Kalkaska Teams Prepare for Haiti Missions

Left to Right: Jeff Trabold, Andy Bratton, Sean Trabold, Sara Blasko, Shirley Webber, Madeline Ferguson, Kaylin Severance, Grace Rowbotham, Tim Severance, Michelle Price (Not Pictured: Brett Gallagher, Jason Teboe, Jaelyn Teboe)

This Thursday afternoon, January 31, 2019, the first of two teams will leave for Haiti. The second team will leave next week. One will be working with Sonlight Ministries in Port-de-Paix and the other with HOPE mission near Gonaives. Both teams will encounter culture shock upon entering this third world country. It's a mind-jarring trip that overloads the senses. Upon returning they'll find it a struggle to explain. Here are some scenes that those going on this trip will encounter:

• Hungry children yelling "blanc, blanc!" with bloated bellies and red-tinged hair from malnutrition
• Pitch black evenings void of electricity and technology causing introspection on life
• Men loudly playing dominoes in the shade of their porch
• Women carrying baskets overflowing with produce on top of their heads down the mountain
• Men with rock hard feet from walking barefoot along dirt paths
• Fishermen pulling in their nets before sunrise only to collect several small minnows
• Flies buzzing around trash piled up by the side of the road
• Clothes drying on dusty bushes outside tiny huts
• The smell of charcoal heating up to prepare the daily meal of rice and beans
• People crammed into a brightly colored pickup truck bouncing down a muddy, dirt road like an amusement ride

So many scenes hitting so many senses. How do you begin to process what you witness? You can't understand the language so you don't know what they are saying. The culture is foreign to you. The heat from the sun is blistering. You just want to get comfortable somewhere.

In Matthew 25 Jesus shares the only description of Judgment day found in the Bible. When Christ returns and all the nations are gathered before God sitting on His throne, people will be separated like sheep and goats. His basis of separating people? How they responded to the needs of the hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and imprisoned.

While Haiti is a cornucopia of sights, sounds, and smells, it is also a beautiful opportunity to live out our calling as Christians. Namely, to meet the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, etc. To love the least of these. The kicker of Jesus' illustration in Matthew 25 about the sheep and the goats is when He says, "For whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for me."

Jesus mystically incarnates himself in the least, and the helpless, and the weak so that in helping them, we are helping him.

Please pray as our teams travel and minister in Haiti over the next two weeks. Pray that they see Jesus in everyone they meet. Pray that they maximize their opportunities to further the missions where they work. Pray that they when judgment day comes, they will hear the master say, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest."