These Boots Were Made for Working

Day 7 continued (Saturday, Aug. 7)

Leogane, Haiti

During our last few days at the orphanage, I began to think of ways to lighten my luggage load for the flight home, knowing I had to keep it under 50 pounds. I threw away a holy pair of jeans that were utterly filthy (and smelly). I tossed a white t-shirt that would never come clean, no matter how much bleach was applied.

The heaviest items left in my suitcase were an old pair of work boots. Surely, someone could use a good pair of work boots. I hadn’t used them in several years before this week; I surely wasn’t going to miss them.

Jonathan, our team leader, pulled me aside and reminded me of the church’s rules to not give personal items or food to the locals. Inside, I was sad, because, in my heart, I knew I was right in wanting to give one of the Haitians something he needed to work in local construction. But I also knew I had to follow the rules, whether I agreed with them or not.

After saying our goodbyes to the children, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up (so important for male construction workers), before heading off to tour Port-au-Prince. When we got back to our rooms around noon, the local construction team was hard at work on the second floor, where I was staying.

After changing clothes (I felt so refreshed), I started to head downstairs to our vans, ready to be a tourist. One of the workers passed by, and I just happened to look at his feet. He was wearing this ratty pair of tennis shoes feebly held together by short pieces of shoelaces. His heels hanged out over the back of his shoes, flattening them, and he was barefoot. The shoes looked like hand-me-downs that had handed down a couple of times.

I got his attention, then put my foot up next to his. His was bigger, but that was OK, because the boots were too big (they were given to me and probably a size 11; I wear a 10). I motioned for him to wait by my door while I fetched the boots. “Please, Lord, let these boots fit this man. He looks like he could use them.”

I put the boots on the ground for him to try on. Perhaps he was wary of me, thinking I was a used shoe salesman from the States. The young man slipped on the unlaced boots and smiled. I smiled back. If the boots fit, you must … keep them.

“Yours,” I told him. “Gift.” I was thinking, “You need them more than I do, fella.”

We shook hands, sealing the deal. He quickly slipped off his tennis shoes and put on the boots, without socks, mind you. I couldn’t help noticing this young man of perhaps 25 had the feet of a 70-year-old man.

He went back to his labors, with toes stretching out, and I skipped off, gleefully. I had lightened my suitcase load and I had gladdened my heart. (The next day, my suitcase weighed in at 50.3 pounds, close enough to not pay the additional fee.)

I probably bragged too much about my thoughtful gift, but I was truly happy that I could help someone in need. Our team rules said nothing about giving your stuff away to the locals.

Caption: These are the shoes worn by the Haitian before my free gift.

One of my teammates, Amy, has returned to Leogane to care for little Charlie, who was sick the entire week we were there. Read her blog at http://amyshaiti.blogspot.com/

Not Even the President Escaped Devastation

Day 7 continued (Saturday, Aug. 7)

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

I felt a bump. It happened in the blink of an eye. I looked down to find a boy about 12 years old, dark as midnight on a starless night, looking up at me. “Hey, don’t do that,” I said to him in a firm English voice, thinking he was pick-pocketing me. Of course, he probably didn’t understand me, because most Haitians speak Creole. He stood smack dab in the middle of a group of 12 American tourists, bunched tightly, looking about at the rubble around us.

I reached into my zippered pocket, and my cell phone was gone. Our Haitian interpreter, Fred, acted quickly, prodding the boy for answers and trying to scare him into cooperating.

“He doesn’t have it,” someone in our group said. “That kid over there has it,” pointing to a boy 20 yards away in the street, halfway between our side of the street and the other, a large (read thousands) tent city.

Fred, still thinking quickly, pulled out his wallet that contained a fake badge from his days as a security guard. Later, he said he yelled at the boy that he was a policeman and if he ran, he would arrest him. The boy froze, then slowly started inching backward.

It was my turn to act quickly. I sprinted toward him as fast as my 51-year-old, sweating profusely body could go. The boy turned and ran just. All I could think of was to say stop in Spanish. “Alto!” I yelled. The boy dropped my cell phone in the street, and I was never so thankful. Thankful that I got my cell phone back and that I didn’t have to run any more. That 20 yards winded me.

A few minutes later, Fred pulled me aside and told me how lucky I was. “Had you gone another 20 yards, you would have been in the middle of all those Haitians. Had (the boy) screamed out, the Haitians would have come to his rescue.” The implication was that I was a bigger, White American seemingly taking advantage of this scrawny, probably hungry, probably orphaned, Haitian boy with no shoes.

