Haiti One Year Later

Today many news networks will focus their attention on Haiti.  Most stories will be about why things haven’t been handled faster or if the efforts have been worth the costs.  As I reflect on Haiti one year later I choose to focus on the fact that once again Florida Baptists and Southern Baptists have brought Help, Healing and Hope to a hurting people after a disaster.

The quake only lasted for 30-35 seconds.  Estimates are that 300,000 people died in the quake.  That was about 10,000 people a second.  In addition, 1 to 1.5 million people were left homeless.  It was a devastating blow to a people that had very little.

Because the Florida Baptist Convention has had a 15 year partnership in Haiti, I knew that we would be heavily engaged in the response.  What that meant for me was that I would be living in Haiti for almost 8 months while serving as the Incident Commander for Southern Baptist Disaster Relief efforts.  Like 9/11, the 2004 Florida hurricanes and 2005 Hurricanes I was honored to play a small part.

One of my first memories of arriving within days of the quake was the fact how the people had immediately picked themselves up, dusted off and began living again.  The reason was that Haitians live day to day and are survivors.  They knew that if they didn’t move foreword they would die.  This was stark contrast to what we saw in 2005 after Katrina where people sat and complained that help didn’t come fast enough.

Early on I described our work as a marathon not a sprint.  That is how we approached the response.  We started out sending medical teams and then added home inspection and chaplain teams.  We also launched an ambitious project called Buckets of Hope.  I still recall my family sitting down in the isles of our WalMart packing the pilot bucket.  We had the list of food items that the Haitian cooks has told us would work but still had to decide on what to put in and how to pack it.  It was the first of what would be 155,000 food buckets produced by Southern Baptists.   We eventually expanded to ministry teams, demolition teams that worked along side the Haitians swinging sledgehammers to break up the concrete and teams that built temporary shelters.

Our Haitian brothers and sisters not only welcomed our efforts they embraced them as their own.   Haitian Christians saw this as an opportunity to minister and share Christ. As a result, they led over 165,000 people to Christ and started over 270 churches.

One person who has responded to Haiti described his experience in Haiti by saying it must have been what Peter and the early Christians experienced.  Like Peter, we saw people coming to Christ and miracles being performed daily.  Many times we would pray for something and the prayer was answered the next day if not earlier.  That experience continues still today.

Many people today will ask if we have made any difference in Haiti over the past year.  Truthfully I don’t know.  I can only reference back to Peter and the early church.  They accepted Christ’s call to make disciples and to take the Gospel to the 4 corners of the earth.  They didn’t set out to change history but instead simply stayed obedient to the call of God upon their lives.  God honored their faithfulness and we are the fruits of their labor.  It is my believe that we too as Florida and Southern Baptists have sought to be obedient to God’s call by responding to the needs the best we could.  We have been the good neighbor who saw a person in need and used the means we had to help them.  Now we must continue to work the fields and let the Master bring the seeds to harvest.  Thanks to everyone that participated during this part of the response by praying, giving and going.

We just started the second half of the marathon in the rebuild phase.  Southern Baptists have recently set a goal to build 6,000 block homes over the next 3 years.  Homes will be built primarily with Haitian laborers whom we will hire and train.  I’ll talk more about that next time.

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