Category: Articles

Keturah was just about 5 or 6 years old.  Quite naturally, her understanding of the microbe world had not matured.

The septic tank needed to be drained just behind our house at Tenwek and as my friend Hal Burchel who was also our neighbor at the time, relates the story, Keturah was rather dangerously close to the open manhole cover.

“Be careful that you don’t drop in Keturah!”  That was the advice Hal gave.

Keturah looked up at uncle Hal and exclaimed: “It’s okay uncle Hal, I can swim!”

So it is with my own naïve nature about life.  I can be in the midst of some very dangerous situations, and rather than cry out for help, I pretend that the water is fine.  “Jump on in and grab one of these life preservers!”

I have been told that the best way to get out of a hole is to first stop digging and then climb out.

My pride will most often prevent me from stop digging.  “This is no hole, I exclaim, only a small pit within which I will find the true treasures I am seeking.”  Then I will insist that it is not that deep and those floating things are actually life preservers.

We must all recognize our desire to save face at all cost and how that negatively impacts the logical, lifesaving choices we should take.

Swimming in stool eventually gets rather disgusting, so I must eventually climb out, clean up and admit that the choice to look into the manhole cover was not very bright at all.

Keturah recognized it even at her young age.  I must remember it even now.

Psalm 40:2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings.

A desperate African man walks into a room of very content and smiling missionaries.  He is desperate because he is trying to find a source for food for 300 school children whom he feeds and educates by donor support.  They are content and smiling as each of them has just started in on their second slice of a variety of pizzas and the grease and cheese illuminates their smiles.

It sounds like a joke.  It is not.  It actually happened.  The only person who did not have a pizza grin on their face was my wife.  She ordered chicken.  This aberrant behavior delayed the delivery of our pizza, but that is a story for another day.  Suffice it to say, we were very hungry, or ready to eat at least and we did not openly display our dismay to the delivery man and certainly not to my wife.

As I went on to explain to the man that we were very short of support because of the economic meltdown, I was at least courteous enough to offer him a slice of pizza.  He was deferential enough to decline.

I wiped the grease from my face, took a swig of cold Coca Cola and escorted him to the back door, continuing to advise him of the dilemma faced by Americans as they are forced to make decisions about downsizing their cars, cable television and even their favorite vacation spots.  I assured him that we would take his request under advisement and find a way to help feed the children.  He explained to me that the price of food had doubled over the last year, where it now cost about $50 to feed 300 children for a week, as opposed to $25 one year ago.  I had to use my napkin to wipe.  Not the tear from my eye, but the tomato paste from my mouth.  Bad form to say no with lipstick.

One of the men in our group was much wiser than I. He promptly reached into his pocket and gave a crisp $100 bill to the man.  He then went on to say that he would make sure we took this under immediate, not careful, later consideration.  This, he assured our visitor, would make sure that the children ate the next day.

I gulped.  It was actually a burp.  Cold soda can do that when mixed with the thin crust pizza.  I should have ordered chicken.

James 2:15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,

James 2:16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

James 2:17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

She had the nerve to get pregnant before we had sexual intercourse!  Now she expects me to marry her.  I have my reputation to uphold.  My family will not hear of it.  How do I know if she will stop these sexual exploits after we are married?

I would guess those are some of the thoughts that went through Joseph’s mind those 2,000 plus years ago.  If Joseph would have asked me, I would have advised him to leave that harlot, slut, hussy of a woman.  I would tell him to leave her to her own devices.  However, Joseph saw himself as a protector.  He would refuse to show up on T.V. asking for a paternity test.

Most families lack a protector.  Many families, in fact, are headed by predators.  The difficult thing about a protector is anticipation and vigilance.  It is not good enough to meet the enemy once it is in the door.  It is best to keep the enemy from even gaining access to the threshold.  It is not good enough to just let those in their care ‘get what they deserve’.  A protector always protects, even when they are rebuked by those in their care and rejected by those watching from outside.

Protectors, who do their jobs well, anticipate.  They see dangers where those of the household see only friends and comfort.  Protectors, who do their jobs well, are vigilant.  They awaken early, and sleep late.  That is not the literal sense of what I mean, it is the spiritual sense.  They spend time with the Father asking for strength, guidance, and protection so they themselves will be able to provide the same for those in their charge.

It is not easy being protector.  That is why so few men do it well, or at all.  Many more men are predators than protectors.  They pillage the family for its resources.  They take and never give.  They allow any enemy to invade, and often invite the enemy in to the lives of those whom they are called to protect.

Pray for your protectors.  Pray that God will infuse them with the wisdom, stamina, diligence and commitment to do their jobs as it pleases Him.  If your protector pleases God, rest assured, you are protected.  Joseph was such a man.  He pleased God, and God brought protection to Mary and the baby Jesus.

It is the protector who anticipates things going bump in the night of your lives, and then goes to see what it was.  Joseph spent time with God.  God would awaken Joseph in the night and advise him where to go and when.  We need men, husbands and fathers like Joseph.

Matt 1:20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

Matt 2:12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

I give you a disturbing peace.  The peace that won’t let you eat too much while you know others have too little.  You will recognize that as you loosen your belt, others are tightening theirs.

I give you a peace that interrupts your quiet time, with the sights and sounds of wars and rumors of wars.  You will become an advocate for reconciliation.

I give you a peace that won’t let you buy your children the latest fashion while you know other children have not clothing at all.  You will take on the challenge of orphans.

I give you a peace that disturbs you.  This peace won’t let you watch pornography as you recognize this industry exploits women and young children for the sake of pleasure.  You will pursue holiness in your own entertainment and a strong influence for those around you.

I give you a peace that won’t let you sit still as you know others are running for their lives from mercenaries, militias and mad men.  You will no longer shy away from bad news.

I give you a peace that convicts you as you put on each diamond and piece of gold, knowing that men and women are being slaughtered to keep the trade in precious minerals alive.

I give you a peace that makes you consider that the very drop of gasoline you buy is produced by nations that exploit its own, especially the women and the poor.  You will conserve.

My peace will convict you of your own sin…, and help you show others how to keep from sin.

I give you peace that disturbs you until you pursue the peace that comforts others.

Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.

Mt 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

I scraped my plate.  I should have eaten just desert, but I needed a balanced meal.  So, I scraped my plate and stacked it on the other half empty one.  I was not full.  I was not even satisfied.  I just wanted to eat another variety of Buffalo wings, some ribs and top it off with some more sushi before eating something sweet. 

This joy of eating was interrupted by pictures on the overhanging television.  Something about some disaster in some god-forsaken place with some god-forsaken pagan people who deserve the wrath of god because of the evil in their lives.  They deserve what they get!  Their just deserts!  Speaking of desert, the variety was mind boggling.

Fruit salad, ice cream, donuts, bread pudding, brownies and that very essential cherry pie with whipped cream on top were just the beginning.  I left my plate on the table this time.  This is a buffet and they hire people to pick up and clean up after me.  Ain’t God good!

Proverbs 30:8 Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:

Proverbs 30:9 Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.

Now the real dying starts.  From the red cage we sit in, the ten of us can see there will be some real dying soon.  Americans are not used to riding in the back of a caged truck.  It is not safe.  None of the benches on which we sit have seat belts and the luggage and supplies between our legs are not secured.  One sudden stop, or, tilting the wrong way to avoid an earthquake crater and we could find ourselves in a tangled pile of bottled water and battered bodies.

On the positive side, the cage serves some good purposes.  One is to keep us from falling out and another to keep people from reaching in and getting our goodies (clean water and snack food).  On the downside, it interferes with getting good pictures of these same desperate people and it fails to keep out the dust.  Welcome to Haiti.  Take good pictures.