I couldn’t help thinking about those two boys, working in tandem as pickpockets for food, for survival. I immediately thought of “the artful Dodger” in the classic Charles Dickens book “Oliver Twist.”

That was the highlight of our afternoon touring Port-au-Prince. At 11, we left the orphanage, stopped off at the hotel to freshen up and change clothes, and by 2, we were in Haiti’s capital.

Touring Port-au-Prince on our last day in Haiti was our reward for our hard work here and … surviving. One of our guides, Jean, promised us a decent meal at a “safe” restaurant. We stopped there, got out, but the sandwich/pizza/burger joint was tiny, seating perhaps 20 people. We had 25 in our group. The owner was unwilling to let us take over the place and displace his regular customers, so we moved on.

Whenever we stop and get out of the vans, people stop us and ask questions. Who are you? Why are you here? How do you like it here? Some of the Haitians can be downright funny. They laugh and joke with us because … “Why would you come to this?” one of them said. Some of the Haitians were genuine in wanting to chat with us. Sometimes, we realized they were cordial because they wanted money, but most of the time, they were just friendly nationals.

Frankly, Port-au-Prince is disgusting in every sense of the word. Billions of dollars, more money than was donated to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2004, has flooded into Haiti, population 9 million people before the earthquake, yet little has changed in eight months. In a August 22, 2010 article, the Washington Post said 230,000 people have left Port-au-Prince for outlying areas. The story said it is believed that 1.3 million people are living in tents in Haiti. That’s one-tenth of the total population. Everywhere we drove in Port-au-Prince, we saw tent cities. Between the medians on the main thoroughfare, in city parks, on bridges, next to rivers.

Before the January 12 earthquake, Port-au-Prince was home to 2.3 million people. The BBC Network reports that 230,000 people died from the earthquake, and it is believed that tens of thousands are still buried in the rubble. Everywhere we walked, we could smell the stench of dead bodies.

Our church sent teams of people to work in a 55,000 person tent city in Port-au-Prince, and the space it filled was no bigger than a couple of football fields. Allies of maybe 10 feet separated tents that were usually about 10 feet by 10 feet. The next tent was no more than a foot away. As far as the eye could see, blue tents filled your vision. Sometimes, you could see what organization had given the tents away, such as Samaritan’s Purse or the Red Cross.

Walking around the capital, it is hard not to feel deep sympathy for these people. Our group would talk awhile, then feel rage at how this country had gotten to this point. Haiti has been pretty much this way for centuries, mostly because of a corrupt political system. The nation has nearly a 50-percent literacy rate.

Jean and Fred, our interpreters would tell us the background about what we were seeing. Jean pointed out the national stadium, where the national soccer team played before the earthquake. He says he played semi-pro soccer earlier in his life and had played there “once or twice.” We walked past what Jean described as a once beautiful city park that once was a place for families to come and relax on hot evenings or weekends. Now, a mega tent city resides there and no grass can be seen anywhere. The national museum was closed, though not because of rubble. The Presidential Palace was in shambles, as was the national treasury and the national cabinet building, all within a few blocks from each other.

Jean got a kick out of seeing the crumbled treasury building. “We don’t have to pay taxes anymore, because there isn’t anyone to collect them.” He was speaking in jest. Or was he.

A single patrol guard stood near the tattered Presidential Palace, easily as large as the White House. The Post story quoted President Peval as never having walked across the street to talk to people in the mega tent city Champ de Mars. While we were in Leogane, President Clinton traveled to Haiti to represent his nonprofit and make a sizable donation to the cause. Every time we saw a helicopter, we joked that it was Clinton. Even Clinton got out and walked about the rubble. But not the president of Haiti.

The Haitian presidential elections are coming up in the fall. One of the people running is a popular rapper, Wyclef Jean. The joke was that he couldn’t be any worse than Peval, who is described as “distant” by the locals.

As we drove around, most of what we saw was more devastation. We could see green hillsides in the distance, and our interpreters said there were still pockets of Port-au-Prince that remained undamaged, mostly homes of the affluent. Our interpreters described the aristocracy as being mostly uncaring about the poverty around them.

We saw lot of big homes hiding behind sturdy gates and tall walls, keeping them away from the population around them. The rich speak French, considered more proper than the pauper Creole.

