Inside Haiti, After The Quake

This article originally appeared at The Washington Post.

I was in Haiti less than a week after the earthquake. I went with Churches Helping Churches on a aid-delivering and fact-finding mission to help the country and it’s churches. What follows is an excerpt of my journal from the trip. Amidst the chaos I captured what I saw the best I could and am including pictures from our trip that help tell the story. Video from our trip and the individual stories from Haiti can be found here and here.

It’s approaching 2 a.m. and I cannot sleep. The images of what I have seen today in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, keep haunting me. And I cannot get the taste of decomposing bodies out of my mouth.

The adventure I am on started a mere five days ago with an early morning call from Pastor James MacDonald. We had met through mutual friends and an organization called The Gospel Coalition. He called to discuss how we might mobilize churches from the US and world to help the Haitian churches following a massively devastating earthquake and powerful aftershocks. After that initial conversation, our day was spent texting, calling, emailing, and strategizing, ultimately culminating in a plan to visit Haiti to witness the need firsthand.

On Friday I prerecorded a sermon to be played at Mars Hill Church on Sunday, on Saturday morning my renewed passport showed up just hours before my flight, and after some time with my family celebrating the birthday of my four-year-old son Gideon, my wife and five children dropped me off at the airport with tears. The Mars Hill team and I arrived in Chicago Saturday night, worshiped at Harvest Bible Chapel on Sunday morning, got our vaccinations, debriefed for the trip with a tactical team, and drove to Grand Rapids, Michigan, with our crew that had grown to include a seasoned security specialist, a two-man film crew, an award-winning combat photographer, the creative director of John Piper’s Desiring God Ministries, and a senior staff member of a relief organization.

After a few hours of sleep, we drove to our small plane that was packed with medical supplies and doctors who traveled with us. Our flight left the US around 3 a.m. and by sunrise we were circling over Haiti, which looked like a battlefield from the air. Unsure if we could land because of the numerous reports of planes that had been denied landing privileges, we prayed and waited. Before long we were on the ground in Haiti, a mere four days after my first conversation with Pastor MacDonald and less than a week after the earthquake hit. I turned on my iPhone to discover multiple messages from international aid workers who were unable to enter the country asking how we did it. We did not do it.

God had pulled off a miracle to get us into Haiti.

Upon departing the plane, the first thing the soldier said to me was, “You will now see a crisis of biblical proportions.” Looking around the tarmac, it was surprising how little aid we saw being unloaded and how few supplies were on the ground.

To be continued….