We started our Monday off with a hearty breakfast (pancakes & SPAM) and a heart for service. We were all quite excited about the day ahead of us; a morning of digging a deep pit for a latrine (out-house), followed by a trip to the “market”, then lunch made and served by the locals, and capped off with a return visit to Matthew 28 - the local orphanage for the poorest of the poor.

A little background on the latrine: we’re taking our lead from the local council of leaders (a group of leaders from multiple churches) who have identified as a priority the need  to construct latrines throughout the community. To build a relatively safe and sanitary latrine is no small task in this remote village in Haiti; The Home Depot doesn’t deliver out here. As a result, many of the residents live with an unsafe and unsanitary substitute (see picture below) which results in disease (the spread of malaria) and sometimes injury; they recently had a little girl fall into a latrine pit and she had to be taken to the hospital for her injuries.

As it turns out, we did not have to dig the pit for the latrine this morning  thanks to the mission teams that preceded us. Instead, we transported about 120 cinder blocks, several wheel barrels of sand and some 90 lbs bags of cement to the latrine site. Today’s latrine is for a family of six. Our team of nine (4 women & 5 men) displayed awesome teamwork as we created human chains to pass heavy bricks in situations where individual hauling (which we also did) was inefficient; there are no slackers on our team! (below is a picture of a finished latrine)

After a couple of hours of hard labor (it felt good, but the heat really zaps your energy) our translator, Erivo (Err-ee-vo), took us on a walk through the countryside to view some of the finished latrines as well as some of the unsafe/unsanitary ones. By understanding the bigger picture of this project, we could see that we were fulfilling James 2: 15-17;  Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes or daily food . If one of you says to him, “go I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing for his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself; if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

After our tour of the countryside, we piled into our Nissan pickup truck and headed to the local market where you can buy your necessities for the week, such as rice, beans, pasta,  and toiletries, not to mention live chickens, goats, pigs, cows, and oxen.

Next we headed back to one of the churches to join the two other teams (we’re down here with two other teams from our church) for lunch served by some local women. After refueling, we walked across the street with one of the other teams to spend the afternoon at Matthew 28, the orphanage that we visited the day before.

The best way to describe the conditions at Matthew 28 is that you feel you are in one of Sally Struthers’ commercials. The conditions are deplorable by our standards with naked children running around, some partially clothed with soiled and tattered clothes and living in dark and cramped quarters. My initial reaction (which was shared by the rest of the blancs; the nickname given to us by the locals) was that we need to fix this! We have means and we can get some clothes and money to improve the conditions to a standard that’s acceptable to us. Upon further investigation and discussion we learned that the children are fed two meals a day, attend school, and share a bond of love with each other that would be envied by many American families. They were quick to smile and quite content even without electronic games! And, one of the most exciting things for me is that they know our Lord and Savior, it’s a priority for the pastor who leads the orphanage. In the end we concluded our need to fix things needs to be replaced with a renewed TRUST in God. While our time with these kids seemed short, at the end of the day I was reminded of the verse from Matthew 25: 40;  when Jesus said, “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

by Tim Rolston