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The Events that are: My Life

Things that go on in my life that cannot be catagorized somewhere else, sort of a catch-all

Mission Trip Haiti: Epilogue, Part 3

I’ve spent a substantial amount of time trying to figure out what to make of everything that happened; or perhaps more precisely, in light of what happened, what am I going to do now? Sure, I returned home to Seattle, went back to work, and have even told my story (hence you reading this). In a bigger sense, I ask myself what am I being called to do. Is it different than what I’m doing now? This, of course, has various theological implications about what a calling is and how one discerns God’s will.

Photo by Brenna Hesch

The problem with mission trips, and really anything else that thrusts a person into atypical situations is that it exposes you to what looks like the greener side of the fence without showing you all the weeds. The typical reaction to this feeling, I think, is to change everything in ones life all at once; there’s a huge push to become a better person, but at what expense? My approach has been one of timid toe-dipping: make small course corrections now, nothing that will list the ship. It doesn’t seem like much now, but in one year (or five, or ten) the trajectory change will be substantially noticeable.

I still have more growing to do.

Photo by Jon Mullins

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure how I was going to process everything. I would have just liked to have sit in quiet meditation for a couple of days, but I’ve never been one to sit still for very long and my responsibilities in the real world were calling me.

Photo by Brenna Hesch

I spent several hours (over twelve) editing the photos and probably another five or six hours writing (and linking photos). I really wanted to avoid a telling a serialized string of events, so I stuck to recalling events that stood out in my mind, even if that meant skipping over some things. My goal is that I could use the picture to compliment and supplement what I wrote1, and in that regard, I hope I was successful in telling, more or less, the entire story.

Photo by Jon Mullins

I also wanted to avoid having this be all about the earthquake. This has probably been the most difficult issue to deal with. Initially, I felt like a survivor without a disaster. But as the shock of the entire situation has warn off, I find myself wonder what our status really was. Were we evacuees of a natural disaster? What sort of danger were we really in? I’ve tried to push myself to tell a fair story, but it’s a tricky balance.

Photo by Brock Fehler

If you were to ask me to sum up my experience in one sentence, it would be this: Greater things have yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city2.

  1. they say a picture is worth a thousand words ↩

  2. to quote Chris Tomlin ↩

Mission Trip Haiti: Business as Usual, Almost — Part 2

Everyone was shocked; I hadn’t even once considered that the epicenter could be Port-au-Prince.

My first reaction was untempered, “Let’s go! People need our help!” However, Bruce kindly and patiently explained our position: a group of white people, with no experience in disaster recovery, who can’t speak French or Creole, and don’t have place to stay, food to eat, or water to drink. Of course, Bruce was right; we would have been more of burden than anything. I guess that’s the kind of insight one gets after working in Haiti for twenty-five years.

Life continued, more or less, as normal. Bruce was working overtime trying to coordinate relief efforts with his organization, CrossWorld, and we did what we could for the people of Port-au-Prince from where we were by praying. The only real impact to us was that our days were a bit shorter since Bruce had so much going on.

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Read More »Mission Trip Haiti: Business as Usual, Almost — Part 2

Mission Trip Haiti: In Words and Photos – Part 1

Editors Note: Sorry it has taken so long to get this post up. The last several weeks have been hectic, at best.

I wrote this as a stand alone blog post for a variety of reasons. One of which is that I was asked by my college newspaper, The Oredigger, to write guest column – which I was more than happy to do. The original plan was to take a blog post and then repurpose it for the newspaper. As it turned out, I did it the other way around.

Below is an expanded version of what I wrote for The Oredigger.

For those who aren’t majoring in History, here’s the quick introduction to Haiti, courtesy of the CIA World Factbook:
From www.cia.gov:

In the early 17th century, the French established a presence on Hispaniola. In 1697, Spain ceded to the French the western third of the island, which later became Haiti. The French colony, based on forestry and sugar-related industries, became one of the wealthiest in the Caribbean but only through the heavy importation of African slaves and considerable environmental degradation. In the late 18th century, Haiti’s nearly half million slaves revolted under Toussaint L’ouverture. After a prolonged struggle, Haiti became the first black republic to declare independence in 1804. The poorest country [and also perceived as the most corrupt] in the Western Hemisphere , Haiti has been plagued by political violence for most of its history. After an armed rebellion led to the forced resignation and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, an interim government took office to organize new elections under the auspices of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). Continued violence and technical delays prompted repeated postponements, but Haiti finally did inaugurate a democratically elected president and parliament in May of 2006.

My involvement with Haiti is a rather curious one. Last spring, I was looking for a summer mission trip that would be able to use to my skills as an engineer. Although I pursued several different avenues, I didn’t find anything that struck a chord with me. Excuses will always be prevalent, especially in today’s society. Through an interesting set of short conversations with a variety of people over the fall, I decided that it’s high time I let my “religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.” (G. K. Chesterton)

So there it was.

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I left for Haiti on January 8th. It was an arduous journey to get there (or so I thought), leaving in the early morning from Seattle, flying to Chicago, and then to Miami. Miami only offered a short reprieve (I think we spent more time trying to get to our hotel rooms than we did in them) before we had to be back at Miami’s International Airport to catch our flight to Haiti.

