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Ecclesiastes says that a sad face is good for the heart.
My name is Mark Driscoll, I'm the preaching pastor
at Mars Hill Church in Seattle
and I have the very difficult task of sharing
with you some aspects of the devastation in Haiti
as it pertains to the Church.
I do so at the request of the elders.
We have suspended our normal sermon series of Luke
for 1 week and they have asked me to share with you what I witnessed
and how we, by God's grace, hope to serve
and help the Church in Haiti.
For the first time ever, as well,
we will be taking a special offering
and we encourage other churches to do likewise.
It has been an exhausting week.
I'll share it with you in detail.
But for many of us, the events that have transpired
in Haiti—from the first quake to the now perhaps 40 aftershocks.
Quakes of various magnitude and scope—have dominated the media.
It's all we've been seeing,
dominated conversations,
and for me...it's been incredibly emotionally exhausting.
Perhaps like you, I knew next to nothing
about this small nation of Haiti.
Perhaps nine million people as I've dug some of the history.
It's been shocking.
It was colonized by the French,
who absolutely destroyed the land.
It's an environmental catastrophe.
For free labor, they imported slaves from Africa
so that today much of Haiti's population is
in fact the descendents of slaves.
As the land was destroyed and people were enslaved,
taken from their homeland, it became one of the richest colonies.
Eventually, however, those who were not able to endure
the malaria and sickness started to die off.
There was a slave revolt and freedom was gained,
at least in theory.
But with a people group who had no education, no training,
no means, and a devastated environmental condition.
And I say that having been there recently.
Even going over the border into another country,
you can see an antithetical difference in the environment.
What you're looking at today in Haiti are
the sons and daughters of slaves.
Their languages include French, English and Creole.
Most speak Creole.
It's not a language that is used for education so if you speak Creole,
you are essentially not able to be educated.
Books are not in that language.
Training and education is not in that language.
Half of the nation is illiterate.
Out of the nine million, today roughly two million people
in this nation, many centered around the capital city
of Port-au-Prince, are homeless.
Ten percent of all the children there are slaves.
That's some 300,000 children in slavery,
many of them in *** slavery.
It is a center for drug trafficking
and human trafficking.
Many of these children are repeatedly sexually abused
as slaves, sold, taken to other nations to be abused some more.
In light of the quake, many parents are dead.
Children are literally just wandering the streets,
some of them naked, not even clothed.
The worst kinds of people are coming in to take
these children, to abuse them, to enslave them, to smuggle them
out of the country to do horrendous things to them.
When we were there, we actually
had people offering us teenagers, girls for sale.
Before the quake it was the poorest nation
in the Western Hemisphere.
Eighty percent of the people living below the poverty level,
which is about $100 a month.
Two-thirds of the people do not have an actual job.
There was no military of any sort or kind.
And once the capital collapsed and the government
essentially ceased to operate,
it's unbelievable how slow things are moving,
how little infrastructure there is.
Even things like roads don't exist.
Only a quarter of the roads in the nation are even paved.
There are no street signs.
There are no street lights.
The businesses and homes don't even have addresses.
People would find things by using markers and now,
with the devastation and roughly half of the buildings
in Port-au-Prince collapsed,
you can't even find anyone or anything.
The population is roughly 80% Catholic, 16% Protestant,
and some would say 100% voodoo.
Demonism runs real deep there.
One of our guides, a seminary professor who's a very godly man
and a pastor, said that the witch doctors really are some
of the most powerful people in the cities
and villages and surrounding towns.
There are actually reports that through their participation
with demons, that demonic spirits will inhabit the bodies
of dead people so that the witch doctors
will bring them back to life, essentially in appearance.
That kind of strong demonic influence.
That even in hearing that some of you will immediately
become skeptical and suspicious,
which is exactly what the demons would want you to do.
And so, I wanted to share one scripture and then tell you
a lot of stories, because I do believe
that a sad face is good for the heart.
We read this in Acts 1:8, some of the final words
of the Lord Jesus Christ before he returned to Heaven
after his rescue mission of salvation
through his death, burial, and resurrection.
He says, "But you will receive power," speaking to the Church,
"when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be
My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the end of the Earth."
Jesus' final words to us were that we are to be witnesses.
This is someone who sees, speaks, and serves.
Who sees the goodness of God and the needs of the world;
speaks of the goodness of God and the needs of the world;
serves the goodness of God and the needs of the world.
And Jesus says that our witness is supposed to start at home.
He was in Jerusalem and Judea and then Samaria—
which were in fact their enemies—
and then the ends of the Earth.
Places like the United States of America and Haiti.
And the Church's mission is to be faithful in its city
and state and nation and world.
And some churches are very good locally
and they're very weak globally.
Others are very excited globally and very weak locally,
and Jesus says that we need to start at home being good witnesses
and that we need to share the Good News of Jesus
in word and deed with the nations of the Earth,
that it should ring out from the local churches.
And my heart is for the local church.
I love pastoring a church and my heart breaks
for the Church in Haiti,
and for me, my minimal involvement began
on Thursday, January 14th.
Pastor James MacDonald pastors Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago.
They have a number of churches that they've planted.
They're also a multi-site church.
He has a national radio ministry.
He publishes a lot of books.
He's a very good and godly man.
We actually met through the Gospel Coalition,
an organization we both participate in.
And he called me on Thursday morning, woke me up and said
that he'd been talking to some pastors of very large churches
and they were contemplating how they might serve the church
in Haiti and mobilize.
This is just a few days after the quake hit.
So as we talked throughout the course of the day,
texting, emailing, we came up
with the idea of actually taking a trip to Haiti,
as crazy as it sounds.
By the end of that day, he had secured transportation
through an organization called International Aid.
We were scheduled to enjoy a trip into the country
with 1,000 pounds of medical supplies—
a few hundred thousand dollars of medical supplies,
some surgeons and doctors who love Jesus,
and we were given permission to have access to the country,
which was in and of itself unbelievable because so few people
have been able to have access.
That night I prayed with my wife Grace to search our hearts.
From the call in the morning to the plan in the evening,
everything had moved so fast I didn't know
if I was making the right decision.
My wife asked me— and I love her,
she's a woman filled with the Holy Spirit.
She said, "Do you want to go?" I said, "No."
I said, "Do you want me to go?" She said, "No."
I said, "But I feel like I'm supposed to go."
And she said, "That's how I feel, too."
So we prayed as a family that the Holy Spirit
would convict both Grace and I of whether or not I was to go.
Obviously if I die I leave a widow and five children
and a church that I love and a lot of work that remains to be done.
And we agreed as a family that we all felt that the Holy Spirit
was calling me to go.
And to be honest with you, I didn't know exactly why.
And we prayed that if God wanted me to go that the Holy Spirit
would make it happen because it was completely beyond
our ability to make this happen.
By the next day, Pastor MacDonald and I were chatting
and we came up with the idea of Churches Helping Churches,
an organization to raise money from churches and Christians,
particularly through special offerings on Sundays,
to take that money and to mobilize it to support the Church in Haiti.
We don't want to in any way compete
with relief organizations.
People need food and water and shelter and medical attention
and we want to be able to allocate some resources to help
those organizations that are doing it well, particularly
those that are doing it well in the name of Jesus,
but we also wanted to go to Haiti to meet the Christians,
to see the churches, to get the stories,
and to figure out how we might be able to,
in some small way, contribute as
much as we can to help churches that are devastated.
Because people also need Jesus and they need Jesus' people,
particularly in times of tragedy and crisis.
And so, on Friday we launched Churches Helping Churches.
I prerecorded the sermon that played back
at Mars Hill on Sunday.
I still needed my passport.
I was renewing my passport, waiting for it to return.
It showed up first thing Saturday morning,
just in time for the flight.
I celebrated my son Gideon's 4th birthday.
My family dropped me off with tears at the airport.
We flew to Chicago, where we were debriefed on Haiti.
We got all of our vaccinations late that night.
We got up early the next morning,
went to Pastor MacDonald's church.
They took a very generous special offering for Haiti.