Our interpreters said the displaced include many of the rich. Jean said he knew of doctors, lawyers and businessmen who live in the tent cities because their homes and business crumbled in the earthquake, and they have nowhere to go. (Jean himself lost his teaching job in Leogane, because the school was destroyed by the earthquake.)

By mid-afternoon, we made it to our destination: MacEpis, a wannabe Haitian McDonald’s. One half of the roughly 2,000-square foot restaurant was reserved for ice cream and desserts, with the other half for hamburgers, fries and sodas. All week long, I had craved a cheeseburger, so I ordered a … cheeseburger, fries and a Coke. After waiting a good half hour, my beloved burger finally arrived, with bacon and cheese.

This truly was a sad day. I nearly cried. The burger was awful, easily the worst hamburger I’ve ever eaten. The bacon was chewy and unedible. The French fries, though, weren’t bad. A Coke is a Coke, even in Haiti. We were told it was safe to drink the carbonated drinks here because the restaurant has a good reputation. (It was safe, as the guards outside carried scatter guns.) In other words, the water was safe. I got a tiny scoop of ice cream for dessert, but it wasn’t the same as Haagen Dazs.

I left with a full stomach, but with memories of more bad food. I refused to claim this as my burger fix. I would have to wait until Miami 24 hours later for that luxury. Ugh.

Preserving Identities With a Paper Trail

Day 6 (Friday, Aug. 5)

Leogane, Haiti

We stumbled upon a potentially embarrassing problem today at the orphanage when we discovered, shall we say, irregularities, in its filing system for the children’s important papers. The paperwork included report cards, medical reports and birth certificates. Everything was in one, 6-inch stack of random papers, which I estimated to be over a thousand pages.

What’s the big deal? For most of these kids, these papers represent their dwindling identity. Many of them lost both parents to the earthquake, some lost only one parent but were dumped off at the orphanage because the surviving parent could no longer care for them after the January 12 earthquake.

One of the teenage girls was in tears when she showed us where the files were kept in the storage room. Little care had been given to the files. No methodology existed for the Haitians, it seemed. The files were infested with ants (major disease carriers) and most were sopping wet from one of the recent storms. We could see mold and mildew on some of the papers, which could make the kids sick.

After making the discovery, several of the people in our group were livid. “How could they be so careless?” was the common cry.

Then we discussed it some more. Part of our dilemma was our common dislike for the orphanage’s director, who is just 18 and barely an adult. She has made her disdain of our presence known by her ever-present frown. She is rarely at the orphanage, doing who knows what while away. She has clearly left the children in our care. We have witnessed her berate the cook and anyone else who gets in her way. Yet she is in charge, and we have to respect the chain of command.

In truth, this job fell on her after the earthquake. She doesn’t really want to be here, but is here by necessity. This job means survival for her. She wasn’t trained to run an orphanage, and she wasn’t trained to file paperwork. So she stuck everything in a big pile and walked away.

The big issue we faced was this: did the Haitians even want our help with the paperwork problem? If they didn’t, should we take action on behalf of the children in the name of righteousness. This is one of those dilemmas with no right answers. So we prayed: “Lord, what would you have us do?”

Fortunately for us, the Haitians eagerly accepted our offer to help. We separated the files into four sections and even built a storage box with four bins. Our solution to the birth certificate problem came to Catharine in a dream. No kidding. Catharine stayed at the hotel yesterday because she was sick. In between sweating and the sound of hammering by the hotel workers, she slept periodically and … dreamed. She dreamed of taking pictures of the birth certificates.

We used one of our cameras to take pictures of all the birth certificates, giving a paper trail to any potential lost items in the future. One problem solved.

Then a few of our people (all parents) went to work doing what they do best: organize. For people like me who have ADHD, people who organize are gold. These people went above and beyond the call of duty. They showed those kids that their identities mattered. I could see a few of the teenage girls watching them with gleeful anticipation.

One day, these kids are all going to walk away from the orphanage. When they leave, we hope that each one of them has his or her treasured birth certificate in hand.

Perhaps a few of them will remember the time when the Americans came to visit for a summer. Maybe a few of them will leave the orphanage with an identity based in Jesus Christ because of our presence here this summer. That child’s life will be impacted for a lifetime because of his hope in an eternity with God in heaven. Maybe a kid or two will choose to help others around them because of the love we showed these kids.

