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

Sunday, September 14th, 2008 2:10 am | Posted by Paul | RSS 2.0 feed | Comment | Trackback