Dear Prayer Partners and Friends,

As I’m sure you have all seen on the news, there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti.  I will be going with my son Brian to assess what we can do and set up a base camp.  We will be organizing for many teams to come.  The response so far has been overwhelming.  Of all the disasters I’ve been to, I am confident that this will be the worst.  Haiti is already one of the poorest nations in the world with little or no resources.  Please pray that God would give us strength, our hearts are already heavy.  We can’t meet all the needs, there are so many.  But our God can.  Here are some words from my morning devotions.  Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.  O Lord you preserve both man and beast.  How priceless is your unfailing love!  Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings.  I’ve been writing over the last couple of days, and you may have seen this letter already.  But if you haven’t, please read this slowly and give it time to sink in.  Jonie titled this for me and called it

SUFFERING

I want to dispel some of the misconceptions about relief work in the midst of a disaster.  Others are probably more experienced than me, and they have degrees in relief work.  I can only speak from my experience and how I’m feeling at this time.

We in America are only a phone call away from medical help and police protection.  If our furnace doesn’t work, we call a repairman and he is here within an hour.  Our homes are always warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  If we are sick, the doctor is only a phone call and a short drive away.  Most hospitals are within five minutes of our house.  If we have a toothache, within an hour it’s taken care of.  “Are you hungry?”  There are many restaurants and fast food places close.  Even if we didn’t have a car, we could walk there, but most of us get in our car and drive.

This is never the case in the Third World.  There is no 911.  Police are generally the enemy.  If you call them, they demand something from you.   Sometimes they’re your abuser.  Your home is only warm if you gathered lots of wood in the summer.  Cool is only on cool days.  The electricity is only good occasionally.  Most of the time you’re in the dark, and if you can afford electrical appliances, they only work when the electricity is on.  If you have a headache, it will go away eventually, or it will be something serious and you will die from it.  If you have money to go to the doctor (and most don’t), you generally get a bad diagnosis.  So your medical problem persists.  In the midst of disasters, these nations fall below Third World status.  No one comes when they call.  And the call is how loud you can yell.  The weaker you become, the less your voice can be heard.  And when many are yelling, no one hears your voice.  And those that try to help have no means to help their friends and family.  They are also very afraid because all the crying they hear only scares them more.  And they are gripped with fear.  Just a few minutes before, their world was miserable.  Now it’s become unbearable.  Complete hopelessness begins to settle in.

It takes months and sometimes years for people to get any help.  I know this because I experienced it in Pakistan in a remote village, four years after the disaster; we were the first to help.

For most of us in America, the disaster in Haiti will be over in about one week because we won’t see it anymore on the news.  For us, life returns to normal.  American Idol will have our full attention.  Haiti will not be in our world anymore.  God is only looking at us, so he’s not seeing the Haitian people.  So we can forget about them.  We are America, and we are a nation that’s close to God.  God loves our nation.  Anyway that nation Haiti is only getting what it deserves, because it gave itself over to voodoo.

Or maybe God really cares about Haiti, and he’s seeing the suffering and cries over the people as he cried over Jerusalem.  Jesus wants to respond, but he’s given the job to us.  He keeps asking us to love the world with his love.  He wants the world to know him and love him.  But when given the opportunity we seem to always have a reason not to respond.  When did we see you hungry Lord, and when did we see you thirsty?”

We are faced with a new opportunity.  All the angels of heaven are watching.  What will we do?

Ken Smith

We plan on being there as long as there is need and God gives us provision.  For updates, visit our website www.omaharapidresponse.org.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 5:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.