That’s why we came. We can’t impact every kid here, but we hope to impact a few. As our week winds down, each one of us has special memories of time spent with at least one kid. I hope each one of those kids has special memories of us, too.

Caption: Nora, a mother of two daughters in Pleasanton, California, was one of four people who helped organize the orphanage's important papers. The discolored papers above is from exposure to the sun.

Building Boxes to Store Treasures

Day 5 Continued (Thursday, Aug. 5)

Leogane, Haiti

Many of the Haitians don’t understand personal responsibility or pride of ownership because of one very good reason: They don’t own anything. We decided to build open-ended boxes that would slide under the children’s bunkbeds so children could have a place to store their possessions, what little they have. Most of what they have has been given to them by our church’s short-term missionaries who came here this summer.

Throughout the week, we could tell when the kids were wearing t-shirts from the Bay Area. My favorite t-shirt was emblazoned with a tennis club from Marin County. I don’t think there are many tennis players at the orphanage. But every day, those kids had clean clothes to wear.

One of the things that slowed us down in the building of the boxes was the thought of only some of the kids receiving the boxes before we left. We could not built all 40 needed for the girls side of the orphanage, to say nothing about the 38 boys across the street.

In every decision we made, we tried to think how it would impact the children as a group. We were told to do certain things out of fairness to the children, such as not giving individuals presents. We didn’t give individual kids snacks. We didn’t want other children to feel slighted, and we certainly didn’t want children to be emotionally or physically abused so another kid could have a gift we had given to someone else.

Most of these kids have few possessions. Everyone has a toothbrush and toothpaste, and everyone has the necessary toiletries. Everyone has their own bed, but that’s about it. Kids don’t have toys to play with, for the most part, except for what we brought. And because the toys don’t belong to the kids, there is little personal responsibility on the part of the children to take care of them so they could play with them the next day. Often, toys disappeared for a day or two, only to be found later, in the weeds or on the other side of the compound.

Part of what I thought about with the boxes was how the children would feel when they got the boxes. “Great, I got a box for my stuff, but I don’t have any stuff to put in it. What good does that do me?” Or maybe, “Thanks, and does this mean you’re going to give me something to put in my box?” I wish I had better answers. (Many of the teenagers did have their own cell phones. Where they got the money to pay for them, I don’t know.)

Sometimes, Americans have grandiose illusions of things they can do for the children of third-world countries such as Haiti. Does it really benefit these kids if they are given some luxury item that’s going to disappear in a few days or weeks or months?

What happens to these kids after we leave this summer? Did we build up their hopes for nothing? Did we promise something we couldn’t keep? That’s a question our church is wrestling with now: What next? That answer will come from more discussions and much prayer.

The worst part about the boxes (aside from the fact I worked on them, and none of them were plum, or square) was that we would not be there when the children received them. The decision was made to not give them the boxes until all of them were completed and could be given out together.

* * *

Working with the Haitians can try your patience sometimes, whether it’s the language barrier or the difference in speed of life. The children’s boxes were to be painted today. Oopsie. We fine American mathematicians, many of us college graduates, didn’t add so good. In fairness to Doug L and myself, the boxes were designed by a certain contractor who shall remain nameless. The original design didn’t consider the half inch on the bottom of the box, which made the fit under the beds a little too tight. One could not put their fingers on the top of the box without smacking them into the metal bed frame. New design: wack off an inch on the sides.

As the group’s designated painting teacher, I was an abject failure. The interpreters were not around, so “what we had here is a failure to communicate.” I tried to teach Jid, one of the Haitian teenage boys, how to paint, stroking going with the grain. Every time I would look away for a minute or do another chore, I would return to see Jid painting up and down instead of side to side. Perhaps “with the grain” doesn’t translate in Creole.

Then, two of the boys did not seal the lid on the plastic paint container, and it spilled all over the grass around us. It’s hard to get mad at them for attempting to something they’ve never done before. I tried to stop them from using the paint on the ground because of the dirt and grass combination, but it didn’t work so well. “Non” suddenly became indecipherable to the Haitians.

When they finished, the box really looked sharp. I congratulated the boys on a fine job. They beamed. Later, I saw it after the paint had dried. Then, I could see the grass imbedded in the paint. It was actually kind of funny. I told everyone we were seeking a natural look. “The green tones bring out the color in the white paint.”

