I have a confession to make.
Sometimes I miss my preministry, premissions life.
Sometimes the weight of what I have experienced, witnessed, and learned in the
last 2-plus years weighs very heavily on my mind and my spirit. When I lived
in the cocoon of American suburbs and my 1% lifestyle, I didn’t have to wrestle
much with injustice, starvation, or extreme poverty. I could take for granted
drinking water that would not give me cholera. Now, there are days I wish I
could un-know things. Wow, preministry, premissions, and un-know, are words that don’t really exist. But, there is a lot of this world, most
really, that most of us don’t know exist or at least don’t really experience. I
sure didn’t.
Adventures in Missions is growing so much lately that we all share offices; even some of our
cubicles are shared. We have people working everywhere. I share an office with
Scott Borg. He heads up Adventures’s Swaziland, Africa, orphan operation. He and his
staff are responsible for the daily care, housing, feeding, and health care of over
5,000 orphans. The adult population of Swaziland is dying of aids, and this is
creating a tsunami of orphans. I hear him fighting the good fight daily to try
and meet this need. This is one of the things that I wish I could un-know at
times.
For a year and a half, the Church-to-Church (C2C) program I lead was assisting an
orphanage in Haiti. For much of that time we considered the Haitian in charge
of the orphanage a hero. That is until we found out he was trafficking the kids.
He is now in prison in Haiti and the children have been placed in new, safe
settings. I wish I could un-know that.
One of the churches in our church to church program, Journey Church, opened a
medical clinic in Haiti last January. It was opened in Carrefour, Haiti, a town
of 25,000 people and no medical facilities. Image that for a minute.
When we
opened the doors the first day, the lines were amazing…amazingly long. We handed out wrist
bands to the first 100 people in line and had to turn away the rest because that was
all we could hope to help in one day. The next day the line was the same.
Sometimes I just wish I could un-know about this.
A million people are still, 2 years after the quake, living in tent cities in
Haiti. And by tent, I don’t mean the nice tents they sell at REI. But mostly
just some wood and traps, all of which leak when it rains. Sometimes I want to
un-know all this as my eyes and Spirit weep.
To see more of the people, ministry, and life of Haiti, click this link.
