Occasional Letter #4
The following letter was mailed last week:
August 12th, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
Three generations ago it was common for missionaries to pack their belongings in caskets and leave for the field quite aware of the challenges ahead. Times have changed, and one of the challenges today, ironically, may be a lack of awareness of the complex environments in which missionaries serve. Many missionaries today serve in areas where physical needs abound. Schools, clinics, orphanages, camps and micro-enterprises accompany missionary efforts with the assumption the gospel will be received by a captive audience in these places. Simultaneously, $2.3 trillion in foreign aid money and development programming has flowed into these countries since the Marshall Plan helped rebuild post-World World II Europe.
For 18-months our family has lived within the confines of poverty. Our town, like many in Haiti, has dozens of churches and schools, and a hospital within walking distance. Operation World states that 96% of the population is Christian. On paper it seems like Haiti might not need missionaries in the traditional sense, and sometimes we wonder. On the ground, however, despair is personified in people we know by name. Day after day neighbors pull us aside to explain their desperate plight as if all the “help” somehow passed them by. Maybe it did? Missionary and humanitarian aid is big business, and some of the wealthy and powerful in this industry stay wealthy and powerful as long as the poor and oppressed stay poor and oppressed.
On any given day at the international airport in Port-au-Prince, scores of foreigners arrive with their offerings for the poor. The recurring theme is: build buildings, sponsor children, teach VBS, solve problems, and give away stuff. Pastors, missionaries and humanitarians bring teams here so frequently, it is as if the revolving door of workers constantly reminds the poor, “you can’t do anything yourself.” Short-term mission groups claim their efforts empower and relate to people even when history, and our neighbors, tell a different story. Yet after decades of this, Haiti is still one of the most impoverished places on earth. Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Maybe the present day debacle should not surprise us?
Professors Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly stand at opposite ends of the humanitarian aid debate. Sachs is eloquent, Harvard trained; he makes appearances with Bono. In his book, The End of Poverty, he champions the United Nations Millennium Project and outlines the need for massive financial aid packages. Easterly, a former World Bank research economist, describes two tragedies: The first is that people live in extreme poverty today and die from diseases that can be prevented by medicines and bed nets that cost only pennies (this is the tragedy Sachs plans to end). The second tragedy looks into the past and asks where all the money went, and why today’s preventable tragedies have not been prevented by now? In his book, The White Man’s Burden, Easterly writes, “I feel like kind of a Scrooge pointing out the second tragedy when there is so much goodwill and compassion among so many people to help the poor.” We share similar sentiments.
Spiritual darkness and grinding poverty are sickening. But sadly, the preferred methodologies of diagnosis and treatment do little to correctly identify and properly dispose of the poison. As it pertains to poverty, Wess Stafford, president of Compassion International, in his book Too Small to Ignore writes, “Most people see only the circumstances and conditions. But poverty is an inside-out issue. It does its greatest damage on the inside, where it often cannot be seen.” Later he writes, “When you understand poverty’s root, its core, as a destructive mind-set that says, ‘I don’t matter. There is nothing special about me. Why should I try? Why should I dare to hope? Who cares about me?’ you have stumbled right into the very heart of the gospel.”
For a long time we have searched for where to begin. There has been no shortage of options and Matt was even recently offered a position with a humanitarian aid organization in Haiti. Of course we want to be part of something that matters. But being part of something that matters simply means being part of what matters to God. In Haiti, to see what matters to God, we believe the starting point is in the littlest places—among the children. Stafford declares, “When a child in poverty says, ‘I matter,’ he has just taken the first teetering step out of poverty! The outer circumstances with which he struggles may not have changed at all, but the inner core, the root of his personhood, is vastly altered. The healing can now begin, from the inside out.”
After 18-months in Haiti, we speak and understand Creole reasonably well. Our house is mostly finished and our routines established. In the coming weeks we will begin a formal discipleship ministry with children. After everything we have experienced and learned, we are convinced that discipling children is the starting point for sustainable development. Teaching children about Jesus and leading them in self-discovery gives them opportunities to change their world in ways nothing else can. Amidst the distractions of aid, programming, and outside efforts, we find what matters most in the example of Christ.
Please pray with us as we take this next step. Though it is difficult to encapsulate this vision on a sheet of paper, please visit our website (www.highwaytohaiti.com) in the coming months to see how it unfolds. We continuously praise God for how he supplies all he ordains, and we thank you for believing in us, praying for us, encouraging us and investing in what God is doing in Haiti.
Humbly and reverently,
Matt, Pam, Silas & Luke McCormick