To define a good picture is easy.  Good pictures will relate how heavy the death toll will be after the 230,000 dead have already been delivered by trucks and then buried by bulldozers in mass graves.  That was the estimated death toll as of my arrival to Haiti in late January.  I happened to be diverted by this disaster as I went home for a few speaking engagements.  Kay strongly advised me that since I was going to cross the Atlantic, it made sense to be diverted from my previous itinerary and see this unfolding disaster.  World Gospel Mission was in agreement with this diversion and encouraged me and Dr. Daniel Tolan to make a survey of possible interventions we could make.  That is why I found myself caged in the back of this truck trying to take good pictures.

World Health Organization expects that once the rains start, the clean water runs out, the septic systems overflow and the tents, sheets and blankets that serve as housing fall down into the mud, the real dying will start. With people living under these conditions, the death toll will indeed rise so, take good pictures.  Some of these people won’t be here.  Malaria, meningitis, malnutrition are the order of the day when things are good.  Keep your camera handy.

Who will die?  The good pictures tell the story.  Take a good shot of that line of people over there.  Many of them will be those we see in that ‘one item only’ line.  You know the kind of line we complain about when someone has the audacity to get in the express line with five items.  Unfortunately, everyone is in the one item only line as it is the only kind of line in town.

This line wraps around the corners of the communities we pass.  Only women and young children are in line.  The men have been kept away by the soldiers.  That is because many of the men will fight for the food and then sell it instead of feeding their families.  One item only is what the women carry away.  They will carry on their heads, a 40 pound bag of meal, or rice, or maybe beans.  It is rationed out by uniformed troops, men and women from many nations and various complexions.

One item only is all they expect.  They are not paying so there is no hurry to get to the cash register.   There is a hurry to get into the next line of one item only.  That one will have water.  Let’s push on.  We have enough pictures.

We arrived at our clinic site just about 3 hours after our departure from Port Au Prince.  The crowds had gathered long before and the doctors and nurses who were just completing their 5 day stay were glad to see us arrive.  They were exhausted, emotionally and physically.  We gave them relief.

They were exhausted.  Imagine how hard it is to talk to anyone about the pain in their chest from the piece of cement that hit them and acknowledge the pain in their heart from knowing their daughters were killed by those same slabs of cement.  An average day was two hundred patients.  A heavy day could be as many as 600.  Many of them were very ill.  Diarrhea, heat stroke, pneumonia and uncontrolled diabetes were the order of the day as the nearest hospital was nearly completely destroyed.  All of them were affected physically or afflicted emotionally and spiritually.

Volunteers from a variety of disciplines in medicine, firefighters and first responders, from all around the globe provided services in tents, under trees, and tarpaulins.  At night these volunteers slept in tents, under mosquito nets, hoping the dogs would scare the rats and the rats would scare the tarantulas.  They shared toilets, took 3 minute cold water showers, and ate unfamiliar foods at inconvenient times, hoping that the next day the crowds would be thinner and with fewer sick people.

Even the Haitians volunteered support by nursing, translating, cooking, and cleaning.  They showed evidence of the emotional strain of a seemingly endless march of people.  To them, it was their own people.  To us as visitors, it was a mass of strangers in need.  Many just wanted to know what to do when the next aftershocks hit.  They awakened many of us at night.  We had the luxury of sleeping in tents.  They slept outside to avoid another slab of concrete.

They asked questions.  What do we do when the rains come, the water runs out, or even more importantly, when the one item lines disappear and the world turns their heads to the next disaster? 

WGM wants to be there to help provide answers for people when the real dying starts.  Will you go there with us?

Call me stupid but, I must have enough to live on.

The phrase ‘to live on’ has taken on a different meaning as my days in Haiti come to a close.  I have watched women drenched in sweat, stand for hours in the hot sun in the ‘one item or less’ line.  Don’t you hate those lines?  They never move fast enough. Neither do these lines.  Thousands of women arrive as early as 6 a.m. and wait for hours for something to take home to feed their families.  They are waiting for their one item of, a bag of rice or beans.  They get water in buckets from another line and carry that home later.  As I recall this scene I step away from my kitchen faucet.  I let the water run so it is cold enough not to need ice cubes that I don’t add ice cubes.  I use that time to choose my favorite glass.

