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Haiti Benefit Concert

I'm going to Haiti again this year, so I shared this tonight at a benefit concert for our Haiti team.

I’ve had the privilege of going to Haiti twice now, and I can say that each trip was very different. On our first trip, I remember thinking that the orphanage was so clean and safe compared to what we had seen in Port-au-Prince; and I left thinking that these children were in such a good place. I came to the second trip with the same understanding, but I left that week with a different mindset. We began to understand from that trip that for all the wonderful things the missionaries had given to these children, they could not always give back to them their parents. These children were still orphans, and for that reason, we saw some of the pain they felt. The directors told us about one boy, in particular, who was very defensive, and learned that his feelings of abandonment came from parents who were still alive and had given him up willingly.

I think some of us learned from that second trip why God names orphans specifically as those for whom the church should care.  Many orphans carry a special burden that we don’t often understand, an abandonment that prevents them from trusting others easily. This means that anyone who commits to loving an orphan must understand the challenge they face, that it is difficult to love those who don’t easily love you in return. As we enter this third trip to the orphanage, then, I think some of us will go with a clearer picture of the responsibility that the missionaries there have, and a clearer sense of the difference we make by supporting them. We hope that we can support the missionaries and children with both our physical and emotional energy. The missionaries can’t give back these children’s parents, but they can commit to the children the love that they have experienced as a result of their own faith in Jesus.

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