Saying Goodbye Is Always Difficult

Day 7 (Saturday, Aug. 7)

Leogane, Haiti

Today was difficult because we had to finish our projects and say goodbye to the children. I went back and forth between my construction projects and the kids playing under the trees. I gave Oligas one last romp on my shoulders and spent some time hanging out with him.

We told the kids through the interpreters that we were leaving soon and flying back to America the next morning. We told them that if we never saw them again on earth, we would one day see them in heaven. Sad eyes all around, both adults and children. We prayed in English and in Creole, then we headed out.

The construction guys said goodbye to the seven Haitian men we trained in carpentry and cement skills. This morning, Bill, Paul and the Haitian crew frantically put up a wall around Amalia’s kitchen. I also had to say goodbye to Amalia. She came out to the van as we all piled in and said “au revoire.” I grew to admire her for the hard work and dedication she puts into preparing close to 180 meals a day under adverse conditions. Seven days a week, she cooks and sweats in her outdoor kitchen.

Leaving mission stops is always difficult. I remember leaving my last two mission trips feeling the same way: empty. We had to say goodbye to relationships we had nurtured over the week, not knowing if we would ever see them again. We have to accept that, for one week, this is where God wanted us to be, serving these little lost lambs. Loving these little children was an unpaid job, but we all know we will attain riches in heaven one day because of the love we gave.

Granted, I am hoping to return to the Leogane orphanage again, to plant a garden. First, I must make sure God is, indeed, in this. I have to ensure the farming plan has the necessary support financially farmingwise make it succeed. I knocked off one item on my to-do list by asking one of our interpreters if he thought we could get a local farmer to come in with a tractor and chisel/disc to turn the soil over before we planted. He assured me it was possible.

Before I left, I packed a few pounds of soil from the orphanage in a gallon freezer bag to take home to have it analyzed for nutrients. Yes, I knew it was illegal, but I asked God to overlook my sin. I packed it in the middle of 40 pounds of dirty, stinky work clothes from my week in Leogane. If the customs people in Miami can find it through that mess, they can have it.

Just dreaming such dreams for the kingdom means waiting on God and doing the legwork to make sure that God is opening doors or not. It’s a conundrum of sorts. We can’t do it without God, but it still requires our efforts. Several people in my group asked about coming back to work with the children. Absolutely. This kind of ministry needs irrigation engineers, carpenters, dirt farmers, chicken farmers, bee keepers and canners. Bringing along people to love on the children is a natural.

As I look ahead, I have already started to write down names of people who can farm, build chicken coops, keep bees and design an irrigation system. I am amazed at the resources God is filling my mind with. We need seed companies to donate seed. How do we get bees down there? How do we get hand farm tools down there? Where do we buy chickens to lay eggs? Will the local Ace Hardware have the necessary fencing on hand?

Those are all questions to be left in God’s hands. I will turn to him in prayer, ask others to pray, ask questions of people I think might have answers or solutions to the problems I foresee and watch God work. The project to-do list is rather substantial. I know I can’t do this task God has put upon me without his strength and guidance.

As we waved good-bye to our little Haitian friends, I, like everyone else in the group, began to cry. I looked for little Oligas, and he gave only a half-hearted wave back. Was he hurt? Or was he used to feeling abandoned? I know I have to return to my life in California, but that notion still hurts me. For the next few miles, our van was silent.

Only God knows if I will one day return to Leogane, Haiti … and see my little buddy again.

Caption: From left, Hilary, Fred (our interpreter), Amy and Geannine were the backbone of our kids' team.

God Whispers in My Ear

Day 4: Wednesday, Aug. 4

Leogane, Haiti

Today, I was feeling sorry for myself in a major way. I suck at measuring (accurately, at least), cutting a straight line with a skill saw and screwing-in screws with a power drill. I was 0-for-3 on the day. I came to Haiti in hopes of gaining more carpentry skills because I feel called to go on foreign mission trips to work in construction. Someday, I’d like to be able to write in a few other skills besides cooking that I offer to a team.

