbling concrete blocks for walls.   Babies with arms an thin as broom handles smiling at me when I started talking with them.  Mothers hovering over their children in the hospital, hoping for their child to get better soon.  Faces of people smiling, staring, and hoping for something good to come their way.

In all of these sounds, smells, touches, and sights there is one thing in common.   Tremendous, all consuming need.   The need for food, for water, for care.  The need for a loving touch, for a smile, for hope.  The need to matter, to have value, to be worth our time, our energy, and our care.   And the often unspoken need to become self-sufficient, to have dignity, to be empowered.
How can I,  how can we possibly hope to meet these needs?   At times it seems so hopeless.   What we are doing seems to be a drop in the ocean of endless poverty, crime, pain, and despair.   But I hear God speaking to me about hope.   I hear him telling me that my goal cannot be to save the country, but rather to be one link in a never ending chain of compassion and love.   I hear him saying "help this baby, this child, this mother understand that they have great value to me."   I hear him saying "ask me for wisdom, so that your love may do more permanent good.   Join together with others to come up with ways to turn the tide in that country."  Through prayer, through education, through mentorship, through training leaders, teachers, doctors, nurses, and every type of profession and trade -- so that Haitians can re-claim their nation, call upon the Lord, and become a light to the nations.   This is what God has for this people.   He says that his light will shine in the darkness, and the darkness shall not be able to withstand it.  We can be that light.     We are that light.  And let's invite others to join us.

-Keith