the gist. [why i am going haiti]

in september, i am moving to haiti [God-willing]. i am moving to haiti to live with haitians, some of them orphans, all of them beautiful. i am moving to haiti to learn to love and to be loved, to serve and to be served. thoreau said that he went into the woods to suck the marrow out of life. but i think that i am going to haiti to let the Gospel seep down into my marrow. i am going to learn the meaning of that famous saying of st. paul, "for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." and even those less famous words of Christ, "whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it."

to be honest, i don't know what i am getting myself into. i am not moving to haiti with much of a plan. i am not going with a big missions organization. (i am going with a very little one. in fact, i will be one of its first three expatriates.) i am not going with a well-defined purpose. as my good friend jay says, "i just want to go live with haitians."

so, this is what i know. i am moving to haiti with jay and his wife diana (i will try to tell you more about them and how we ended up planning to move to haiti together later). we are going through an organization called LESPWA. jay started LESPWA in 2006. we will be living and working at the Presbyterian Mission in Haiti, which was started by pastor charles amicy. pastor charles has started many churches around the capital, port au prince. the mission, located in the town of messailler, 30 miles or so north of port au prince, has a church and a school and an orphanage. the orphanage is planned to open in september and will initially be home to 20 boys. a medical clinic is planned for the future.

LESPWA has a wonderful relationship with pastor charles and the presbyterian mission. the goal of LESPWA is essentially to build orphanages and give haitian children hope by giving them a home and teaching them the Gospel (it's all explained a lot better on the LESPWA website). LESPWA is helping pastor charles do this in messailler. and we will be living at the mission to support the orphanage and the mission as a whole. but we are also going to continue the work of LESPWA (which for the foreseeable future will likely remain in partnership with pastor charles), looking for more opportunities to build orphanages. so there is much to do, but we are pretty clueless about how things will develop. [a little disclaimer: jay might disagree with me about some of this. i'll let you know if he does.]

so, i think that explains why i am moving to haiti. i guess later i'll try to explain how i came to this point.

thanks again, and peace.