The Highway to Haiti

by Eddie Ogan

I’ll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy was 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money.

By 1946 my older sisters were married and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.

When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn’t listen to the radio, we’d save money on that month’s electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could. For 15 cents we could buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1. We made $20 on pot holders. That month was one of the best of our lives.

Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we’d sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church, so figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.

The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before.

That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn’t care that we wouldn’t have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn’t own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn’t seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet.

But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt rich. When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us kids put in a $20.

As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills.

Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn’t talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have our Mom and Dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the spoon or the fork that night. We had two knifes that we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn’t have a lot of things that other people had, but I’d never thought we were poor.

That Easter day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn’t like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed–I didn’t even want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor!

I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew that we were poor. I decided that I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time. We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn’t know. We’d never known we were poor. We didn’t want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn’t talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun dried bricks, but they needed money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, “Can’t we all sacrifice to help these poor people?” We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.

Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering. When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn’t expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, “You must have some rich people in this church.” Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that “little over $100.”

We were the rich family in the church! Hadn’t the missionary said so? From that day on I’ve never been poor again. I’ve always remembered how rich I am because I have Jesus!

We have been particularly impressed by the teaching of Ray Vander Laan and the Faith Lessons DVD series produced by Focus on the Family. Dr. James Dobson says, “Nothing has opened and illuminated the Scriptures for me quite like the Faith Lessons series.” One particular lesson puts an interesting twist on a familiar passage in Matthew, and steers it in a beautifully missional direction. Though the advantage of the Faith Lessons is that Vander Laan teaches on location, we have summarized his exegesis of the Matthew text and attempted to preserve his stream of thought in a way that we hope you find insightful. To learn more about Ray Vander Laan or the Faith Lessons DVD series, visit: www.followtherabbi.com

Banias (or Banyas), at the foot of Mount Hermon, is where the Jordan River begins in northern Israel. More precisely, the Jordan River is fed by several springs that come together in this region, and Banias is one of the springs. Banias is also the place known in the New Testament as Caesarea Philippi. Herod the Great built a temple at Banias and dedicated it to Caesar Augustus. Later, his son, Herod Philip the tetrarch, made his home there and renamed it Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi was a pagan place, notorious for its evil.
(more…)

I, Matt, had the distinct privilege of going to college with Ben Piper. Ben is the classic opportunist. Once he had nothing better to do in the summer, so he decided to see what it was like to be homeless for a couple months. When he heard an attractive Brazilian girl got a job as a librarian, Ben immediately found his library card and met his future wife. Using peas and mashed potatoes, Ben convinced a prof—in the student dining room—that he didn’t need to take an Ancient Near East geography exam. Pam and I, and Ben and his wife, Melissa, enjoyed those sweet years in Chicago together. But as it was with all of our friends at Moody, what brought us together there is ultimately what pushed us apart.

Whether or not you know Ben, you may be familiar with his dad, John. John recently shared his thoughts at his granddaughter’s funeral. Having known Ben and Melissa, and being expectant parents ourselves, there is a sense of closeness in his words. It’s worth your time to read. The article is called: What I Said at My Granddaughter’s Funeral

The following letter was mailed to our family and friends in December. Since then we have received a considerable amount of positive feedback and felt it appropriate to post online.

December 4th, 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

There’s a story about two farmers who desperately needed rain. Both of them prayed for rain, but only one of them went out and prepared his fields to receive it. Which one trusted God to send the rain? God will send the rain when he’s ready. We must prepare our fields to receive it. (more…)

A few months ago I (Matt) was riding with another missionary named Bill. Along the way, Bill was telling me about his family’s experiences in their first year in Haiti. He told me about strange noises they used to hear. He said every night they would hear something walking on and in their roof. Whatever it was would walk from one end of the roof to the other, and stop right above their bedroom. The tin roof would crunch under its weight and the wooden rafters would shiver and creak as the prowler moved through them. Night after night, they would hear it, but they could never see it.

Bill told me his family began praying over their house—and they prayed with their son who was in elementary school at the time. Sometime later, Bill was talking with another missionary named Ray and the topic of strange noises came up in the conversation. Ray told Bill that the same thing happened to his family in another town pretty far away. Ray said that he had some relatives visiting and they actually tried to trap whatever this roof-walking creature was. In the daytime they planned how they would stakeout the corners of the roof as well as access points, such as trees. In the evening, like clockwork, the intruder began making noise. Within minutes, everyone had a flashlight and got into position. They found nothing. Ray told Bill that in Haiti there is actually a spirit being that is believed to walk on rooftops.

Later that day I came home and told Pam about my day and recounted some of the things Bill and I talked about. I told her about the roof-walker. Just then, she reminded me of something unusual that happened to us when we lived among the Haitian community in Miami last year—something I had totally forgotten about.
(more…)