Haitian Workers: 'Let's Get Up'

This is the second in a series of articles that report on ministry in which the Christian Reformed Church in North America has been involved since a devastating earthquake hit Haiti more than six months ago.

July 20, 2010 -- As worldwide news organizations do six-month anniversary stories about the lack of hope and progress in Haiti, Mario Matos found things to be the opposite during a recent trip to the earthquake-ravaged island.

The Caribbean director for the Center for Transforming Missions sought and found important signs of hope in his visit to Haiti.

Matos, a Christian Reformed World Missions- supported missionary, works to bring about healing and wholeness to people who live in areas that have been damaged by disaster or violence. The CTM is involved in Haiti in projects that focus on pastoral and leadership training, reconciliation and the spiritual growth of Haitians.

Walking the streets, Matos and his colleagues stopped in front of a work crew moving rubble away and cleaning the streets with a sign written on the back of their T-shirts: “Ann Leve Kanpe,” meaning in Haitian Creole, “Let’s get up.”

Other signs of hope included finding schools “operating in backyards under tarp classrooms, churches holding crowded worship services in the open air spaces where their church buildings used to exist, streets filled with people striving to survive however they can, small businesses back in operation, and a local gang deciding to build a tarp school to help children get back to their education,” writes Matos “Geography of Grace,” the most recent CTM newsletter.

“God is there at work today and has always been. God is at work through his people, local and international, who are preaching good news in word and deed among those who are hurting.”

In the report of his trip to Haiti, he describes how he and three others worked “alongside Sous Espwa, our Haitian partner organization, to continue the training of Haitian pastors and grassroots leaders.”

Among other things, they visited painful places that were affected by the earthquake and attempted to find signs of hope in those settings.

“If we want to preach and teach good news among people whose lives have been crushed by life, sometimes the best classrooms are places where people are living in affliction and pain,” writes Matos.

With a group of more than a dozen local leaders, they visited an “area where thousands of people share common graves, buried without any identification or epitaph that would serve as reminder of their existence,” writes Matos.

They also visited several neighborhoods severely damaged by the earthquake and spent time talking with families in tarp and tent cities.

In a particularly profound experience, they “conducted a moment of blessing service in front of a collapsed hospital building where the body of the wife of one of the pastors in our group still remains unfound under the rubble.”

--Chris Meehan, CRC Communications

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