It's Wednesday morning here in Haiti. Yesterday was such a full on day that I didn't have time to do a blog and was too exhausted by the the time we got in the room to go to bed. We travelled out of the city to a place call Leogane which had been badly affected by the earthquake. As we drove through the city and then out through some of the country we really got a chance to see both the devestating effects of the earthquake but, more shockingly, the devestating effects of poverty here in this country.
Whereever we go here there are people living in the worst possible conditions you can imagine. Hundreds of thousands of people still living in makeshift tents, either in large groups our simply dotted throughout devasted buildings. Many of the people still fortunate enough to still have a home that is standing are living in just the smallest, dirties buildings. Unemployment here is ridiculously high. Everywhere we go there are either groups of men gathered with nothing to do or people trying to make a living by setting up stalls inbetween the rubble on the pavements selling anything they can.
Yet the Haitian people have such tremendous heart and courage. We spent the day with Pastor Menard and the school he runs which caters for 800 children of all ages. All around the school there is nothing but tents and makeshift homes. Compassion pays for the most disadvantaged (it's all relative isn't it!!) children to attend his school. The other parents pay $120 a year for their children to go. Its is the most highly respected school in the area. These children are living in such abject poverty but sang songs to us about the goodness of God with huge smiles on their faces. They, and their teachers, meant every word. Pastor Menard is anothe extraordinary church leader. He told us about the day his church fell down in the quake and about how he felt when he couldn't reach church members stuck under the rubble of buildings they were living in. He told us that in the days after the quake he wore a baseball cap with the word's 'Jesus is my Boss' on it to remind everyone he met that there was someone greater than any earthquake. He told us that his passion to reach the lost and the broken is greater than ever. His church too has grown, more than doubled in the last year. And as we stood in the large makeshift tent that now functions as his church he told us ablout his hopes for the future. Jesus said "blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God". I've seen that today.