So I went for a short walk to be alone and pray. “Lord, why is it so hard for me to learn how to do these things. I really want to get better. I just don’t have a knack for this sort of thing. This is going to be a really frustrating week for me if you don’t help me.”

I looked out over the empty backyard of the orphanage and stood in silence for a minute, sweating profusely. Then I heard God whisper in my ear: “Plant these people a garden. You’re a farmer.” Then I cried for a minute.

God was right. The fact that I suck as a carpenter doesn’t disappoint God one bit. I grew up on a farm, and even though I left the farm 31 years ago, the farm has never left me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven down I-5 to Los Angeles and driven over a thousand bubbles in the middle of the freeway because I’m checking out the crops to my left and to my right. When I began catering in 2004, my secret ambition was to grow a garden for vegetables and herbs, and maybe even raise a few steers, a pig or two, maybe a goat, a roost of chickens or a gaggle of ducks.

I joke that the farm house I grew up in was next door to fields of cantaloupe, wheat and lettuce – and poop, lots of poop because 20,000 head of cattle lived across the road. I can tell you everything about raising cattle, because my dad was a cattleman. As a sophomore in high school, I had the 4-H grand champion steer in the Yuma County Fair. I participated in the Arizona State fair judging cattle. I could guess the weight of a steer within 30 pounds. For three summers in college, I was a hired gun for various farms in California and Arizona. Driving farm implements was a whole lot of fun growing up, but my oldest brother will tell you that I never could put in straight rows for planting. He always had to put the first six rows in. Sort of like my saw skills.

My senior year, my dad the farmer advised me to choose between cattle and wrestling, and I chose wrestling. In college, I gave up wrestling for journalism after I suffered a lifelong injury to my neck. I was a newspaper journalist for 23 years, including seven years working in the food department for the Tri Valley Herald in Pleasanton, California. Here I am writing about farming again.

I digress. Back to Haiti. Whereas my mind doesn’t really see things when I work in construction, the ideas started flowing immediately for a garden. I walked around the roughly one-half acre. I grabbed a handful of dirt and tried to envision what kind of crops would grow here. I looked at all the weeds and rocks and began plotting strategy. Thankfully, it is a fairly flat piece of land.

I walked next door to check out the corn field. I plucked an ear of corn, and the kernals were sweet and tasty. The field was infested with weeds. This farmer apparently didn’t like hoeing weeds.

I made mental notes of the farm equipment we would need. I thought about the irrigation problems we would face and how we would solve them. I made a mental note to ask my middle brother how to get rid of the abundant grass. I made a quick plan to buy some chickens and build a chicken coop so the children would have eggs to eat for protein. Chicken poop is one of the best natural fertilizers. They would need either a cow or a nanny goat for milk. We’d plant fruit and nut trees someday. I asked one of our interpreters if he thought we could get a local farmer to come in and chisel the ground, and he assured me they would help us. I made plans with the cook to go to the local farmers market so I could see the vegetables for sale from the area. (There was a large variety; I counted more than 20 different vegetables and fruits.)

When would we come back? November, to plant the winter crop. Then again in February for the harvest. We’d teach them bee-keeping because bees are needed for pollination. We’d teach them canning so vegetables would be plentiful two months later. Canning is no good unless you have a cool place to store the jars. With no electricity at the orphanage, we would have to build an old-fashioned root cellar a few feet underground to keep them cool. Because it rains so much, it would have to have proper drainage designed. We would need to write the director of the orphanage and ask his permission.

The children would help farm, because they need to learn the responsibility of caring for something that will benefit them. Teaching them to farm will bring alive Jesus’ teachings on the Parables of the Soils. Maybe a few of them will even become farmers.

