Haitians love acronyms. Nearly every ministry we work with is referred to by its acronym. My first few weeks here I was learning all sorts of acronyms: ECRH, STRH, ITRH, CRECH, MDK, SKDE, PWOFOD, UEBH, and PRIHA. Each of those nine acronyms is connected with a series of people, ministries, and incredible stories of what God is doing.
One ministry - MDK - is of particular interest to me as they focus on leadership development which is the subject of the Doctorate of Ministry Degree I have been pursuing at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto for the last few years. Our role here in Haiti with MDK is to encourage, evaluate and otherwise support them as they do their work. MDK stands for Ministry Devlopment Kretienne and it is run by an incredible team of hardworking people led by their Executive Director, Lemet Zafir.
Lemet reminds me of my friend Andrew Beunk, pastor at New Westminster Church in British Columbia. Patient, wise, hard-working, and a team leader, Lemet is also a man of prayer who expects the Spirit to be at work and expects results from ministry. These qualities of Lemet and of the whole team he leads have shaped MDK to be a ministry that is having tangible effects in many places.
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti, toppling 100's of 1000's of buildings and taking at least as many lives, people being crushed beneath the weight of poorly constructed walls, roofs, and upper floors. Those who did not die were left traumatized, many because they had been partially crushed. As aid workers and doctors rushed to the scenes, some 4000 lives were spared by emergency amputation surgeries. It is incredible to even begin to think about what those early days after the earthquake must have been like. Carol's cousin's husband, Dr. Rob Yelle, was on the scene within days and has shared stories about the work that he and many other foreign medical staff did.
In the wake of all of these amputations, leaders trained by MDK saw a need: prosthetics, crutches, canes, wheelchairs, and financial support for education for children of amputees. Nearly right after the earthquake, they began a ministry called "Give Me a Foot" abandoning the acronyms and getting right down to business. Within days, they were gathering supplies which were overwhelming the country as eager donors from around the globe acted out their desires to "do something" by having church drives and sending crutches to Haiti. Our own congregation in Cambridge did such a thing and the crutches in our basement were all sent.
Bringing the supplies is one thing. Building and supporting particular people is another. For the past 4-1/2 years, "Give Me a Foot" has supported countless people, hand in hand with sharing the words of the Gospel, they were acting out the Gospel as leaders should, doing whatever they did for one of the least of these for Jesus himself.
Last Friday, I had the privilege of meeting five beneficiaries of the program. For the sake of their dignity and privacy, I am not including pictures and names, but I can share some things generally. The five of them came into our meeting room and sat down. There were three women, a boy, and a man. The man had a cane; the boy seemed to have nothing wrong as did two of the women. The last woman had one arm missing at the elbow, the other at the wrist.
These five had two things in common: First, they were beneficiaries of the "Give Me a Foot" program; and Second, amazingly, these five had a facial countenance I can only describe as 'hope-filled.' While many residents of Haiti, due to generations of struggle and too much loss, have a blank look on their faces, these five had deep and joyful eyes. Though I noticed the man's cane and the one woman's amputated arms, I struggled to understand why the others were beneficiaries.
The boy, I soon learned, was the son of the woman without hands. "Give Me a Foot" was helping them as a family afford to send him to school. As I watched him feed his mother her lunch, a sandwich, I wondered about all the things his young mind had learned in the past five years and what other tasks had become his. The man with the crutch revealed a prosthetic leg after some discussion, with a joyful twinkle in his seasoned eyes while he talked about the way that "Give Me a Foot" had blessed him.
This left the other two ladies. One began to inch her long skirt a few inches above the floor, revealing at first a pair of matching shoes, and then, her left, a prosthetic leg that went all the way above the knee. She talked laughingly about the way "Give Me a Foot" had come alongside her, how she was now one of the leaders of the "Give Me a Foot" team, and how her life had been transformed. Finally, the last lady spoke, shyly revealing that she too had lost a hand, but eventually gesturing with it and her good hand about the work of this fine Christian leadership development ministry that had spawned "Give Me a Foot" when the need was there.
As I drove away from the meeting, I thought about my Doctoral Thesis I am thinking through for the writing that will resume when we return from Haiti. I thought about the quality of 'readiness' that MDK had bred into their leaders who were ready when the earthquake rocked their world to respond with action and faith rather than despair and fear. Going forward as God calls me to build other leaders, that quality will be one I will work for.
When the earthquake happened in 2010, a lot of people asked, "Where was God?" I don't have a neat and tidy answer to that question, in fact, I may just ask him one day how his love allowed him to restrain his power and not stop the quake altogether. But in the aftermath of the quake, thanks to my meeting with the "Give Me a Foot" folks, I do know one place God was. Ephesians 2:10 says "We are God's handiwork created, in Christ, to do good which God prepared in advance for us to do." Where was God during the earthquake? One place, in the people of MDK, getting people ready for a godly response to an ungodly horror.
