Anniversaries

Yesterday and today… Japan and Haiti… one month and a year and a quarter…two devastating earthquakes. For the people that hundreds of thousands they have impacted in each country, they are still very real. How about for us…how good is our memory? Do we recall the images of 50ft walls of water, or a million people living under tarps?

In Japan, the news was of officials declaring the nuclear disaster is now at a “7”, yesterday it was still a “5”. “7” is the worst rating of a nuclear disaster. New data has shown things to be much

worse, resulting in many more people being forced to leave their homes, not knowing when, if, they might ever return. Pray for the long road ahead for the Japanese people.

I was in Haiti today, and was struck with reality of so many families still living in some sort of make shift shelter. I seemed to notice more of them in places I had not focused on before. They look more faded and tattered. As I drove through the Champs de Mars, the former park now shanty town of 10,000 in front of the Presidential Palace, there are more signs of permanency; more sheet metal; more furniture; and with the slow pace of the recovery, more of the same for a long time. There is very little new concrete/block construction except for a few church, clinic or school buildings being funded with outside resources.

The striking difference of pre- and post-quake was so starkly seen in my visit yesterday with a pastor near Gressier. He had a relatively nice block home with several bedrooms for he and his extended family of 14. When the quake struck, he and his 2 young boys were in the house. The pastor was stuck in the head with a block, and concrete crashed down on his shoulders. He was dropped to the ground, but providentially was spared from being crushed as he fell aside some furniture in his house that resulted in a void space. As he dug himself out, he told me his thought was only of his boys. He was sure they were dead, then he heard a moan, and began digging, and the Lord spared them all.

Now today, he has been able to build small 2 wooden buildings for the family to cook and eat in, but the slab of the former house is covered with 5 tents, where the family still sleeps each evening. Please don’t forget Haiti. Keep praying. Keep giving. Keep coming to serve.