I started thinking of friends who might join me because they have certain skills our team would need. My friend Jan was the first to come to mind, because she raises a few chickens in her back yard, she keeps bees to make her own honey (the best I’ve ever tasted), and her back yard is one huge garden. My two brothers are my best advisers, and maybe I’ll invite them to come along. I asked Bill, our Haiti team’s resident construction expert, if he could design us a chicken coup, and he said certainly. When I told team members I wanted to come back to plant a garden, a few of them said they wanted to come back, if for no other reason then to see the kids again. The team will need engineers as well as housewives.

Cool.

When God puts a vision on the hearts and minds of one of his followers, he gives them the tools they need, from ideas, to consultants, to helpers, you name it. All of the components won’t come at one time, but they’ll come at just the right time. His time. I love how God works. He uses us for his purposes, if we are willing to humble ourselves and serve him with his plan, not ours. This isn’t about us. It’s about empowering the Haitians to feed themselves. This project may go beyond this little orphanage that sits on 2 acres of this island nation. Every farmer in Haiti could benefit from the irrigation principles we can teach them.

Here’s the funny part. In January, I began a ministry called Feast With the King, whose premise is to use good food to witness to a lost world. One of our tenets is to help churches plant urban gardens and give the proceeds to the homeless. In Livermore, I’m working with a church to plant a garden in its back yard. But as I planned to go to Haiti, at no time did I ever think about planting a garden. I knew I wanted to go, prayed about it and asked God to provide the finances, which he did.

God first had to get me down there before he could put his ultimate plan on my heart. I had to grow a heart for those orphans before I could serve them. God wants his servants to have caring hearts for those they help. He wants our motives to be pure.

The hard part for me was to not go out and find a tractor and chisel and get to work. I wanted to organize the kids and get all the big rocks out of the field. But I knew I had to be patient, pray and wait. Every once in a while, I’d walk over to the ground and just look around and pray. Before I left, I bagged a pound of dirt to have it analyzed back home for nutrients.

When I got home, I wrote up the proposal to my church, Cornerstone Fellowship, and its mission board, which oversees this Haiti project. A few days later, I was invited to participate in a group to plan our follow-up ministry. Since I got back two weeks ago, I started calling people I thought could help me solve problems I foresaw. I shared the vision with a few friends, and some of them sent me notes from research they did on the Internet.

God is present in Haiti, and he is working in the lives of Haitians. He is letting them know every day that he loves them. Someday, one of the ways he will show them he loves them is by providing them with healthy food from their very own garden.

Way cool.

I can’t wait to go back to Haiti again. I want to help plant a garden. I want to see the children again. And I want to share God’s love for those children. God willing.

Caption: Could this be where we one day plant a garden? Stay tuned.

Of hugs and bon swas

Day 1 Continued (Sunday, Aug. 1)

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

After our team’s bumpy, two-hour ride in the back of a truck from the airport to our hotel near Leogane, we were promised some time to rest. We had been traveling for 18 hours, including a redeye from San Francisco to Miami, followed by the final leg from Miami to Haiti.

Our hotel is a work in progress. Some rooms are finished, whereas others are being constructed. Five rooms had air conditioning, which we paid extra for, and four of those went to the women in our group. My room had a simple 3-speed air fan, a double bed covered with a simple sheet, a table with two chairs and a tiny bathroom. The entire space was perhaps 150-square feet. We did have a shower – indoors even – with one handle with no H or C to designate the temperature of the water. We assumed it was cold, or at least we hoped it was. After working in 95-degree heat during the day, we wall wanted to take cold showers upon returning to our rooms late in the afternoon. But growing up in Arizona, I can tell you I took many cold showers that were actually warm. The prospect of taking a warm shower after working all day at the orphanage did not appeal to me.

Later that night, my roommate, Doug L, and I would put up a mosquito netting in our room. Opening the window was not an option, because that would let the mosquitoes in. Mosquitoes can only bite you if you let them inside. We decided we would rather sweat than hear mosquitoes buzzing about.

Our team’s R & R ended much sooner than promised. Our leader, Jonathan, a software guy leading the construction team, let us know we would be boarding the truck and driving the 25 minutes to introduce ourselves to the kids. Eating was also on our minds, and dinner was provided for us at the orphanage. We hired the orphanage cook to cook meals for us during Cornerstone Fellowship’s summer mission here.