I took care of some of these women as they arrived in the clinic.  They had carried 40 pound bag of food, five to ten gallons of water, on their heads, along crowded uneven and dusty roads.  It may take or seem to take an hour to get back to their homes.  It is not a house.  It is home.  It is made of sheets, blankets, tents and cardboard, and if very fortunate, some donated tarpaulins.  They came to clinic, or were brought there, confused, lethargic, sweating and near death from dehydration and sun stroke.  As I interview them through an interpreter, I ask myself; ‘What do I need to live on?’  I need to narrow that list.  I think the water is cold enough to fill my glass now.

Call me insensitive, but a refrigerator that keeps food just long enough for me to dump in the garbage or feed my dogs is not essential to life. I confess.  If I can recognize the color as original, I will eat it.  Let me narrow my list.  It no longer includes bottled water or that green stuff I just threw out.  The dog would not touch it.

Call me out of touch, but spending for reality T.V. is off of my list of essentials after seeing the reality of people searching the garbage for food hoping to find enough to eat before the dogs, or neighbors get it or before nightfall comes. It is hard to find good garbage to eat in the dark and avoid the rats.

Call me out of step, but it seems that the $17 I recently spent on popcorn, soda and a movie may have been a bit extravagant on my part. How far does 17$ go in Haiti, street sweepers make 4 dollars a day Of course I work hard and I deserve to be entertained and amused.  But a movie about rescuing people who are being devastated by an alien force pales in comparison to helping people who are being decimated by a natural disaster.  I could have actually spent a bit more here helping them, micro-waved a bag, had some Kool-Aid and read a good book.

Call me ridiculous, but now I realize that telling people I have been called to serve about my fears and frustrations does not make sense to them.  They don’t really care to know about the problems I will face retiring because I did not put enough aside for my later years.  They just want to make it through the day.  They have seen too much death, even this week.

Call me stupid but if I can’t go a week or a month to help people, should I be willing to spend a week salary, or even a month’s salary to help someone do it in my stead?

Now you can really call me stupid, insensitive, out of touch, out of step, and ridiculous.  Give a whole week’s or month’s salary to help?  Let me see how bad it really is.  Turn on CNN and get the real story.   Don’t be stupid. After all, you must have enough to live on.

Haiti needs help.  Go, give or send.  That is smart.  That pleases God.

Just 24 hours ago, I was feeling very sorry for myself.  Now, I wish this bus window was not so scarred so that I could get some good pictures to take home.  Of course opening the window would allow dust in the bus and let the cold air conditioned air out, or is it warm air in?  I can’t remember.  Anyway, there are a lot of desperate people, dilapidated buildings and other good things which I will only be able to talk about, all because I can’t roll down the window.

Such are the challenges of my desperate departure.  As I said, just 24 hours ago, I was feeling very sorry for myself because my flight out was overbooked.  It seemed I would have to spend an extra day or two in Haiti.  I was tired of seeing dirt, feeling the dust and thinking about disease.  I was desperate to depart.  I tried going to the airport at least twice, sourcing other means of transport from UN or mission agencies and even American armed forces.  Nothing came of these forays.  I sat on a rock outside of the airport thinking of just how I could get out.

Our hosts picked me up and took me back to the guest house.  We ate lunch, talked, laughed and planned strategies.  I used their computers went online and looked for cheap tickets and ready transport to go to neighboring Dominican Republic so I could fly to the US and on to Kenya.  I found it!  The next morning I am aboard a bus for $40 plus $30 for…?   I don’t know what the other $30 was for.  I am just glad to be on the bus.  I was desperate to depart to see my family and most importantly my wife whom I have left in Kenya.

