Spring Break in Haiti

(This post was written by Michael Wallace, High School Pastor)

While you are reading this, most high school students are on spring break.  Many of them are at the beach, lake, Six Flags, shopping or playing video games.  But several Faith Promise students chose to spend their week off from school in a different way: in Haiti.

The country of Haiti has been ravaged by natural disasters and government corruption for decades.  Much of this was brought to a global light during last year’s massive earthquake that nearly leveled the capital city of Port-au-Prince.  In addition to wrecking the country’s already weak infrastructure, the earthquake created an immediate homeless population of millions and thousands of children were orphaned.  That’s where we came in.

Faith Promise as a church has partnered with several orphanages in the last year to support and build in to the next Haitian generation.  Over the last few days I have had the privilege of serving alongside a dozen students and leaders from our church whose simple goal was to show kids God’s love.  It was an amazing and humbling experience.  As you can tell from the videos and pictures below, these kids are just that: kids.  They love to laugh and play, sing and dance.  But in their community they have very little joyous interactions with adults.  Our team made it a priority to shatter our comfort zones in order to connect with these children relationally.  It was a phenomenal thing to watch people who have never been out of the country or seen anything near this level of destruction get down on the floor and love on some kids. 

Initially there were some fears and anxiety about the impact we could truly make.  The country is so messed up…what can we possibly do to make a difference?  The truth is, God loves these people every bit as much as He loves us, and by helping to show these children love we will set the foundation for a different kind of Haiti.  These kids are the ones that will start that revolution!

So, what can you do?  Simple: Pray.  Experience the stories of this team and commit to support them in any way possible.  As Pastor has said, we are blessed to be a blessing!  Now that you know the stories, the numbers go out the window…it’s all about the people.  Thank you for giving so generously to this nation that truly needs it.  There is hope for Haiti because we are the church.