Our team was now complete: 18 in all, with three staying over from the previous week. We were growing accustomed to looking out the back of the truck at the busy traffic behind us. Most of the Haitians stared at us, and we stared back. Car and truck horns are not your ordinary horn honks; most are loud air horns. We would hear that sound thousands of times during our week here.

Even though Americans have been coming to the region more frequently in the past six months, white people just aren’t a part of the culture. Americans don’t retire to Haiti, as they might so in neighboring Dominican Republic or Belize or Costa Rica in Central America. Haiti does not have a sewer system, a water works, garbage pick-up, and most homes don’t have electricity, so no air conditioning or even a fan. Hence, it is not the kind of place people come to vacation, though one of the cruise lines owns an island near Port-au-Prince. Only two airlines fly into Haiti.

Finally, we sense the truck slowing down for a right-hand turn, meaning we were closer to the orphanage. My heart beat would slow down dramatically once off the rough road.

Once the truck stopped, we sweaty Americans hopped off and were immediately greeted by the friendly children. Most were smiling broadly. We exchanged “bon swas, to introduce ourselves, making us fast friends. Some kids wanted to be picked up and held. Most would quickly grab your hand and just hold it and stare at you. A few kept a safe distance, not knowing what to think of the Americans. We were coached to let the kids determine how friendly to be. Pushing the children for hugs or high fives was not on our agenda.

The Haitian hellos lasted for five minutes. There are 78 children in the orphanage, but not all of them are present. I came in contact with perhaps 50 kids in rapid fashion.

In between greetings, I glanced around at my new settings. Our headquarters would be here, at the girls’ orphanage. The boys’ dorm was a quarter mile away, across the street. Before the January 12 earthquake, the orphanage did not include boys. The population doubled with one swift wind. Many of the children lost one or both parents to the hurricane.

The orphanage (I am choosing not to include the name of the orphanage in order to protect the identity of the children) is not your typical Haitian cinder block building. It is a temporary facility made of plywood walls and a tin roof. A cement floor gives it a sturdy foundation. Three doors connect to the outdoors, but there is only one window. Despite the typical 95-degree heat and high humidity, there are no fans in the room, requiring electricity, which is not hooked up.

The building consists of two dorm rooms; one for the older girls (roughly 12 and up) and one for the younger girls, with roughly 20 bunk beds filling each room. A storage room and dining room (our designated adults only room) are the third and fourth rooms. The entire building is perhaps 400 square feet. The kitchen is out back.

The “outhouse/shower” is 20 yards away and consists of cinder blocks with tarps acting as doors. Knocking, we would find out, consists of pounding your hand on the tarp and waiting. Inside is a hole in the ground. There is no toilet. Sometimes, toilet paper is present, sometimes not. As I peak inside, I secretly hope I will never have to use it.

Across the driveway sit five tents, two of which house local families who lost their homes in the earthquake.

In the distance, a hundred yards away, sit two large mango trees. Before long, children grab our hands and start walking us to the “trees.” We would soon realize that the massive amount of shade the trees offer make it the perfect place for the children to play. Virtually everything the kid team did with the kids is done in close proximity to the trees.

A small herd of goats eat grass and weeds nearby. Each one pants feverishly but cannot go far; each is tied by rope to a big-rooted weed or shrub. During the week, I did not see the goats ever drinking water.

The construction team quickly huddles to review our work schedule. Making cement pillars was primary on our list, as well as repairs to the front gate and various other repairs. If lucky, the church’s 10-foot x 30-foot storage unit would arrive from the Port-au-Prince port after being shipped by sea from San Francisco. The joke was that it took two weeks to ship the storage unit 6,000 miles through the Panama Canal, but it might take 40 days to go the final 20 miles. Such is the way business is done in Haiti, we are told.

