More of Haiti in my heart.
Fond Doux, Petit-Goâve, my second home. And a country I never expected to be sent to.
My first time in Haiti was with Jennifer and our family. The second, in October 2016, I went with Pastor Todd Lugli, the founder of Happy Kids International, to see the vision up close. I wrote before I left that this trip would be different. It was.
Every time I leave, I leave with more of my heart in Haiti and more of Haiti in my heart.
Port-au-Prince airport, November 1, 2016
For the next three years I helped lead the work in Haiti with Happy Kids International, and brought teams down from Corinth, Mississippi. High school boys. Families. Leaders. We built the Mission and Team Housing Complex at the HKI Center for Hope in Fond Doux, started the first of eight houses, and ran medical clinics, Kids Klubs and feeding days in the mountains around Petit-Goâve.
January 19, 2017. We started the first of eight houses. Our Haitian team leader on the builds was David Sainnatus. He and his brother Daniel had been with Happy Kids since the very beginning, first as interns, then as full staff, and David was finishing a computer science degree while he worked full time. The men who led our sons were Haitian men.
One morning on the way to the airport in Port-au-Prince, there were tires burning in the streets and a man lying dead on the sidewalk. What I wrote that morning is still the whole reason this site exists.
"That was someone's son. Was he a father? A husband?
Life is short, everyone dies, but how many live?
Run until there is nothing left, then run some more... Love until it hurts, then love some more... Climb the mountain in front of you and then thank G-d for putting it there.
Take a mission's trip, to your neighbors... I don't care if it's the ones across the street, the tracks or in another country, just go love someone who needs help, because you can."
By the end of February the Mission and Team Housing Complex was coming up out of the ground. I climbed to the top and shot video looking down, because the view is different at the top. The team was already assembling for the dedication.
March 4, 2017. We gave thanks that morning and finished setup that afternoon, and that night the children's choir of Good Seed Church in Fond Doux sang the building open.
Then we kept building. The staff house went up two weeks later, rain or not, and by March 23 construction was done and we were waiting on concrete to dry so the staff could move in.
In May our Haitian crew poured the footers for the next house. Day laborers, paid. That was the point. The mission begins with a man getting a day's wage in his own village. In June the varsity boys from Alcorn Central came down and put their hands to it. House build in the morning, Kids Klub in the afternoon, beans and rice in Marose.
And so. We begin.
June 8, 2017
Some days the need outran us. After one clinic in October 2017 I wrote home asking for dentists, eye doctors, nurses, anybody with letters after their name.
"I need some MDs, DOs, PAs, NPs, RN, or any other abbreviation in the medical field to come help us... my 91B10 training was 21 years ago and I can only do so much."
By the end of 2018 the HKI team had run more than ten medical clinics and seen over two thousand kids, and Saturday Kids Klubs were reaching three hundred to eight hundred children in five locations.
In January 2019 I traveled Haiti proclaiming it the year of the seed.
By February we were transitioning out. And that February, in Las Vegas, a prophetic prayer team prayed over Jennifer and me and told us we were between rounds. That we were about to enter Round 2, and that it would look dynamically different.
By summer we had left the work in Haiti and moved home to Coastal Alabama. We did it begrudgingly.
"When you miss something as deeply as I miss these people and this land, the pain is almost physical."
June 27, 2019
2019 felt like a bad year until I understood it. Like Rocky fighting right-handed until Mickey switches him to southpaw, I wouldn't stop swinging, so the bell had to ring on Round 1. Sit down. Let the cut man release the pressure. Let the corner doc heal the wounds. Let the trainer give you a new strategy.
The redemption of days past happens in the future, not in the present.
"I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name." (Revelation 3:8)
Five long years of pushing on doors. Then a door opened. Hope Beyond Borders, who had served alongside us in Haiti, brought Jennifer and me under their covering. We planned on it leading back to Fond Doux.
It didn't. Not yet.
In 2024 we didn't make it back to Haiti. The door that opened was one I never saw coming.
"I had a conversation with my Jenny that was a lot like Forrest Gump with his Jenny. 'Bye-bye Jenny, they're sending me to Vietnam.'
Notice I didn't say I'm going. I'm being sent.
Haiti is still important to me and nothing has changed about my heart for that country, its people or the vision G-d has for me there; but it's not where I'm being sent in this season."
April 29, 2024
On May 19, 2024, I was ordained and sent. Eleven days later I was on a plane to Ho Chi Minh City.
New country. New language. New culture. New people. New season.
A couple who sowed into that trip asked only one thing: let others send you too. Because when the body sends you, they go with you to the places they can't physically go.
Ho Chi Minh City. Sunday worship in the Mekong Delta. The coast at Vũng Tàu to preach.
Saigon is loud. Vendors, people everywhere, motorbikes. Lots and lots of motorbikes. But before I ever went, I talked with American veterans who served there. Some spoke about it openly. Most said the loss was so great it was hard to talk about. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.
The men of Jericho had the same problem with their water. The city was pleasant, they told Elisha, but the water was bad and the land was barren. He asked for a new bowl with salt in it, walked to the spring, and threw the salt in.
"Thus saith the L-RD, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or barren land." (2 Kings 2:21)
So I took salt to the Saigon River and prayed that same prayer. For the land. For its people. For the men who served there and still carry it. That the bitterness of the past would be redeemed.
Salt Redemption ... Ho Chi Minh City, 2024
Faith doesn't pretend the water isn't bitter. It walks to the spring anyway.
My heart hasn't left. The complex we built is called Theo's Place now, and it houses Impact International Institute of Haiti, a school feeding and teaching the village's children every day. It's walking into its fourth year. Seventy-two kids. And a classroom with no desks. Local carpenters build the furniture on site, so the school creates jobs while it gets built.
Todd Lugli, the man who put me on a plane to Haiti the first time, has a line I live by: if a lot do a little, a lot gets done. In Haiti they say it this way.
Yon sèl dwèt pa ka manje kalalou.
You can't eat okra with one finger.
Fè byen. Tout kote. Toujou.
Paske byen ap retounen.
Do Good. Everywhere. Always. Because Good Comes Back.