It’s kind of funny, or it seems like it might be next week, when we’re sitting around in Birmingham looking back on the trip. When I first met Anne, she warned me that itineraries in Haiti are more general guidelines, than any sort of reliable timetable. I laughed, and assured her that we (Bedouins) were ready for anything.

In truth, we were ready for more than she expected. But for my part, I wasn’t quite ready for Haiti, and the full weight of all that she has to throw at travelers. Which is considerable.

Twenty people in a pickup bed. Heat like a sauna, from 8 in the morning until sundown. Major roads that look like washed-out gullies. Dust, dust, and more dust, covering and pervading all my gear. All of which seem trivial in comparison to the sinister machinations and dirty politicking of the simplest transactions, from buying gas or souvenirs, to hiring a ride across town. Our guide and translator, Alan, has saved our bacon more times than I can count. Put another way, without Alan our bacon would be in a dirty market stall on the other side of Cap Haitien right now, and somehow we would have given US dollars to the hustler who stole it from us. It’s just that sketchy.

But God, as I’ve said, is so good. We pray every morning, for wisdom, for guidance, for unity in our group and for Christ-like compassion. And as weird as it seems to the scientist in me, it actually appears to work! Imagine that. I guess that happens to everyone, the “new every morning” wonder at God’s faithfulness, His real-ness, when He orchestrates events completely beyond our control to grow our faith, and glorify Himself.

Case in point: Our trip across the river, to the village that had never been host to white people. Ann had known for years, almost a decade in fact, that the second village was over there somewhere, but had somehow never made the trek. It’s understandable, the school at Coco Beach consumes a huge amount of time and energy. But on Saturday we found ourselves wending through the cacti and Spanish bayonets, into a world simultaneously brand new and very, very old. When we walked into the village, the first woman we saw was carrying a baby. She called out to us, asking for help. When we got closer we saw that the baby, a boy of about a year, was shaking his head violently from side to side, staring straight up at the sky.

Speaking to us through Alan, she said that the baby was sick, which was as much detail as she could offer. We perceived however, pretty much immediately, that the boy was blind, or very close to it. His eyes were crossed, and focused on nothing, his jaw slack as he shook his head, attempting to capture a stray shaft of light. His face was covered with tiny bumps, scars perhaps from a bout of pox or worse, probably the cause of his blindness. Regardless, Ann decided on the spot that the boy “must and shall” have medical attention, and after we conducted our interviews we loaded both mother and child into the truck, and began the two-hour journey back to Cap Haitien.

So many “ifs…” If we hadn’t decided to cross the river… If we weren’t with Ann, whose love for these people borders on mania… If we hadn’t decided to take this project! That little boy would still be out there, in a village that has no name known outside its borders, shaking his head at the sky. Instead he’s waiting for his appointment with an ophthalmologist in Cap Haitien, a grateful mother hoping that someday he won’t remember a time when he couldn’t see.

I love, love, love this mission. God birthed a dream in us that we simply weren’t qualified for, so huge we couldn’t possibly plan for it. But as we continue to chase Him into the unknown, He continues to show Himself faithful. I’m content to chase Him until I drop, cameras rolling on a miracle, His glory unfolding at 24 frames per second.

See you soon!

In Christ,

Paul

I’ve been told over and over this trip by the Haitians that I “look like Jesus.” It’s an interesting thing…at first I felt a little awkward about it. I’m not Jesus, and I didn’t want that thrown around lightly. And then as the trip went on I kept hearing it, and kept thinking about it. And yesterday it clicked. There are things going on here in Haiti that are far too involved for me to write about on here. I could fill two novels with the corruption, and backwardness of the situation. And yesterday that corruption filtered down to us, and we were stuck in the middle of a situation where we saw someone giving themselves, their time and their money over and over for 7 years and Haiti (more specifically the corrupt here) working against her and sabotaging it every step of the way. And when faced with the person who is for some reason attempting to mess everything up we were given a choice. We were mad. There’s no stopping that. When you’re as involved with something as we are with this now, and you’re as close to someone as we have become it’s impossible not to feel emotional. So what do we do. We can bite our tongues and walk away. We can fight back. We can trash talk. It was in the face of this decisions that I realized the Jesus comments that I’d been getting all week were the answer. We are a media business. But we’re more than that. We have accepted the responsibility to go into some of the darkest places on the planet, and it’s our job to bring light to them. I realized that many missionaries get to spend a lot of time in a dark place, making it their home and learning to be a part of it. But we have the special task and opportunity to go into many different places, and to bring the image of Jesus to everyone that we meet. We are not just here to make movies and take photos. We’re here for the kingdom. And while I’m not Jesus, and may or may not look like him with my beard and long hair…I will do everything possible to “look” like him for everyone that I meet in our travels and our work. That is our job, and our wonderful privilege.