Inside the storage unit is 40,000 pounds of equipment, tools and parts we would need to rebuild the orphanage, to California building codes, not Haitian, which don’t exist. That’s why the country virtually collapsed en masse under the stress of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco was a 6.9. In Haiti, the bricks and cement structures are not strong enough to survive such a tremor. In our six days there, we would find out how just poorly constructed local homes and businesses are. (Across from our hotel, I can see a half a dozen homes being rebuilt in the same manner as before. Local construction techniques, for the most part, have not changed much.)

We played with the children for a little while longer, and then it was time to return to the hotel for our promised R & R. Even though we are exhausted, we want to stay with the children and the children want us to stay. We need rest for the next day’s work, though.

Seeing the children’s sad faces makes leaving difficult. Our group’s demeanor took on a somber feel on the drive back to the hotel. The children and their dismal circumstances are on our minds.

Caption: My teammate, Dustin, took a picture of the orphanage's toilet with his cell phone. This is a typical outdoor outhouse, with only a hole in the ground for doing No. 1 or No. 2. This is a good day; toilet paper is in the corner.

Devastation and garbage are everywhere

Day 1 (Sunday, Aug. 1)

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

The severity of the sweltering heat hit me square in the face when I walked off the plane and through the hallway to the terminal when I was hit with a heat blast through a crack. I grew up in Arizona, so 110-degree, dry heat is something I dealt with regularly in the summer for 20 years. This was different; it was muggy and sticky.

After we gathered our 15-member traveling party (three met us there for their second week), we took a bus to customs. I saw my first tent in the distance near the tarmac. Once inside, utter chaos ensued. Everyone on our flight was standing in the same long, sweaty lines. Haitians, naturally, got preference going through the lines. In the distance, I saw hundreds of people trying to track down their hundreds of suitcases, while fending off hustling Haitians trying to earn a buck by taking your suitcase to the customs’ luggage checkout counter. It was a distance of perhaps 30 yards, but with the massive body traffic might take hours.

We spent roughly 30 minutes in line to get our passports stamped (my first ever). The building was your typical metal airport hangar, but with no air conditioning and only a few fans. I estimated the temperature to be 120 degrees F with 70 percent humidity. Sweat constantly dripped from my body. Most Haitians keep a handkerchief in their pockets for wiping their brow and face. I made a quick mental note of that.

Once through the line, we had to swim through some 300 bodies for our 25 pieces of luggage, including 10 extra suitcases with donated children’s clothes and tools and equipment for the construction team. Five different men boldly grabbed my suitcase, trying to “help” me, only to be given a stern “non!” and a wag of my index finger. I can’t fault them for trying to make a buck; they’re at least willing to work. One of my teammates offered a Haitian man $2 for maybe five minutes work and was told, “Not enough,” he said with palm out. “Take it or leave it,” he was told. He took it and went on to his next victim.

The various Haitian baggage handlers bickered constantly over who carried what bag and who should get credit. I know about five words in Creole, but I’m certain I heard a few loud four-letter insults.

The men in our group tried to take charge and protect the women in our group as best we could. We stacked carts four-suitcases deep, and I was in charge of one, with my personal suitcase and a second suitcase filled with children’s clothes on board. I didn’t let it leave my sight. I feared being asked by a customs agent: “Has anyone other than you handled your bag in the airport?” Well, yeah, 13 Haitians handled my bag. Duh.

Next up: getting all 25 bags through customs. The first cart was being handled by John, one of the 17-year-old twins. The woman agent asked him to open a bag, and she went through it for a minute. She waved him through. I was up next. I was motioned to put the top suitcase on the counter in front of her.

In broken English, she asked what was inside. I told her, “Children’s clothes.”

“For who?”

“An orphanage,” I told her.

“All of these bags are for the orphanage?”

I chose my words carefully, not wanting to lie. “Yes, all these suitcases are together,” I said.

She smiled. “You can go. All of you. Thank you for coming.” She waved us all through.

This was not your normal “Thank you for visiting Haiti” travel dialog. She was thanking us for coming to help the orphans. She knew what we were doing in her country.

