Mission: Haiti

I am fairly certain that almost everyone reading this knows about the devastation that took place in Haiti a few years ago due to an earthquake.  Well, life is still pretty much in shambles down there with no real economy, rebuilding occurring at a slow pace, and people merely scraping by.  A gentleman who used to attend our Church is seeking to make a difference however.   This man, Sean Forrest, has always been involved with the youth, organizing retreats across the country, headlining a Christian band, and seeking to help out anyone he can.  Over the past year he traveled to Haiti, saw the devastation, and was moved to start a monumental project of building a school amongst other things to help out a small local community down there.  Well, our Church has jumped into this project head first and is seeking to help out in any way possible from donations to actual trips to help in the building process.  The first such trip to help in the building process will be happening in June.  When I saw this, I thought this would be a great opportunity to put my skills to work.  So now I need to figure out how to get there.  I am sure it will all fall into place, but its not going to be the easiest thing to do.  I have a wife and son to help support and take care of and as we all know, money is tight right now.  How am I going to do this?  I don't know yet.

So why would I want to go down to Haiti to help build stuff.  Simply put, as bad as some of us might have it here in the United States, nothing compares to how bad they have it down there right now.  Anything that I can do to help will hopefully make a difference.  We don't have the extra money to make a donation to help with much and I feel my skills at working with my hands, building things, would be much more valuable put to use down there than any amount of money I can donate.   The good thing is that I am getting busier with work which means that I should be bringing in a little more money.   Obviously none of that means I will be able to make it down there.  Despite the cost of the plane ticket, I still need to factor in the amount of money that will need to be saved up in order to make sure bills are paid at home while I am down there helping build.   I hope this whole trip does work out and I am able to make it down there, it just might take a little bit of creativity to make it work.  The other downside of this trip is that it occurs during my busy season of work, where my customers are clamoring to get their work done.   I have a feeling however, that most of them would support the fact that I would be gone for a week or two to donate my services to people in need.  Even if they aren't, it really isn't their choice and as long as I explain to them early enough that I will be gone for a certain period of time, everything should work out.

In any case, we are still a few months away from the trip which leaves plenty of time to figure things out and hopefully make it work financially.  As I write this, I do find it a little ironic how I am talking about making sure we have enough money to sustain us while I am gone yet the people I would be going to help have practically nothing.  But such is the crazy lives we live.  Damn money.   Sometimes I wish we didn't need money to survive, to pay stupid bills and buy food and what not.  There is no getting rid of it however.  You can be sure that as long as we live in the United States, there will always be some company or some government agency seeking to thrust their hand deeper into your pocket to take as much money from you as possible.  The simple life is gone.  Now in order to go help others, we need to save up money just to do that.  But enough, I just need to keep my sights focused on getting to Haiti to help them out and hopefully everything will work out.  Maybe I should just start an online campaign to raise money to get me down there and help support my family while I am gone.  I don't know how I would feel about that though.  Raising money to help me while I go help others in more dire need.  Hmmm.  What to do?  I guess my first objective is to figure out how much all of this will cost and go from there.  In any case, that's my current mission outside of being a husband, father, and half of the support of our family.  Crazy, crazy, crazy, but that's my life and I love it!