We left on January 3, 2012 and that day was unlike any other that I have ever experienced. I took the boys to daycare in the morning on my way to work at Republic Airways (ok, that wasn’t really all that unique) but this time I wouldn’t see them again for an entire week as I had an afternoon flight out to Miami.
After I dropped the boys off, I arrived at Republic for my last day of work there. I had worked there for nearly 11 years and had experienced a lot of success and had made a lot of friends. I never thought it would be very difficult to hand over my laptop, my smart phone, my office keys and walk out the door; but it was very hard. I was thankful that I was able to send out the following Email to my co-workers as I left:
Today is my last full work day at Republic as I am leaving here to pursue new adventures.
I will be starting my new journey with a missions trip to Haiti with my church during the first week of January. If you think of it, please pray for me, my team, and the people of Chambrun that we will serve while we’re there.
I will return from Haiti (hopefully without malaria) to a lengthy honey-do list of neglected items around the house, take care of my parents, serve my neighbors, read a few books, spend some time in the gym, travel with my wife and sons, and do some career development.
In time, I’ll get back in the game and I hope that our paths will cross again because I have thoroughly enjoyed working with each of you.
I would like to encourage all of you to live each day to its fullest, always do your best in whatever you do, be honest, be yourself, be humble, and always be mindful of God’s presence and His character.
This Email really seemed to touch many of them and I am thankful that I was able to send it out…hopefully it is a way that many of them will remember me.
After leaving RJET for the last time I got a haircut, had lunch with Stephanie, off to the chiropractor (had a little Monkey Joe’s incident), then off to Genesis to hop on a van headed to the airport.
We had an overnight layover in Miami (RON in MIA for my airline friends) which was nice because a) Miami is warm and b) it was a comedy of errors as our hotel had just been sold the week before and there was a lot of confusion regarding our reservation. After we finally got checked in we had a late dinner at one of Miami’s finest IHOPs.
Early in the morning on the 4th, we got up for a 7:25 flight to Port-Au-Prince (PSP). I wish I would have known that the last mostly organized / scheduled thing I would see for the next week would be at the airport in Miami, I would have enjoyed it a lot more (even though our flight took a catering delay).
Arriving in Port-Au-Prince (PSP) was a real trip. It is amazingly disorderly (some of that due to earthquake damage and some of it just the way Haiti operates). Well designed and well run airports tend to confuse people but PSP takes the cake. I don’t have good words to describe the chaos that welcomes you when you get off the plane, but what I can tell you is that the Nehemiah Vision Folks (NVM) have some good guys on the ground there at the airport that get you through that mess pretty well.
We were welcomed in the airport parking lot by Genesis Chruch’s own Brandon Hutchins who is working with NVM (along with his wife Katie) for at least the next year as their operations guy. It was really nice to see a familiar face and I’m sure he felt the same way when he saw all of us. He picked us up in a huge tap tap, it was open air with a pretty impressive welding job using rebar (everything in Haiti uses rebar) to turn a former box truck (I think) in to a people mover.
The drive to the NVM campus was an eye opening experience. There were countless people who appear to have nothing to do and no particular place to go. What an amazing blessing MEANINGFUL WORK is! Of course I noticed the poor living conditions, the filth, the smell, the crazy traffic, the honking of horns and such but all I really paid attention to was the people wandering around looking for something to do.
Since we were down there during the first week of the year, nearly all of the staff that work on the compound (the doctor, the nurses, teachers, students) were still on Christmas vacation so it was a great time to get things done in the clinic and in the school buildings. Our days were filled mostly with work around the NVM campus. They had our team painting the interior of the clinic and they would like our team to paint some murals for the kindergarten since we had an artist on our team.
We did get to take a couple of trips off of campus. We were able to go out to Onaville a few times which is a city of 150,000 people who all share the same story: they are sojourners who have been violently displaced from their true home. Its an encampment of tents and ramshackle huts cobbled together by earthquake victims who lost family, friends, and a place to call home. In simple terms, it is a place where the Haitian government is sending displaced people from Port Au Prince so that they can rebuild that city without homeless people coming in and living in the new structures while they are building them. We also walked to the Children’s home in Chambrun to play with the children that live there.
The below picture is of me spinning one of the kids at the home. We spent a lot of time doing this no matter where we ran in to children.
In addition to the work around the compound, some of our team built this awesome latrine for the NVM church plant in Onaville. It is well built by talented craftsmen and should provide for the potty needs of the church attendees or several years to come! I helped with this a little bit by adding the Genesis flower logo to the side but they have probably painted over that by now.
Below is the market in Onaville. It is quite the happening place and I'm glad that we were able to see it.
As a mom and her baby were waiting to get in to the clinic, I played some soccer with one of her "older" kids. I think that this boy is about 2 but he is super tiny.
We were very safe on the campus at NVM. This is my friend Junior. I taught him how to throw a football. It is difficult to throw a football with a 12 guage but Junior did a pretty good job.
Our time with Nehemiah Vision Ministries was fantastic. They are doing good things down in Haiti. Our team worked hard to get all of our tasks done several times working past midnight and in to the wee hours of the morning painting the clinic and the murals. I am proud to have been a part of such a good team.
Here are some things that I learned while in Haiti that I think you should know. 1. There are 2 lane roads separated by a yellow line like here in the US but in Haiti it is just a suggestion as traffic sometimes runs 4 across. 2. Haitians are up before dawn and they were at work before most of us Americans had got out of bed. 3. Primary modes of public transportation in Haiti are tap taps (pickup trucks with toppers) and motos (motorcycle taxis), there is always a lot of folks crammed in to a tap tap, they say that a tap tap is never full and there is always room for one more. 4. The boys are not circumcised and you will see a lot of boys running around without pants. 5. Haiti doesn't smell particularly good, everything runs on diesel fuel and there is a lot of poop everywhere. 6. Malnourished people (especially children) are heartbreaking and easy to find in Haiti. 7. Cleanliness and appearence is very important to Haitians, they sweep their dirt floors often and they feel terrible if they happen to make you dirty. 8. There is rebar (iron bars) sticking out of the top of almost all buildings, I guess that if there is still rebar exposed that the construction isn't considered "complete" and therefore isn't subject to tax. 9. Haitians enjoy their personal space and most property is marked by fences or wood stakes. 10. The "LOTO" is the game of choice down there and there are little loto booths set up all over the place. They don't have their own drawing so they use numbers from american lottos, I don't know what all they use but I remember seeing New York quite a lot.
At the end of our trip, we went to a resort in Haiti and played on the beach. Here is our team's only group picture during our entire trip. Go visit, go serve, God will bless you way more than you bless the people of Haiti. The country is beautiful, make your travel plans today!
The priest answered them, “Go in peace. Your journey has the LORD’s approval.” - Judges 18:6
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