When we finished painting, I told Jid we needed water to wash the paintbrush, so I marched off, bucket in hand, to the neighborhood well a hundred yards away. Thirty yards later, I realized I was not alone; Jid was walking with me. I pumped the water, then grabbed the bucket for the return trip, but Jid took it from me and insisted on carrying it. At that moment, I felt the respect of a teenage boy. I don’t know when Jid lost his dad, but it sure felt like he appreciated another man doing something for him.

The Haitians see certain jobs belonging to women, water carrying being one of those tasks. Jid did not look at it that way. That skill will one day make Jid a better employee, a better employer, a better husband, a better dad, and a better man. Today, Jid discovered humility.

* * *

We never know how little things might impact the Haitians. Yesterday, while the men were getting lessons in using the skill saw, one of the men, Jacque, who is 53, did not have a pair of safety glasses, whereas the other six did. I saw the problem and quickly went over to Jacque and pulled off my own glasses and offered them to him. His broad smile said “thank you.” Jacque felt a part of something.

Today, Jacque is still wearing those glasses, quite proudly, I might add. Even though we were told not to give the Haitians presents, I later gave Jacque those glasses. He needs them more than I do. I can’t remember the last time I used them. I didn’t like them any way.

* * *

Random happenings from our group today:

Three people from our team went with the Haitians to take a few of the sick children to a local free clinic. One of the boys, Charlie, had severe diarrhea, but didn’t get to see the doctor. The doctor used the triage method, taking the worst cases first. Charlie’s case wasn’t severe enough. After six hours of sitting, our team felt like it didn’t get much accomplished today.

Said Hilary, a first-grade teacher at Cornerstone Christian School in Antioch, who was with that group: “DMV has nothing on Haitian hospitals.”

Said Catherine, also with the group: “I’ll never complain about American health care again.

Amy, who quit her job to come to Haiti, had the best story, though. She had to go to the bathroom and stood in line for a few minutes. When she finally got in, she laughed, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear her. When she came out, all the locals were laughing with her, knowing why she was laughing. She was laughing at the fact that the toilet consisted of a hole in the ground.

One of the sick children at the hospital needed his diapers changed. “Anybody up for the task?” one of the ladies asked. John, one of the 17-year-old twins on our team, said he would do it, and took the child in hand. Then he asked, “How?” Everyone in our group roared with laughter.

* * *

I’ve decided I complain too much. I complain about the lack of space back home in our 1,100-square foot, two-bedroom 1.5 bath condominium, shared by my wife, her son and her dad at the moment. I whine when I have to wait 15 minutes for the shower. Yet, every day, I get to take a hot shower. Every day, I write on my laptop, search the Internet on the Wi-fi. Every day, I grind coffee beans to percolate my fine, Colombian coffee. Every day, I reach into my 38-degree refrigerator for cold half/half. I have a 33-inch TV (though no cable, by choice). I am a chef by trade, but at home, I cook in a teensy-weensy kitchen, but at least it’s inside; my kitchen is also indoors; I have an air conditioner that keeps our house at a cool 72 degrees when it’s 100 degrees outside. Most of these Haitians would think I live in the lap of luxury.

Members of our team often joke about how many Haitians we could “cram” into our tiny homes. We could get 3-4 Haitian families living comfortably in my condo. None of them would complain about being cramped. Dustin and his wife live in a 1-bedroom, 600-square foot condo. Twelve was the number we came up with for his home.

My dinky 4-cylinder Honda Accord goes twice as fast as most of the cars in Haiti. I don’t think it’s ever held more than the maximum allowed by law, five seat-belted passengers. Here in Haiti, the locals would cram a 10 people in my car, with a few more in the trunk and maybe two on the roof.

It’s all a matter of perspective. The next time my toilet seat is a little cold in the winter time, I’ll remember that I don’t have to squat, as the Haitians do (and which Amy refused to do in the doctor’s office) every day. When I complain of a poor night’s sleep because my mattress is too hard, I’ll be thankful I’m not on the cold, hard ground. Next time I start sweating in my house, I can walk over to the air conditioner and turn it on to cool off.

Thank you, Lord, for the many luxuries you give me.

Caption: This simple, wooden box will one day hold the treasures of the Haitian orphans we cared for in Leogane.

Passing on Godly Legacies to Our Sons

Day 5 (Thursday, Aug. 5)

Leogane, Haiti

Everything I needed to know about Bill, I learned while hanging the orphanage’s gate earlier in the week. Our leader, Jonathan, looked at the gate at one point and said to Bill, “That’s good enough.” To which Bill responded, “It’s good enough for government work, but this is for the Lord, and I have to do it right.”

