All My Bags Are Packed, I’m Ready to Go
Embarrassing Fact: Each time I’m about to take a trip, I start humming “Leaving on a Jet Plane” all day long for at least a week before I go.
I’ve been planning a trip to Haiti for several months, and this small Caribbean country has gotten to me. I’ve studied up on the language — Bonswa! I’ve tried Haitian recipes and read stories of its people. I’ve even packed and repacked my suitcase, so excited am I to meet this culture face to face.
Well, all my bags are packed, but I’m not going anywhere. I was supposed to leave on April 12th, and I was hoping to pack you in my suitcase to experience Haiti with me through this blog, but the situation is too unstable to travel right now.
The Haitians are calling it Clorox and Battery Acid — a famine that leaves their mouths white and dry from hunger, like powdery Clorox, and leaves their intestines feeling like they are being slowly eaten by battery acid. Unlike many famines, though, there’s plenty of food on the store shelves in Haiti. The people just can’t afford it.
Because of inflated food prices over the past three months, the 80 percent of Haitians who live in extreme poverty are getting desperate. In January, it cost $2 for a bag of flour. Now it costs $3. It might not seem like a lot to us, but when you live on $1 a day, this 33 percent increase hurts. Thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets in the past week protesting, some holding signs saying “We’re Hungry.” Most are peaceful, but some are getting violent, burning tires and breaking car windows.
The good news is that no Compassion project activities have been affected, although each family is affected by the rising prices as they struggle to feed all their little mouths.
Would you join me in praying for Haiti?
- Pray that the Haitian government can effectively address the situation.
- Pray for the survival of those who are starving.
- Pray for the safety and the health of all the Compassion-assisted children, their families, and Compassion staff.
The trip I was going to attend was called “It Works,” a 5-year interval trip, on which we follow-up on the stories of sponsored children to find out if, indeed, sponsorship works. I hope to still travel to this needy country that has wheedled its way into my heart. I hope to hear the story of Yvette, a Compassion alumna who is now a doctor, and of Jean Robert who five years ago was studying accounting through Compassion’s Leadership Development Program, and, of course, I hope to still see the faces of the precious children, who in a glance, despite poverty and beyond reason, remind us of what joy is.
Continue Reading ›Proof
I sponsor a child in Haiti named Youvens. In the seven years I’ve sponsored him, I’ve never, ever seen him smile. Even when I visited Haiti and brought him a soccer ball. No smile. He played soccer with me, ate lunch with me and never let go of the ball. But he never smiled.
Continue Reading ›2,000 Screaming Teenagers
The title of this post scares me. I love all of God’s children, but the thought of a room full of teenagers makes me a little nervous. The exception will be this Wednesday night when I travel deep in the heart of Texas for the start of the Hawk Nelson “Green T” Tour. Compassion has partnered with artists for 30 years and in that time almost 200,000 sponsors have been found in the seats of concert venues all over the United States.
My job with Compassion is to build relationships with artists and partner with them when they are out on the road. I love the fact that on my Compassion roster is one of the legends of Christian music, Dallas Holm, and young bands like Hawk Nelson. The common thread between the two is the calling to be an advocate for children throughout the world and a belief that we are called to partner together to release these children from poverty.
One of the great joys of my job is traveling to different parts of the world with these artists so they can see “first hand” the ministry of Compassion.
In January, I took Daniel from Hawk Nelson to Haiti where he met his Compassion sponsor child, Franchioux. Daniel immediately connected with the boy he only knew through letters and pictures and outfitted him with a “Hawk Nelson is My Friend” t shirt written in Hatian Creole for the occasion.
This trip encouraged and inspired Daniel to stand up in 36 different cities for the next two months in front of 2,000 screaming teenagers, parents, and youth leaders and tell them about this 8-year-old boy in Haiti that hears about Jesus every week, is doing well in school, has the right nutrition and medical care, and believes that one day he can be an engineer so he can build better roads in his community. Daniel will stand up each night and invite those 2,000 screaming teenagers to take a stand and join him in the fight against poverty.
Brian Seay is an artist relations manager for Compassion, working with musicians and bands who advocate for Compassion and children in poverty. He was one of the bloggers on the Uganda blog trip.