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Read More »Mission Trip Haiti: In Words and Photos – Part 1

For the week of 2010-01-30 in Tweets

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Back in the United States

Good news everyone! We’re back on US soil, solid ground so to speak. I’m currently at the Miami Airport waiting for our flight to leave (AA 1763 to ORD, AA 425 to SEA). We get in at 6:35pm local time. I’ll have more of an update when I get back and I’m not using an iPhone.

Another Haiti Update

Some of this information is going to be repeated becuase I had about all of four minutes last time I was online. Once you get to the second paragraph, it should be mostly new stuff:

As you probably know by now, there was a severe earthquake (and several dozen aftershocks) just south of Port-au-Prince Haiti on Tuesday. I am staying about 125 miles north near a town called Port-de-Paix. We felt the earthquake (best guess is around a 3.0 or so, perhaps less), however I and the rest of my team is safe. The missionaries we are staying with have enough food, water, gas, and other essentials to last for a very long time (easily several months).

Unfortunately, getting out of the country has proven to be a bit difficult. Port-au-Prince (which is where we flew into and are supposed to fly out of) is in ruins, although the airport is reasonably intact (or so I’ve heard). We were scheduled to fly back on Monday, 18 January. However, American Airlines has cancelled all flights for the time being and has rescheduled us for Saturday, 23 January. Additionally, we have to take a short “commuter” flight (from Port-de-Paix to Port-au-Prince) on a local airline that has also stopped operating and has stated that they will not resume operations until American Airlines starts flying (which should be Tuesday, 19 January).

Several aid ships for several nations are here or enroute. The United States Military has or very shortly will take over control off the airport and hopefully things will get going again. It’s rumored (although I can’t substantiate this) that Monday is the day they are airlifting a bunch of stuff in, which is why we can’t fly out.

We’re past plans B, C, and D and are on to about Plan E now. We are monitoring the situation and still attempting to get out on Monday (although we don’t really think that will happen). One possibility might be to get a flight out on an missionary flight operated by Missionary Flights International. However, we won’t be moving until it’s a “slam dunk” to get back to Miami (or somewhere else in the US).

Contact with the outside world as also been at a minimum. So far, I’ve only been able to get Internet access for about 10 minutes in the last 10 days. I haven’t read any news reports or seen any photos from Port-au-Prince, thus all I know is what Bruce (one of the missionaries) has relayed to us (to his credit, he has been doing a great job of keeping us apprised of what’s going on).

We’ve continued on with our original plans as best we can and have generally been in good spirits; however, yesterday was a bit tough as final word came down that American Airlines was not flying on Monday and our flight have been pushed back almost an entire week. I think everyone has taken the news rather well and has shifted gears to figure out how to make the best of the situation we are in. Most of us have jobs and took a large chunk of vacation time to come down to Haiti and now we have to dig into that bank even more, which hurts a bit (at least for me).

I’m also tired of eating oatmeal and tuna fish sandwiches for breakfast and lunch, respectively, everyday; however, Deb (Bruce’s wife) has cooked amazing dinners for us every night and I’ve been eating better down here than I have at home most nights.

We’ll continue to keep on keeping on down here. I’d ask that you pray for safe (and soon) travel back to Seattle and peace of heart and mind while we are down here.

Know that we are safe and will get back to Seattle as soon as safely possible. Feel free to post comments below. Updates will be provided when I get more Internet access. You can also stay up-to-date at http://www.upc.org.

Andrew, out.

Update from Haiti

This is just a quick update to tell you that first off I am, along with the rest of our team, ok. We are in Port-da-Paix, which is about 125 miles north of Port-au-Prince. At about 4:45pm on Tuesday we felt an small tremor (~3.0 or so on the Richter scale, best guess). We thought it was an isolated and local tremor. As we all now know it was quite more than that.

There really isn’t a lot were are able to do from where we are, so we are going about our project as usual. We get intermedite updates from our hosts as time and information permits. However, this is the worst thing to Haiti in at least 100 years.

My biggest concern right now is getting back home. To get back to the US, we have to take a 45 minute flight into Port-Au-Prince and then catch an an American Airlines flight to Miami. Right now, we don’t know if American Airlines if flying or not.

I’d ask that you pray for the people of Haiti. That you would pray for us and the rest of our trip. And that you pray that God would find us getting home safely.

-Andrew

For the week of 2010-01-10 in Tweets

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In Haiti

Believe it or not, Andrew isn’t at home, please a message… at the beep. I must be out, or I’d pick up the phone. Where could I be? Believe it or not, I’m not home!

I have left the country (no, really, I’m out of the country again) and am on vacation from 8 January 2010 through 18 January 2010. I will be returning to life as you know it on Tuesday, 19 January 2010.

I do not plan on having access to email (or really any form of communication), so don’t plan on hearing from me until after the 19th.

If this is a real emergency (i.e. someone is going to die), my parents have my emergency contact information.

Good luck.
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