We conducted a little bit more business getting ready
for the trip, packing water, supplies,
a few granola bars in a backpack.
We had with us a full film crew from Mars Hill,
a great photographer from the Bellevue campus, Thomas Hurst,
who had actually shot in Haiti in God's providence taking film
for a few months professionally 10 years prior.
And we all decided to go to Haiti.
We drove up to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the owner
of Amway allowed us to use his private jet to fly
in with International Aid.
We boarded the plane at around 3 o'clock in the morning.
And by sunup on Monday, we were in Haiti.
We were in Haiti.
From a phone call on Thursday night to Monday morning,
God had opened every opportunity.
He had answered every prayer.
And we were actually feet on the ground in Haiti.
As I got off the plane, there was a soldier
who was stationed there and his words were amazing.
He said, "You will now see a crisis of Biblical proportion."
And so, I'll show you a little bit of what we saw.
We were on the tarmac unloading supplies, trying to help out.
Packed up our backpacks, headed out into the streets.
Here we are being told, "If you exit the airport,
"you are on your own.
We won't open the doors again."
A riot had just tried to press in.
We finally got through the mob.
Our security detail was there waiting for us,
by God's grace, with cars.
And we headed out into the street.
Thousands of people walking around.
No food, no water, no shelter of any sort or kind.
It was absolute chaos around the airport.
To be honest with you, the thought of exiting
the airport caused me great anxiety.
The mob had just tried to rush the airport.
The power's down.
Water is everywhere.
And the military tells you, "Once you walk out,
"you cannot come back in.
"We will not open the door.
You are on your own."
And so the crew and I rolled out.
By God's grace, we did have someone on the ground who was
security personnel with vehicles and they took us out
into the streets of Haiti.
And at this point we do not know anyone in Haiti.
We're hoping to get the story of the churches in Haiti.
We were on the ground for a total of 32 hours.
We had a lot of work to do.
As we tried to get our way through Haiti,
the roads were clogged.
It was absolute pandemonium.
We had to snake through the city on secondary side routes
and we had one credible lead.
We had heard that there was a Christian seminary that also
had a church and had a K-12 school and that it was on a nice piece
of property and it was in Port-au-Prince and it was
surrounded by devastation, but it was largely intact.
And it was housing a few thousand people
and basically functioning as a refugee camp with people sleeping outside.
So we headed out to find that location, but as I said, it was
very difficult because there are no addresses and the markers
and landmarks that would guide you were destroyed.
And so we arrived in front of a church and that church was
locked up and we thought it was the location and we thought
we were doomed and we thought that we had no more leads
and our one lead was a dead end.
And then God brought along this amazing woman.
I call her Grandma Angel.
If I get to Heaven and Jesus tells me that she was an angel,
I will not be surprised.
I will introduce you to her.
She walked up to me and literally just took my hand
and walked me around the corner a block or two away with a number
of other people following us, including our staff.
She spoke.
People guarding the gate let us in.
And lo and behold, we were a few blocks away from
the Bible college and seminary that we wanted to go to.
At this point, I had no idea where she was taking us.
She didn't even speak English.
She speaks Creole.
She just walked up to us at this locked gate and tried
to communicate with us and I had no idea what she was saying.
I didn't even tell her where we wanted to go.
And she literally kindly, sweetly took my hand.
She touched my face. I'll never forget it.
She walked us down the street to a small gate,
spoke, the gate opened,
the guards let her in, she led us up to the top
to the exact place, the exact place that we needed to go.
Once we got there, I said hi to some people,
turned around and she was gone.
But she was the one who made everything happen.
Without that open portal of opportunity,
the trip was absolutely wasted.
But God showed up and she was kind.
I'll tell you what happened then.
We met a man named Dave.
He's an American serving there,
3rd generation missionary at the seminary.
This is the building that actually came down.
Is that where the seminary student died?
We pulled one out there and the one died in there, yes.
And what was he ultimately going to do?
Be a pastor. They both were.
Church planters? Pastors?
Yeah.
And right here is our makeshift clinic.
How long do you anticipate being able
to house thousands of people?
