I thought I was getting used to the poverty here in Haiti (which of course isn't a good thing). The this afternoon we went out to the mountains to the north east of Port au Prince. There we saw poverty on a completely different level to what we have seen so far.
In a small town in the moutains is Pastor Nahum who oversees a church and a small school of about 100 children. He and a guy called Timothy run the 'Back to Life' project in this small town. Here, as well as educating the children of the school, they also feed hundreds of malnourished children in the area and provide a home for 18 orphans. The home is actually the Pastors house, where he lives with his wife and six children. the building they live in is tiny for the 26 of them, but the Pastor and his wife do this without any regret. Instead we saw just the joy of being able to serve the Lord in this way. He didn't ask us for money to help build the new orphange he and Timothy are planning. He didn't ask us to provide food for the children. He just asked that we remember them in prayer.
Each day has been more shocking than the one before for Andreas and I. Tomorrow we fly out to the largest island around Haiti. It is called Lagonave and we will visit an orphange and the site where Compassion and others are looking to rebuild a hospital. We expect to see even greater poverty than we have seen so far.
The question going through my mind is that with so much need and poverty what can I do. That is where I think Compassion's idea of changing the world one child at a time comes into it's own. There are so many needs out here that it could be so hard to know what to do that paralysis sets in and nothing get's done at all. But something needs to be done and sponsoring a child is, at the very least, a great way of changing just one life. What I have seen so far tells me that sponsoring a child transforms the life of the whole family.
"All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do." Gal. 2:10.