That’s the voice of a servant who wants to do his best work for God. That’s what we all should be striving for.

As the week went on, Bill’s expertise on everything construction came to the forefront. No matter what we were up against, Bill had a response based on experience to share with us. And, as a teacher, Bill was top-notch. Bill had a knack for getting the seven Haitian men who worked under us to convey his desires, often without our esteemed interpreters. Bill, no doubt, has the same reputation with his employees who work under him at the Lawrence Livermore Lab.

But the best teaching Bill has done in his life is with his son, Paul, who also is on our team. Bill tried to teach everything he knew about construction and fixing things to Paul, and he did a commendable job. Paul had the same desire as Bill to teach the Haitians life and carpentry skills. Not only did they try teach them the right way to do various carpentry skills, they also tried to teach them the meaning of hard work and integrity on the job, traits that seem to be sorely lacking with many of the Haitians.

Watching Bill interact with Paul was a joy all week. They had the kind of relationship every father and son should have. It included one important element: mutual respect. When Bill was away from Paul, he talked admirably about Bill's ability to play games with kids and be a team leader in the corporate world. Later, Paul marveled at his dad's vast knowledge of all things carpentry and the like. They had fun working together, razzing each other.

Christians need to always remember to exhibit those two characteristics when on the mission field. Bill and Paul lived that out throughout our week in Haiti, and with a good sense of humor.

Bill has passed on a legacy to his son, something that all fathers need to do with their sons. My dad taught me how to be a godly man simply by setting a lifetime example for me. I can remember having only one or two conversations with my dad about what a godly man looked like. I knew what one looked like by looking at my dad.

My dad also had a knack for fixing and designing things and would have made a fantastic engineer had he not wanted to be a farmer. My only regret I have with my dad is that I didn’t seek him out more on how to fix things. He would have taught me everything he knew, but I never had the desire – until he died five years ago.

The Haitians quickly took to Bill, too. They came to know him and trust him, even giving him the esteemed nickname, “Papa,” an endearing name in Haiti.

Men, what kind of legacy are you leaving your sons? We should all strive to be more like Bill and Paul, who is working to pass on his own legacy to his son.

When I think of legacies, I think of what Joseph passed on to his son, Jesus. By age 12, Jesus knew enough of the Pentatauch (books of Moses) to teach in the Temple. No doubt, Joseph was there in the temple studying God’s word with his son. For at least 10 years, Jesus made a living as a carpenter. Because we know he never sinned, we know that Jesus always gave his best work and never cheated any of his customers or lied to them about his workmanship. The Bible doesn’t say, but I think Jesus had an outstanding reputation as a carpenter in Nazareth.

I think about my own legacy to my sons. I am nowhere near the godly man my dad was, but I constantly try to instill in my 23-year-old son and 16-year-old step-son (Julian) the importance of hard work and integrity. My son, Matthew, is not walking with the Lord, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have godly characteristics. The things I taught him as a boy growing up in the church can still be seen in him.

Like Bill and Paul, I, too, want to go on a mission trip with my sons. When the prospects of going to Haiti came up in late April, I told Matthew I was planning to go. I hoped to instill in him a desire to go. Because he’s studying architecture in college, I tried to pump up the unique design my church is using in the rebuilding of the orphanage. In the end, Haiti lost out to an architecture class in southern Europe, where Matthew drew pictures of buildings of antiquity. Go figure.

I won’t give up in my hopes of trying to persuade my sons to go on mission trips with me. I will return to Haiti one day to plant a garden, and perhaps my son will come with me. Maybe another city will be devastated by the likes of a hurricane, earthquake or tsunami, and our church will decide to go and lend aid and care for the dead, sick and the injured. That’s where my heart is, to go on the first wave of relief aid and write about it.

Matthew is preparing to apply for grad school in architecture, and I keep pushing Habitat for Humanity on him. Not only would it be good experience for his studies, it would put him in the midst of other like-minded people who believe in helping those less fortunate than us. That’s the legacy I want to leave with my sons.

Caption: Paul is in the middle smiling broadly, while Bill stands in the background at far right, admiring the work of one of his students.