So, yeah! Sitting here waiting on iMovie to convert a huge pile of AVIs, reflecting on the last few days…

As Stephen said, we walked into a village today that had never before seen “blancos,” or white people. More importantly, in the memories of the Haitians living there, we were the first people to step foot step in the village, that weren’t born in that tiny corner of the country. That means no doctors, no aid workers, nobody of any color, ever. We conducted an interview with one woman in her backyard, asking about her family, children, life in general, with her sitting five feet from the crumbling foundation of a centuries-old stone wall. It was part of a small cluster of weather-beaten walls and ramparts that stretched out behind the village, probably the remnants of one of the Citadel’s several watch towers. It’s likely that outside of the village, no-one is even aware of its existence; this moldering fortress wall being slowly reclaimed by the Haitian rainforest.

When we asked them about their faith, they said, “of course we are Christians,” a response that took me aback. This is a people group that aren’t thriving or expanding, but merely surviving. Half of the kids in the village had the orange-tinted hair that is a hallmark of malnutrition, and since they’re so close to the ocean, their only source of water is an inland river that is, to paraphrase our translator, “not so close.” So to hear that they’re Christians, and that they have a small church in the village, makes me perk up immediately! I want to ask a hundred questions, about faith, about Jesus, about how their faith, and what Jesus said about His children, intersects their (objectively crappy) reality. Don’t even get me started on the socio-political stuff. I could chase rabbits all day.

But the reality lived by these people every day doesn’t suffer such pedantry well, in fact the thought of pressing them on such issues makes me cringe! They need love -now- in the form of food, medical supplies, and education. The situation in Haiti is dire, but not beyond recovery. There aren’t any child soldiers in Haiti, but a slow death from starvation, waiting for aid as the government grinds to a halt, doesn’t seem any better.

(I didn’t intend for this to get all disjointed and heavy. Really. I will now attempt to recover this post.)

God is good. It seems obvious, or more likely cliche, but it bears repeating. God is so, so good to us! To be in this place, pressed in shoulder-to-shoulder with His creation, His beloved, hopeful, passionate, crazy, made-in-his-image creation, is awesome. Sometimes, in a rare quiet moment, I compare notes with myself — the me of perhaps a decade ago. How could I ever have imagined this outcome? I’m in Haiti. I’m filming a documentary on a forgotten people group, and their first furtive attempts at self-rescue. I’m dirty, sunburned, and exhausted. In short, I look nothing like the man I thought I would become, and that’s a very, very good thing.

I cannot wait to get this footage down, and start piecing together the story. I think you guys are going to dig it.

We miss you!

In Christ,
Paul

Today was our fourth day in Haiti, and quite an eventful one…as seems to be the pattern here. Landon was home sick, which was no good. Everyone be praying that his stomach will settle back to normal so that we can get back out in it as soon as possible.

As for the rest of us…we took off for rain forest to see the vanilla, and then to the school bright and early. As usual, it took us half the day to get there. But we made it…and man, it was worth the wait!

Many things happened, as you’ll see in the photos…but for the sake of our lack of steady internet and power I’m going to jump right to the end of the day.

We were at the village and decided to cross the river where several of the school kids come from. It was literally like stepping into a new world. We suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a community…a village that had never before seen a white person! To be completely honest with you, I didn’t know that places like that existed anymore. Certainly not this close to the United States!

We spent some time there with the people, and the entire village came to join us at the house of a woman and her children who we were interviewing. During the interview I asked the woman, and the village if they were Christians or if they practiced voodoo. I had no clue what to expect, as they were some of the most remote people in the world.

After a few seconds of silence an older man stepped up in the crowd and spoke something in creole. Allen, our translator turned and said to me, “Of course they’re Christians!”

wow.

God is HUGE.

That’s all for now…enjoy the pics and hopefully we’ll get a video up here soon!

-Stephen

Hey guys…As I write we are sitting on the front porch of Hotel Christophe in Cap Haitian waiting for the truck to take us away on yet another adventure. Today we are going to the market to buy some rice (now selling at the insane price of $60 U.S. for a 50lb bag…it was half that in January). Then we are off the the rainforest where the vanilla is growing…the vanilla that has the potential of saving a lot of poeple in Haiti.

A recap from the last three days…

-We were mobbed by people at the airport wanting to help us with bags (aka needing money to eat)

-Haiti is absolutely beautiful…we got to see a lot of it on the 2hr ride to the school our first day here in the back of an old pickup truck. P.S. I am never going to complain about driving in the US again. They don’t even have complete roads here. (As you will see in some pics below).

-Stephen and Anne almost got ran off the road by an angry taxicabby who said they owed him $50 for a ride that should have cost them $1.

-There are no monkeys in Haiti.

-Allen is our translator and hero…without him we would not have gotten as far as we have.

-As there is no gas here anymore, we had to pay $50 for 6 gallons of gas (that came from gallon jugs).

-We have not yet been chased by anyone with a machete.

I am sure there are many more stories, but now we are about to head out…here are some photos Stephen took that will hopefully speak more eloquently than I. And p.s. please be praying for Roger and Landon…they aren’t feeling too well today. Love you guys!!