As I peered through the filmy window pane, sipping on my cold, clear, bottled water, it occurred to me just how self absorbed I really am.  Most everyone outside of this bus is desperate to depart.  They have neither the cash, credit, connections nor contacts to depart.  They will live in this state of perfect poverty.  Perfect poverty is poverty without options.  It is depicted by living in a cardboard house that wilts when it rains because you don’t have plastic sheets nor clothes pins to it to make it ‘waterproof’.  Perfect poverty is not being able to boil the food you were given because you can’t afford the charcoal, or it is still wet from the rain (if we only had waterproofed the cardboard).  Perfect poverty is when you give up looking and mourning for 3 of your 4 children who were in that pile of rubble because you could not house, feed or clothe them anyway without their mother who died from her injuries.  Given your present circumstances they are better off dead.  You keep on with life even though a view from my seat on the bus says you should give up.  You have perfected poverty.

My desperate departure is about me and my inability to consider any more sights of people who have no options.  I pulled the curtain on the window.  The air conditioning feels good.  It is now I should feel sorry for myself.

I called him Pasaka.  Easter sounded like a girl’s name.  Pasaka, the Swahili equivalent sounds much more masculine.  As a matter of fact, it did not really what I named him.  He was a nameless piece of trash, discovered by someone and dropped at one of the orphanages we support.  We estimated his age to be about 3 months and his weight to be less than 2 pounds.  Pasaka, looked more like a large starving dirty rabbit than a human child.  He was dehydrated and malnourished, with each of his cheek bones protruding and his eyes receding into his small face.  He responded to pain by withdrawing his limbs, as we searched in vain to find a place to put a needle for rehydrating fluids.  I took the alternative route of directly sticking a needle into his foreleg, just below the knee, deep into the marrow.   It is a common route for extreme cases of dehydration in infants and worked this time.  We estimated Pasaka’s weight and began rapid infusion of balanced salt solutions with boluses of glucose to give energy to his obviously starving frame.

Pasaka was one of five children I admitted this Easter week.  Three of them severely sick enough to die, and one severe enough that he did die.  Pasaka seemed as though he would live.  I was too tired and too busy to check on him a fifth time as the child which followed him came in between three c’sections and I only heard about this fifth child’s death on arrival.  He supposedly had pneumonia.  It is hard to tell much about a child whom you find in a garbage dump.

This Easter has been memorable for these several admissions for nameless children clinging to life in a world and on a day when all we think about is Easter eggs and bunny rabbits with jelly beans and chocolates.

Pasaka, should he survive, will know different.  If he lives, it is because Christ lives, and has inspired people like you, to send people like me to stick needles in his bones, as Christ had nails pierce His hands.

Spit and polish!  I sat very comfortably over Him as He bent over, brushing each of my shoes hard enough that they reflected a dull image of his face.  He never looked up.  I was impressed with his humility.  It was clear that this man knew how to spit.  Once he was finished, he stepped back and I stood up and flipped him a coin.

Jesus could have easily shined shoes because after all he did wash feet.

Imagine the Savior of the world, God Himself incarnate, bending as low as to shine my shoes.  How do I repay Him?  I flip him a coin.  He tells me it is not enough.

I toss my loose change in the offering basket on Sunday morning.  I take an occasional read of His word, and I spew out a few trite words over my meals.  I am nice to strangers (most times) and I give to charities that show pictures of dirty, hungry, and desperate children.

In reality, God does not need my money.  God does not even need me to go to outer-Mongolia, Timbuktu and he is certainly not impressed with my righteous posture of sitting over his bent form shining my shoes.

I need to look up at Christ and see the true image of His face, not the dull image reflected on my shoes.   I need to repent of my arrogant posture of thinking I have done enough, given enough and even prayed enough.  What is the true measure of enough?  It is not how much I give of what I have acquired.  He does not want all that I have.  He wants all that I am.

After all God has done for you, and still does, don’t you dare flip Christ a coin.  He wants all of you.  Spit and polish!

Mark 10:21Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

Mark 10:22And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.