Love Letter to My Wife From This Island Paradise

Day 4 continued (Wednesday, Aug. 4)

Leogane, Haiti

My darling Susan,

Here, I am a quarter of the way around the world, slaving away in a tropical paradise, and I’m feeling sorry for myself. My wife is not here to share the experience of working in 95-degree F temperature and 80 percent humidity.

Today, as I watched our team care for the little children, I thought, “Suzie would have fit right in.” You would have been such a great lover of these orphans. You would have been a great hugger. You would have been an awesome wiper-away-of tears. You would have taken lots of pictures of the kids. You would have let the Haitian teenage girls braid your hair. You would have laughed with them. You would have cried with them. I missed getting to see you do what you do best, which is to love other people. I get to feel that every day, but these children have never felt it. They missed out.

Four and a half years ago, we went on a romantic vacation together in Hackberry, Louisiana after having dated for six months. We were on a mission trip to roof houses, and you wanted to be up on the roof with me and the other men on our team. You insisted on carrying your own weight, and you did.

Do you remember the day when the church from Mississippi joined us to roof First Baptist Church? Their under-their breath comments about you belonging below in the kitchen were not so under their breath. (Little did they know that I was the one who spends so much time in the kitchen!) The comments from those good ‘ol southern boys were beginning to bother you, and you asked me what to do. I told you to do what God tells you to do, and you stayed on the roof. The tomboy in you always wanted to play with the boys and not with Barbie dolls with the girls.

The other men in our group stood up for you to those country bumpkins. “Suzie’s a hard worker. Leave her alone. She’ll pull her own weight,” the men from our church said.

They left you alone, because they realized the spirit of faith gave you just as much energy as any one of them. Or maybe it was because you outworked a few of them.

A little while later, the pastor of the church sidled up next to me, pulling nails from the roof. We struck up a friendly conversation, and he asked me: “You planning to marry that gal?”

I stopped working. “Yes sir, I believe I will,” and went back to work.

“Good, ‘cause you’re a fool if you don’t. My daughter’s just like that. She goes on mission trips like this and she wants a hammer in her hand. If she were here, she’d be up here on this roof, too.”

That day, I knew I wanted to marry you. That was February of 2006. A few weeks later, I asked your mom and step-dad for permission to marry you. It took me another six months before I asked you to marry me and another year before we actually married, but that day on the roof I knew you were the one for me. I had been single for 13 years, because I knew I wanted to marry someone who had a heart to serve God as I did. You were worth waiting for. And, the fact that you were pretty darned cute didn’t hurt, either.

I always enjoy serving the Lord a little more when you are beside me, whether we’re distributing food to the homeless or cooking meals for people in the church. I like that feeling and look forward to feeling it for another 30 or 40 years with you.

So here I am in Leogane, Haiti, working on our church’s construction team, and I’m sad because my partner is back home. I know you wanted to be here, but the timing just wasn’t right for you this time. I know that God opened all the doors for me to come, but closed them for you. Know that I always want you beside me. I love that you care so much for people like the Haitians; I know you are praying for me this week (that I won’t bash my thumb with a hammer, no doubt). We believe in helping those who can’t help themselves. It’s who we are.

Right now, that’s the Haitians. In a couple of years, another disaster will strike some foreign land, and we’ll talk about going and pray about it. I know we will have many more mission trips to take before we die. Someday, I’m sure you’ll come to a place like this without me, and you’ll miss me in the same way I missed you this week (you better!).

It’s getting late, and it’s time to go to bed, so I will be refreshed and ready to go at 5 a.m. tomorrow. I wish you were here beside me, sweating in this tiny hotel room on this island paradise. But then, if you’d come, you might have fallen in love with one of the little buggars and wanted to adopt one, and you told me not to bring one home.

Love always,

Doug

xoxO

Caption: Bethany, a college student at Indiana Wesleyan, spent two weeks of her summer vacation in Haiti, caring for the children at the orphanage.

Missing Haiti already

Somewhere between Miami and San Francisco

As I write in my journal, I am 5,000 feet up on American Airlines flight 1817. Looking out my tiny window, I just watched a magnificent, cloudy sunset on the horizon, a gift from God, I think.

We are on the last leg of our 18-hour trek home from Leogane, Haiti to San Francisco, which began with a 4 a.m. (Central time) wakeup call for our departure to the airport. We would land at 10 p.m. Pacific time. Our day included spending four hours in the Port-au-Prince airport and four hours in the Miami airport: eight hours in airports and nearly seven in the air.

