One Month Down

Time does fly.  I've been in Haiti for a month already.  Right now I'm enjoying a day off- after waking early to get our transportation needs in order for the day and taking part in our daily morning devotions- I went back to sleep until lunch!  I'm trying to get in some reading and guitar playing and maybe watching a movie.  I was pretty whipped coming out of the weekend!

We continue to have daily vehicle problems.  We've had a van without a transmission ever since before I arrived.  We finally got it going last week but cranking it and driving it only revealed other problems.  I think the initial cause of the most of the problems is bad fuel combined with poor maintenance like changing filters, etc.  But now the problems are greater- likely fouled up injectors and sensors and the like.  We need a really good Diesel mechanic and maybe a portable code reader to get everything back in order.

Everyday is a juggling game in terms of who gets which vehicle.  We have a team that conducts Discipleship among local Pastors and they also coordinate a partnership between Haitian and non-Haitian Churches....this requires local travel 2-3 days a week.  Our Set-Up Team is constantly evaluating Ministry sites and homes where our teams live during the week...they need transportation to do that.  We have airport pick-ups and drop-offs as well as "lost-luggage" runs a few times a week.  We generally need to resupply our short-term teams with perishable food on Wednesdays.  If we provide any other supplies to the teams- like Food for a church or Building supplies- then we do that on Wednesday and Thursday.  Also Wednesday-Friday, we start planning for the next week so we make massive shopping runs.  Our Directors here need to visit local orphanages about once a week.  If a vehicle needs a part, we usually have to take the part we need off and then take it into the city to find a replacement, thus using 2 vehicles!  Finally, on Saturdays we have to make multiple airport runs for departing teams and on Sunday we make multiple airport pick-ups as well transport our Project Leadership teams and all the supplies they'll need for a week to their sites.

Having a "down" vehicle complicates the heck out of everything!

If we have more than 15 or so people departing or arriving then we usually hire a local bus-driver- here's what one of our airport pick-ups looked like yesterday morning with a team of 21 people:

Weekend

It's late Saturday night.  A little past my bedtime really.  Here's what my weekend looks like.

First a couple of definitions:
Project Leadership Team-A Project Leader and a few Support Staff that live at a Ministry Site with one of the Short Term Mission Teams.
Mission Team- usually a church group

Teams depart on Saturdays.  We had a small group of teenagers from Indianapolis with us all week in the Staff House.  They were great, I really enjoyed having them around.  They had to leave at 6 am this morning so I was up in time to see them off.

• At 7:30ish I made a "Water Run"- a trip to a local store to buy drinking water- about 130 gallons.
• At 8:30ish I picked up one of our Project Leadership Teams and a few Mission Team Members from  their ministry site.
• At 9:30ish I made another Water Run- stocking up...we need about 600 gallons for the Staff House and the two team houses this week.
• At noon I took the last two participants to the airport...and picked up Pizza at the Domino's trailer near the US Embassy.

Tonight one of the World Race Teams joined us for our weekly worship time which was preceded by Pizza and followed by Ice Cream!  After the party died down I talked Sarah into cutting my hair.  Pictures later.

In the morning I'll make an Airport run to pick up 8 incoming participants.  At the same time, two Project Leadership Teams will go to their ministry sites.  21 more participants will arrive after lunch and 2 more later in the day.  After my first airport run I'll continue to make Water Runs and disperse supplies and participants to the two Leadership Teams before making a final airport run.

All this assuming all the vehicles keep running and I don't get lost going to or from the airport!

Connections

Here's a couple of nice "Hey what are you doing here?" moments so far in Haiti.

When I arrived the first night I ran into Stacy.  Stacy was on my World Race Squad and I think this was the first time I had seen her since Nov 19, 2007.

She's here leading a World Race Relief Team for the month.

It was awesome running into her!

This story will take a few minutes but it's a good one. This is Debbie from Tupelo.  A few minutes after her arrival today we figured out that we share the obvious Mississippi Connection.

In the course of getting to know one another she mentioned one of her daughters whose name is Shannon...and a slight bell went off.

At some point she mentioned her daughter went to Ole Miss...a big bell went off.

Then she mentioned that her daughter is currently on The World Race because some guy spoke at the BSU about it.  The lights, the bells, the whistle's all went off.

That's when I asked her if she would believe that I was that guy that spoke back in Nov 08.  Shannon applied for The World Race less than a week after I spoke.

It was almost like a little family reunion.

Debbie and another World Race Parent are in town for the week which is a pretty awesome thing for a parent to do.

First Blog from Haiti

First blog from Haiti.  But where to begin?

Should I write about my first impressions?  About how the daily thundershower began right after I stepped out of the airport and I stood underneath a tarp roof for over an hour waiting on someone to pick me up.  Should I mention there were hundreds of us packed -in that stifling, confined space?

Should I write about what I saw and smelled riding in the back of the already beat-up Nissan Caravan on the way to the Staff House?  I saw the Tent Cities.  I saw crumbled buildings.  I saw tin-shacks seemingly stacked upon one another on a hillside- probably the worst living conditions I’ve ever seen.  And they didn’t pop up since the Earthquake… they pre-dated the Earthquake.  People were living like that well before the Earthquake.

I could write about NGO World.  Behind a fence near the airport are, I guess, thousands of workers with Non-Govt Organizations.  A lot of the NGO’s have really nice Mercedes trucks or Land Rovers or Pathfinders…and we’re struggling to keep our used Nissan Vans and Chevy Truck running. I could write about how the US Embassy appears to be the nicest building around and how there’s a Domino’s Pizza trailer just down the street from it. 

Should I write about the trash that is everywhere?    I don’t think there’s been any trash pick-up since January (and maybe not before then either!).  And when it rains (as it does every day), the roads coming down the hill onto the flat plain surrounding the port become rivers and gulleys washing down even more debris.  There seemed to be so much flotsam and jetsam that you could have walked on it across the flooded streets.  Today I drove for the first time- going up one of those hills felt more like driving up a riverbed- it was that rocky and water was flowing down all the way.

I could write about how it took 3 hours to drive 10 miles yesterday because of the rain, the traffic and the messed-up roads.

Or I could write about how this one lady in a neighborhood we’ve been ministering in this week (alongside a local Pastor) has turned her home into a school- taking in a dozen or so neighborhood kids!  About how appreciative they were for a small donation of crayons and stuff. 

I could write about the girl and her baby one of our Project Leaders took to the hospital yesterday.

I could write about running into some Southern Baptist Disaster Relief guys from Oklahoma today while buying 120 gallons of drinking water.

I could write about running into World Race friends down here or about the World Race Relief Team that arrived yesterday- 50 of them for one month- many who have never been on a mission trip before!

I could write about how awesome this week’s team is- a group from a church in Wisconsin along with 4 individuals working with them.

I could write about an amazing Staff here- about how diverse we are but about how much it seems everyone really desires this communal living arrangement.

I could write about Rice and Beans.  I could write A LOT about rice and beans!

I could write about the apparent stoicism of the Haitian people.  They can talk so matter-of-factly about losing loved ones in the Earthquake.

I could write about the way the Haitian believers have responded to the Earthquake- in repentance and dependence upon God- and about how, in the long run, all of these well-meaning Americans and the American Church (I’m one of them) may be here to learn something from them in preparation for times to come in America!

I could write about our Haitian Translators who are being discipled and who are discipling us too.  They are men-of-God bringing Kingdom to the Republic!

I could write about the beauty amidst the destruction- the port city of Port Au Prince is surrounded by the Caribbean Ocean and Mountains!

I just don’t know where to start.