Churches Helping Churches

This article first appeared on 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.

Snaking through the city on back streets, we started to get a glimpse of the scope of damage away from the earthquake’s epicenter. As we passed the waterfront we could see that all the docks had sunk and that no ships could bring supplies to the shore, thereby crippling any aid effort by water. As we got deeper into the slums, the devastation became more massive and overwhelming. Buildings were folded up like pieces of paper. Entire blocks were rubble. There was no food or water or any sign of any store in business anywhere. Children were wandering everywhere. Garbage filled the streets. Small fires were burning. Bodies lay on the roadside. Every inch of seemingly every block of the city had people simply sitting on blankets as their temporary homes both day and night. And no one was crying. Thousands upon thousands of people were walking around emotionless and seemingly in shock.

Finding the seminary was difficult because many buildings in the city do not have addresses, and with the city in ruins, even using landmarks as navigation points was impossible. We ended up in front of a large church that was empty and chained shut. Our hearts sank as the one lead we thought we had to get interviews with Christians and an understanding of the plight of the church seemed to have been a dead end. Then, an elderly woman with a wonderful smile approached us. Realizing we could not understand her Creole, she sweetly touched my face with her wrinkled hand, smiled warmly, took my hand and kindly led us to a large metal gate down the street, which was opened by the men standing guard upon her request. Passing through the gate, we were on the large grounds of the seminary.

We followed a steep winding path up a hillside to reach the main building on campus. Once there, we immediately noticed that the walls on two sides of the building had collapsed and were rubble. An American man approached us to explain that the school had been there roughly seventy-five years and that he was a third-generation servant of Christ there serving under the leadership of Haitian nationals. He told us that, when the earthquake hit, classes had just let out and students were headed to chapel, and had it occurred a few minutes later, they could have lost most of their 160 students studying for pastoral and church planting ministry. Nonetheless, one student did die, and five more were pulled from the rubble by fellow students and faculty. The president of the seminary later told us, with tears in his eyes and quivering in his voice, that he personally had lost at least a hundred Christian friends and fellow church leaders in the city.

Looking around the campus, it was obvious the school was no longer functioning. Instead, it had become something of a refugee camp, with upwards of perhaps five thousand people sleeping all over the grounds at night. But, unlike the rest of the city, there was a joy among these people. Tensions were low and it seemed God’s peace rested there to comfort the afflicted. Many children, some among the roughly eight hundred who attended the Christian elementary school on site, were playing games, singing, dancing, and making toys out of empty water bottles, using the caps as wheels.

To be continued…

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.

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.

After helping unload medical supplies from our plane, we needed to secure two vehicles, a driver, and a translator. Our security specialist had come into the country to help mobilize peacekeeping efforts and within minutes he had two vehicles and a security detail from a private security firm, and we were on our way.

God had pulled off another miracle to get us around Haiti.

We carried our backpacks, loaded with minimal supplies along with a few days' worth of water and food, through the airport, which was so damaged that water covered the floor where ticketing had been and the power was out. As we pressed through a small crowd toward the airport exit, we saw a mob wanting to get to the food and water supplies that were being unloaded under US military protection. A soldier told us that if we exited the airport we could not return, as they would not open the door for us. Admittedly nervous, we exited the airport, pressed through the mob, met up with our local security detail, and jumped into our vehicles.

The scene surrounding the airport was complete chaos. Like in the rest of Port-au-Prince, there was not a street light or sign to be found. Thousands and thousands of young men were literally just standing on the roadside. People were walking everywhere. The roads were completely jammed with cars and there was no sign of anything to keep order, such as a traffic light, a traffic sign, or any police presence. Our goal was to get to the Port-au-Prince Evangelical Seminary that was roughly six miles away. We had heard that thousands of people were taking refuge there, although our information was merely speculative, since nearly all forms of communication were down across the city. If this lead came up dead we had no backup plan and trusted Jesus to figure it out for us.

Snaking through the city on back streets, we started to get a glimpse of the scope of damage away from the earthquake's epicenter. As we passed the waterfront we could see that all the docks had sunk and that no ships could bring supplies to the shore, thereby crippling any aid effort by water. As we got deeper into the slums, the devastation became more massive and overwhelming. Buildings were folded up like pieces of paper. Entire blocks were rubble. There was no food or water or any sign of any store in business anywhere. Children were wandering everywhere. Garbage filled the streets. Small fires were burning. Bodies lay on the roadside. Every inch of seemingly every block of the city had people simply sitting on blankets as their temporary homes both day and night. And no one was crying. Thousands upon thousands of people were walking around emotionless and seemingly in shock.

To be continued…

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….