Haiti Take Two

Blessed.  The best word to describe how I feel on this day, my 42^nd birthday, as I prepare to leave on an impact trip to Haiti tonight.  Blessed to have family and friends who love and support me.  Blessed to be part of a church that acts locally and globally and believes in transforming lives through Christ.  Blessed that I have a job at a school that values, supports, and encourages the faculty, students, and the community.  Blessed to live in my favorite city.  Blessed that I have the opportunity to go, serve, and love in a country in need.  Sure, there are other feelings today: joy, sadness, fear, anxiety, fatigue, to name a few.  But, blessed is the overwhelming feeling. 

Our team of fifteen men from Flood Church in San Diego leaves tonight to serve on a short-term venture team with Children of the Nations in Haiti (COTN).  COTN began establishing a presence in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010.  Our church has partnered with COTN in Malawi and Uganda in the past, and we raised $200,000 to help establish this new ministry in Haiti.  We are the first official venture team from Flood to go to Haiti, and hopefully will set the stage for other teams to go on a regular basis in the future.  I worked with COTN in Haiti in 2010 as part of a disaster relief medical team serving at a field hospital.  For more on COTN’s growing ministry in Haiti go here: http://www.cotni.org/pages/haiti. 

One of our major roles on this trip is to build relationships with the children and the community COTN is now serving.  So our team will host a Vacation Bible School, Soccer Camp, and Leadership Conference.  We will also be distributing some of the 150,000 meals and hygiene packs from the large container our church shipped to Haiti earlier this summer.   We are basically there to help in any way we can, and hopefully cast vision for future teams from our church. 

I would appreciate your prayers for our team in the following areas:

1.     Safety - for our flights on the 20th, 21st, 28th, and 29th and while we are in country

2.     Health - that nobody gets sick, including protection over our digestive systems and from the bugs

3.     For us to help further COTN's work and ministry in the village, transforming children's lives 

4.     For the 300-500 kids we will serve

5.     Team unity and healthy communication

6.     Decent sleep within the hot weather

7.     For humble hearts, teachable spirits, and flexible schedules.  

8.     For easy communication through the translators 

9.     That we would have confidence in Christ in all we do 

For me personally please pray that I will have the energy to persevere, despite the drowsy feelings from my Parkinson’s medication, that this second trip to Haiti will transform and build upon any experiences from 2010 and further my desires to continue mission work in Haiti and around the world, and that God would use my professional skills in video and photography to help the people of Haiti through the video work I will be doing during and after the trip. 

Thank you in advance for your thoughts, prayers, and encouragement.  I feel the love.   Blessed. 

John 15: 9-17

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command.  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit —fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.”