During the second day, being a Sunday, all the teams that were at the compound visited different Haitian churches. So after breakfast, we all got into our van and drove about 40 minutes into downtown Port-au-Prince to the church that we were visiting. As we were driving there, our interpreter was explaining to us that there are 2.5-3 million people in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the death count so far since the earthquake was at around 250,000, not including people who might still be buried underneath ruble still. Right now there are about 1.5 million people are living out on the streets because they are too traumatized to go back into their homes. Later on, we heard a report that it is estimated about 1.3 million of those people can safely live in their homes but they will chose not to and sleep in tents right outside their homes on concrete ruble. The interpreter also gave us insight as to why practically all of Haiti uses concrete to build, and it is because it is the only thing that can stand up to hurricanes (which they get more of every year than major earthquakes), and to use wood would be very expensive because it is a very scarce commodity.
 When we got to the church, I could hear praise songs joyfully being sung with such enthusiasm and emotion from outside the building. There were probably close to 100 people inside, dancing, clapping, and raising their hands while singing, and never stopped when a bunch of guys with yellow shirts came in. They led us to sit in the front, where they continued to sing praises until the pastor came and gave us some encouragement and thanked our team for coming to Haiti to help them out. They asked each one of us to say a few words, and when I went up I wanted to encourage them with a verse from Hebrews 10:24-25, but somehow with the translation I ended up only saying part of the verse.ÂÂ
After each of the members spoke, one of our team mates requested to share a short message on the spot, and he spoke on Hebrews 12:26-29 which talks about God will shake the Heavens and the earth once again, and only things that are “unshakable” will remain, which poses us with a question what are we holding onto in this life???
Apparently, this was the FIRST time the congregation met in their own church building SINCE the earthquake, because the building collapsed and the ruble and debris kept them from meeting there. All of it was cleared out and ready to open the church with a blue tarp over as a make-shift temporary roof, and I think another SBC Disaster Relief team JUST finished cleaning the site up the day before.
After the church service, we visited the Presidential Palace. As soon as we got out of the car, some kids came up to us asking for a dollar. Again, all I could do was say no and smile. I was so surprised that this one little kid saw my name tag and was able to read my name, and was saying “Nick”. I asked him what his name was, but I don’t think I was saying it right because he wasn’t responding. We took a few pictures of the palace, and headed over to a cathedral that was also damaged from the earthquake. There again, kids came up to us asking for food and money, and we couldn’t give them anything. After taking more pictures of the cathedral, we went back to our “base”. We didn’t have much to do afterwards, I think most of us napped because still jet lagged, and not used to waking up so early.
After dinner, I was invited by one of my team mates to the kitchen where he introduced me to our interpreter for the week, and 2 of the cooks daughters. It was so crazy because we had a spontaneous worship night right there in the kitchen. It was really cool to be singing common songs that all of us knew with a little travel guitar.
Every night, we would have a team debriefing where we would talk about the day, what was good, what could we have done better, and any concerns/issues that came up. Then we would have a devotion led by one of the team mates. I think another thing that God blessed us with was really great team cohesion. From the moment we met at LAX/Fort Lauderdale, to when we all departed from the airport we just clicked with each other and worked well with each other. There weren’t ANY conflicts with our team members, and we always were encouraging each other and building each other up.
So for my thoughts and reflections of the day, I think this was THE day that really hit me and things just started becoming so surreal for me. The first day, I saw Haiti for all of 20 minutes from the airport to the house, and after that I was locked up in that compound for our own “safety”, so there’s only so much you can see and experience in 20 minutes. But the second day, we drove MUCH longer periods of time, and actually got out of the car to interact with people and such. I saw sooooooo many houses completely collapsed and destroyed, tent cities EVERYWHERE, ruble, ruble, and more ruble, more and more trash and you could tell when you were getting close to a trash pile because of the smell, and practically the entire city was out on the streets. The fact hit me that this truly was a disaster and I have NEVER in my life experienced anything to this magnitude and I don’t know how I would even react in a situation like this. Again, I keep thinking what if this were to happen in Los Angeles, or even San Jose, both being on a major fault line. I realized that it would take YEARS for Haiti to recover from this event, and the week that I was there would only contribute to a fraction of the help needed. I remember as we were driving back to the compound, I became overwhelmed by these thoughts and emotions and began to tear up. I remember asking God to give me the strength to go through this week and help me to understand His BIG picture of the work He is doing in Haiti. And boy did I hear some amazing BIG stories that I will share with you in later posts =)
Another thing that was kind of hard for me to get used to was NOT being able to give people any food, water or money, especially people I know are in need. I realize that the safety of the team is important and causing a riot would be really dangerous, but it just kills me inside NOT being able to help those in need which is the reason why I wanted to go to Haiti in the first place. Again, this goes with God’s BIG picture.
Anyways, that is day 2 of Haiti….still LOTS more to tell, tomorrow is the start of the actual work we were there for =)