One ministry - MDK - is of particular interest to me as they focus on leadership development which is the subject of the Doctorate of Ministry Degree I have been pursuing at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto for the last few years. Our role here in Haiti with MDK is to encourage, evaluate and otherwise support them as they do their work. MDK stands for Ministry Devlopment Kretienne and it is run by an incredible team of hardworking people led by their Executive Director, Lemet Zafir.
Lemet reminds me of my friend Andrew Beunk, pastor at New Westminster Church in British Columbia. Patient, wise, hard-working, and a team leader, Lemet is also a man of prayer who expects the Spirit to be at work and expects results from ministry. These qualities of Lemet and of the whole team he leads have shaped MDK to be a ministry that is having tangible effects in many places.
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti, toppling 100's of 1000's of buildings and taking at least as many lives, people being crushed beneath the weight of poorly constructed walls, roofs, and upper floors. Those who did not die were left traumatized, many because they had been partially crushed. As aid workers and doctors rushed to the scenes, some 4000 lives were spared by emergency amputation surgeries. It is incredible to even begin to think about what those early days after the earthquake must have been like. Carol's cousin's husband, Dr. Rob Yelle, was on the scene within days and has shared stories about the work that he and many other foreign medical staff did.
In the wake of all of these amputations, leaders trained by MDK saw a need: prosthetics, crutches, canes, wheelchairs, and financial support for education for children of amputees. Nearly right after the earthquake, they began a ministry called "Give Me a Foot" abandoning the acronyms and getting right down to business. Within days, they were gathering supplies which were overwhelming the country as eager donors from around the globe acted out their desires to "do something" by having church drives and sending crutches to Haiti. Our own congregation in Cambridge did such a thing and the crutches in our basement were all sent.
Bringing the supplies is one thing. Building and supporting particular people is another. For the past 4-1/2 years, "Give Me a Foot" has supported countless people, hand in hand with sharing the words of the Gospel, they were acting out the Gospel as leaders should, doing whatever they did for one of the least of these for Jesus himself.
Last Friday, I had the privilege of meeting five beneficiaries of the program. For the sake of their dignity and privacy, I am not including pictures and names, but I can share some things generally. The five of them came into our meeting room and sat down. There were three women, a boy, and a man. The man had a cane; the boy seemed to have nothing wrong as did two of the women. The last woman had one arm missing at the elbow, the other at the wrist.
These five had two things in common: First, they were beneficiaries of the "Give Me a Foot" program; and Second, amazingly, these five had a facial countenance I can only describe as 'hope-filled.' While many residents of Haiti, due to generations of struggle and too much loss, have a blank look on their faces, these five had deep and joyful eyes. Though I noticed the man's cane and the one woman's amputated arms, I struggled to understand why the others were beneficiaries.
The boy, I soon learned, was the son of the woman without hands. "Give Me a Foot" was helping them as a family afford to send him to school. As I watched him feed his mother her lunch, a sandwich, I wondered about all the things his young mind had learned in the past five years and what other tasks had become his. The man with the crutch revealed a prosthetic leg after some discussion, with a joyful twinkle in his seasoned eyes while he talked about the way that "Give Me a Foot" had blessed him.
This left the other two ladies. One began to inch her long skirt a few inches above the floor, revealing at first a pair of matching shoes, and then, her left, a prosthetic leg that went all the way above the knee. She talked laughingly about the way "Give Me a Foot" had come alongside her, how she was now one of the leaders of the "Give Me a Foot" team, and how her life had been transformed. Finally, the last lady spoke, shyly revealing that she too had lost a hand, but eventually gesturing with it and her good hand about the work of this fine Christian leadership development ministry that had spawned "Give Me a Foot" when the need was there.
As I drove away from the meeting, I thought about my Doctoral Thesis I am thinking through for the writing that will resume when we return from Haiti. I thought about the quality of 'readiness' that MDK had bred into their leaders who were ready when the earthquake rocked their world to respond with action and faith rather than despair and fear. Going forward as God calls me to build other leaders, that quality will be one I will work for.
When the earthquake happened in 2010, a lot of people asked, "Where was God?" I don't have a neat and tidy answer to that question, in fact, I may just ask him one day how his love allowed him to restrain his power and not stop the quake altogether. But in the aftermath of the quake, thanks to my meeting with the "Give Me a Foot" folks, I do know one place God was. Ephesians 2:10 says "We are God's handiwork created, in Christ, to do good which God prepared in advance for us to do." Where was God during the earthquake? One place, in the people of MDK, getting people ready for a godly response to an ungodly horror.
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