It was the first miracle that our team experienced in Haiti. We would experience many more in our eight days there. As we walked out the door together, we silently gave thanks for making what could have been a difficult process as easy as possible. God had let us know in our first hour in Haiti that he was with us amid the chaos around us.

In the parking lot, en route to the truck that would haul us to our hotel, we had to dodge a few more aggressive baggage handlers. In the distance, we saw a “Cornerstone” sign and walked to it. For all we knew, this guy punched out the original sign-holder to make a few extra bucks. We met our contact outside, who led us a quarter mile to the parking lot, where our truck awaited us. We had a 10-minute walk through the bumpy, pock-marked parking lot, with hundreds of Haitians shouting at us for change or water. Most of the airport was heavily damaged from the earthquake and was closed.

Four kids loaded our bags onto the truck. Our leader, Jonathan, asked us to contribute $2 to the main handler, who would divvy up the $30 among his people, all for five minutes work. The good news is we didn’t have to pay for parking.

The drive from the airport to our hotel was 20 miles, but it took us nearly two hours in normal traffic. When I say normal, I mean normal for Port-au-Prince. We drove on the main road from the capital city to Leogane, the epicenter of the January 12 earthquake that devastated this tiny Caribbean island. Much of the road was not paved. Most of it was filled with ruts and pock marks that sent drivers from the far right of the road to the far left in a matter of seconds. Each quick swerve brought honks from on-coming traffic and gasps from the 22 passengers in back, including the five Haitians who bravely sat on the back with no handhold or seatbelt.

From the back of the truck, I saw nothing but crumbled buildings (but not torn down), utter devastation, filth, stench from garbage strewn everywhere and hopelessness on the faces off Haitians. Rubble from broken buildings lay on the main road. Blue tarps and tents were everywhere, side-by-side in every vacant lot and park in town.

One-person businesses were everywhere. Men and women of all ages hawked their wares on every street corner. Motor oil, bottled water, sodas, gum, clothes, fresh produce, cooked food, stores on a stand – you name it and it was for sale.

White people in the back of a truck brought stares from the thousands of Haitians we passed by. We quickly learned that a friendly “bonswa!” (good afternoon) brought a smile and return “bonswa” from Haitians. Most of the Haitians we would meet were friendly.

Traffic is heavy on every square foot of the road. It is filled with motorcycles (often taxis) with as many as three people on board, personal cars and pickups, trucks like ours hauling goods and semi-tractor trailers. And public transportation. No, not busses like we see in the United States but little mini-pickups that had metal cages in their bed with benches on both sides. It wasn’t unusual to see both benches crammed and with people on the floor, standing on the back bumper holding on for dear life and even sitting up on top. I counted 21 people in one pickup/bus. Every person had the same empty look on their face. Few vehicles have air conditioning. Haitians shout at each other for every driving transgression, then move on.

The larger your vehicle, the more respect you get when you weave. Thankfully, our driver was an expert at avoiding ruts and weaving through traffic.

I reserved three waters in my suitcase, but it was buried at the bottom of the pile. I was sweating profusely. Katy, one of the women in our group, offered me a drink of cold water. I swallowed my pride and took a drink, a big drink. “Thank you,” I said, humbly. “No problem. If you need more, just say so,” she replied. I said so a few more times on our long, hot drive.

All the way, we prayed. The truck’s transmission was shot and slipping constantly. Every time we stopped, we held our breath as to whether we were going to move again. Each time, we eventually moved. The road was dusty much of the way.

This form of travel was foreign to us foreigners but a common, everyday occurrence for the locals.

It is Sunday and many of the women and girls are wearing pretty dresses, and the men are in coats and ties, walking with Bibles in hand. Church is going on somewhere nearby – or maybe miles away. I could see a few open-air services going on as we drove through town.

Finally, we reach our hotel. Our 18-hour venture is over. Rest was coming. On the gate of our hotel was a picture of a gun with an X through it. Was this an ominous sign? We joked about it, but inside, I was wondering what I had gotten myself into.