For the past few days, I’ve been craving a cheeseburger and fries, Haagen Dazs ice cream and a Starbucks coffee with real, honest-to-goodness cream from a cow. I managed to nail three out of four at Miami airport diner with three of my mates. No time to search for ice cream, though.

After dinner, I practically sprinted to the Starbucks some 200 yards away from our gate in order to get back to board While waiting in line for several minutes, I felt like preying on people’s good nature by imploring “I just spent a week in Haiti helping rebuild an orphanage, and I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee all week. My flight’s about to take off; will someone PLEASE give me cuts in line?” Alas, our group’s study for the week was on humility, and I just couldn’t do it.

I am exhausted, but I cannot sleep. My brain is going a hundred miles per hour, going over my to do list when I get home. I close my eyes, but my mind keeps wandering back to Haiti. No, not the 95-degree, 95-percent humidity work days. Not the food. Not the maddening traffic. Not the airport. The people.

There are so many writing projects I want to tackle. There are so many memories to remember. Some make me laugh, some make me cry, some make me think, some make me angry, some make me pray.

At every stage of our long journey today, my teammates and I swap stories, mostly the funny ones. It helps to keep the memories flowing. They all know I plan on writing this blog about our mission trip to the orphanage in Leogane, Haiti. As one of them, Dustin, waited in line for the cramped airline bathroom, I told him, “Don’t think about the bathroom at the orphanage.” We both laughed.

“Did you get a picture of the bathroom?” he asked. I did not. “I did,” he smiled. “You gotta write about the bathroom.”

“I’m going to write about Rebecca,” I replied. We both laughed at the inside joke. Readers will just have to wait for that tale.

Then he returned to his seat, and I to my journal. Note to self: Write about orphanage toilet.

Mostly, I can’t stop thinking about the children. Their faces are embedded on my mind. I can’t forget them. I want to tell their story, because they deserve to be seen and heard. Is Oligas, my little buddy (think Gilligan and Skipper), OK? Is he playing by the mango tree? Is he thinking of me? Are his eyes welling up, too? Is he wondering if he’ll ever see that white man with the great beard and tan golf cap again? I wonder, too.

The most important lesson we learned this week came courtesy of Jeanine, one of our kid leaders. As we get back to our normal, everyday lives, we will tell others about what we did at the orphanage. I’ve chatted up the experience with my two seatmates, two women from the Bay Area returning from a short vacation. People have the same response: How neat that you could go and do that for the children.

The focus is on us and what we did. The truth is, everything we did last week was God’s doing, and Jeanine challenged us to give God the credit. He orchestrated everything we did so that people could see his glory. We were there to let those 78 children and 10 employees about God’s love and provision.

God laid it on all 18 of our hearts to go to Haiti when the call came out this spring. He opened the door for us to get time off from work and away from our families. He provided the $1,200 for each of us to go, in unique and different ways. None of us received scholarships to go. God gave us ideas to share, strengthen and to persevere in the blazing tropical climate. He gave us strength to work and even when we didn’t sleep more than three hours a night. He gave each of us different skills, from 17-year-old twins John and Brian to nearly retired Bill. Some were great with kids, some were whizzes with a saw in hand.

Me? I’m just so-so with kids, though I was aces with Oligas. Truthfully, I stink as a carpenter, though I was a pretty good at gophering. I gave lots of encouragement to those around me. Though I’m a caterer, I did not cook a single meal down there.

My gift is telling stories and for the next 2-3 weeks, I’ll be telling our stories, one by one.

I tell these stories so that I won’t forget them. I tell them so that I won’t forget Oligas and his buddies. I tell their stories in order to inspire others to pray for them and perhaps one day go down there themselves.

What I want to share with readers is that God hasn’t forgotten the Haitian people, in the midst of the worst catastrophe in that nation’s sordid history. God never stopped loving those children, many of whom were buried in the January 12 earthquake. I want people to know that God is large and in charge in Haiti. He doesn’t do that by grabbing big headlines in the media. He does it one by one in the hearts of Haitians.

In a few hours, I will finally put my head on my pillow in my own comfortable bed. I will return to my comfortable Western life. I will drink my coffee with cream every morning. When I want a Haagen Dazs, I can drive the four blocks to the store and purchase a container. I don’t deserve it. Oligas and the other orphans fell asleep hours ago, when darkness, struck, in the same hot, perspiring way they do every day.