Mountain Land

We stepped off the DC-3 onto the hot tarmac of the Port-au-Prince airport.  We and about 2000 pounds of our belongings had left the Missionary Flights International hangar at Palm Beach International airport early that morning.  It was January 28, 1986 and we were moving to Haiti for two years to work with the Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM).

We were greeted by Betty Turnbull.  Almost the first words out of her mouth were to tell us that while we were in the skies off the coast of Florida, the Space Shuttle Challenger had blown up in the very same skies.  What was a very good day for us and a very positive turning point in our lives, was just the opposite for the families and friends of the crew of the space shuttle.

There are not a lot of dates that I remember but this is one of them.

The name Haiti, I have heard, comes from a word used by the original inhabitants of the island for “mountain land”.  And, indeed, there were many “mountains” we had to climb during our stay there.

While our plan was to work with BHM for two years, we ended up staying for seven.

We had been on the island about a week when “Baby Doc” was run out of the country after he and his father had run the country for 27 years in a dictatorship that was brutal for many.  We had eight more governments in those seven years.  Those eight years were essentially anarchy.  And while we made little or no progress in the projects we were working on, it seemed like we were going forward compared to what was happening in the country.

We lived in the country in a place called Letan (l’Etang).  Letan got its name from Letan Somat, from the French term for “brackish lake'’.  The community was located on the north shore of the lake.

Letan was a beautiful place to live.  On the weekends many people would make the trip down the bumpy roads and rutted tracks from the city to swim in the fresh water lagoons on the edge of the lake.  Flamingoes could be seen in the lake throughout most of the year except when they left to nest on another island.

Ingrid ran a community health clinic.  The building was put up by a group called His Hands out of Michigan.  The clinic was the only one around for miles and some people would walk for 5 hours or more from the mountains to get there.  There were days when over 100 people would show up.  Our goal was to train a Haitian worker who could run the clinic, but we never found a person willing to stay in the rural area to do that.

While Ingrid was doing that, I stayed busy with many projects.  We had experimental gardens, a tree nursery for reforestation, a school and a church on the property.  Much of my time was devoted to maintenance.  I also led Bible studies and trained local leaders to run the school.  In the mountains we did soil conservation projects and spring capping.

While we encountered a lot of problems and roadblocks (sometimes actual road blocks of burning tires in the street) in our work in Haiti, we generally enjoyed our time there.

On this 25th anniversary of the Space Shuttle disaster, people will ask,  "Have we learned anything from that?  Where have we come since then?"  So, too, I believe it is appropriate to ask similar questions about our experience in Haiti.

We made many mistakes during those years, but we learned a lot of things in the process.  Some of the lessons we learned are:

• Problems-The physical problems we were trying to solve weren't actually problems but symptoms of underlying spiritual issues.  Trying to fix the physical problems without addressing the spiritual issues doesn't work very well.
• Prayer-Goes with the above.  Using my human instincts often just made things worse.
• Power-I am weak but God is strong.
• Patience-We got to learn patience through practice.  You would think, after all these years I would have mastered it, but I still working on it.
• People-We learned a lot about the Haitian people.  We learned that they are just like us on the inside, but that it is expressed differently on the outside because of cultural and economic differences.
  We learned to invest in key people.  Once I was asked about the "success" of our work in Haiti.  Rather than give results of projects, I gave names of people.  Changed lives are what missions is all about.
  We also learned we need people.  We need others around us for accountability and for a different perspective.  This is hard for a loner like myself, but doing missions on your own is difficult.  So we need to be part of a team and we need to be part of a church.

For more details about our time in Haiti, view here.

As we now prepare to move to another country these lessons stick with us.  But the main lesson in all this is to never stop learning.  Never think you've arrived.  Never stop depending on God.  As Paul writes:  Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. 1 Corinthians 10:12 (ESV)