Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Weather
All my life, I have been in love with winter weather -- the colder and more extreme the better! -- so it might seem that a trip to Haiti, where current highs are in the low nineties, would be less than ideal! But I find that my reaction to the weather is far different now than it was a few decades ago (I'll turn 58 later this month), so maybe a little warmth and sunshine won't be such a bad thing after all. (Particularly if we learn that Ann Arbor experiences snow and ice while we're gone.)
Monday, March 2, 2015
Our team
More details will ensue as I learn them, but for now, I can tell you the names of my fellow mission team members:
Our leader, Mark Gunderson, and his teenage daughter Emily;
A man, Tom Single, and his two teenage sons, Jacob and Matt
A married couple, Eric and Mari Veenstra
Two young women, Marissa Brazeau and Katie Abraham
Our leader, Mark Gunderson, and his teenage daughter Emily;
A man, Tom Single, and his two teenage sons, Jacob and Matt
A married couple, Eric and Mari Veenstra
Two young women, Marissa Brazeau and Katie Abraham
The coming trip
I am looking forward to going on a mission trip through our church, Zion Lutheran in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Haiti in conjunction with Living Hope Ministries there. We will leave Michigan on Thursday night, April 2, overnighting in Atlanta, and arriving in Haiti on Friday afternoon, April 3. We'll then return to Michigan on the following Thursday, April 9. As they have wireless service there, it is my hope to be able to post to this blog while there, to record our experience.
We had a planning meet tonight at the home of our trip leader, Mark Gunderson, and plans are coming together nicely as the date for our departure approaches. Even though Mark says that our time there will be pretty "free form" in terms of not having a structured agenda, I had been mildly concerned with my inability to speak and perhaps the consequent inability to "do" anything meaningful there. But I remembered the words of a leader of a previous short-term mission trip I had been on at my former church, where he spoke of the "ministry of presence"—that, just by our going, and letting our hosts know that it matters enough to us to journey to be with them, we are doing much. And as I thought on my situation, I realized, too, that since I always have my laptop with me to communicate, I could turn that into a strength. When I asked Mark about this, he said the children that we'll be working with there will be quite fascinated by it, and so I've begun compiling a list of select applicable words and phrases to use, in Kreyol (a variant spelling of Creole), the language they use in Haiti.
At one point, we discussed WHY we would go on a trip like this, and I quoted Jimmy Carter, found in a meme regarding him that I posted on Facebook a couple of weeks ago: "I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference."
We are being commissioned at church on Palm Sunday (March 29), and then gathering for a "packing party" where we will distribute the supplies we are taking into suitcases and measure them to be certain that they approach as nearly as possible (but do not exceed) the 50-pound limit.
We had a planning meet tonight at the home of our trip leader, Mark Gunderson, and plans are coming together nicely as the date for our departure approaches. Even though Mark says that our time there will be pretty "free form" in terms of not having a structured agenda, I had been mildly concerned with my inability to speak and perhaps the consequent inability to "do" anything meaningful there. But I remembered the words of a leader of a previous short-term mission trip I had been on at my former church, where he spoke of the "ministry of presence"—that, just by our going, and letting our hosts know that it matters enough to us to journey to be with them, we are doing much. And as I thought on my situation, I realized, too, that since I always have my laptop with me to communicate, I could turn that into a strength. When I asked Mark about this, he said the children that we'll be working with there will be quite fascinated by it, and so I've begun compiling a list of select applicable words and phrases to use, in Kreyol (a variant spelling of Creole), the language they use in Haiti.
At one point, we discussed WHY we would go on a trip like this, and I quoted Jimmy Carter, found in a meme regarding him that I posted on Facebook a couple of weeks ago: "I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference."
We are being commissioned at church on Palm Sunday (March 29), and then gathering for a "packing party" where we will distribute the supplies we are taking into suitcases and measure them to be certain that they approach as nearly as possible (but do not exceed) the 50-pound limit.
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