We have no idea. We expect this to grow.
The quake was a momentary disaster.
Catastrophic.
There's a second catastrophe in the making.
That is, we're gonna house people.
We're gonna feed them.
We're gonna get water.
We're gonna provide security.
Those are the four things they're looking for.
And unfortunately, the major center of the government
all collapsed physically with their buildings
and government offices.
How close are you now to running out of supplies? Food? Water?
We have no potable water here on campus.
- You have no water left? - No.
Two weeks down the road...
...Where will they find it?
Yeah.
As we went through the city toward the seminary,
you've got to see this in your minds.
Buildings are down.
People are everywhere.
Bodies are stacked up.
Garbage is burning.
We make it up to the top of the hill to the seminary.
This man told us he was Pastor Dave,
3rd generation missionary serving at this school.
The wreckage you saw was where the building collapsed.
Classes had just let out and students were
on their way to chapel.
Upwards of 200 students are trained there every year
for pastoral ministry and church planting.
This is an evangelical school, bible-believing, Jesus-loving.
Had class let out a few moments prior,
the student body would have been in the chapel and dead.
As it were, apparently a handful of students were there early.
One died.
The other five were trapped under the rubble
and they pulled them out.
That seminary's run by Haitian nationals,
great people, godly people.
For the money that we raise through Churches Helping Churches,
we intend to start there.
It's a safe compound.
It's the place where 5,000 people have already flocked
for safety, so they trust it.
There is a school that educates 800 children,
most of them poor from the slums.
Most of them for free.
There's the seminary that trains pastors.
They're connected with a local orphanage and also
a good church, so we felt that this was God's grace
opening up our first opportunity.
And then we met Cindy, who's an amazing sister in Christ,
also serving at the seminary.
And I want you to hear her story about church planting.
Yesterday I saw on the internet the Senegalese President
had a press conference and he said,
"We're inviting Haitians to come back to their land of their ancestry."
So, I don't know if this should be publicized yet,
but we're saying—
At this point, we'd just gotten started.
We'd been on the ground maybe two hours.
We, by God's grace, landed, got through security,
avoided the mob, made it through town,
snaked through all the traffic and devastation and chaos.
The Grandma Angel was kind enough to lead us
to the location that we had hoped to go.
We'd just seen the rubbles, ruins, wreckage.
We saw their clinic, which was basically a tarp
with no doctor, Band-Aids, and gauze.
That's it. Little children there.
No help at all. They'd been there for 6 days.
And as Cindy is speaking about church planting
and what she's talking about in context is
in the Book of Acts when God
scatters His people because of famine or tragedy or crisis,
the Gospel and church planting spreads and so she was praying
and trusting the Lord that in scattering His people,
that he would be scattering them for mission and church planting.
She was a very encouraging woman of great faith.
And as she was talking,
you heard in the background gunshots.
And this is where the trip turned very dark, very fast.
Next to us...someone was shot.
A teenage boy.
And I'll show you the footage of that.
This young man just got shot in the head.
We're on the other side of a wall in which there is
a Bible college seminary.
A whole bunch of children. I actually just bought ice cream
for a couple hundred little kids.
We heard a pop, look over the wall
and this is what's going on in Haiti.
It's getting pretty violent in the streets
and this guy just lost his life about 20 yards
from the Bible college and seminary
where a few hundred people worship on Sundays
and about 160 students study to plant churches,
preach and teach the Gospel.
It's absolutely surreal to see a young man just shot down
in the street.
There are no police.
There are no medics.
There is no help on the way.
That was a surreal moment.
There was no food, no water.
The children are under the tarp at the clinic,
the makeshift clinic if you can call it that.
A young boy had an ice chest filled with ice cream bars.
He was walking around selling them.
It was the only food for sale I saw in the area.
And so I and Pastor MacDonald, we paid the young man
for all of his ice cream bars and we carried them over
to the makeshift clinic to give to all the injured children
to at least do what we could to just be loving and give them a treat and
as we were handing out the ice cream bars,
people kept walking by the body.
Just feet away through a gate.
That young man laid there for hours.
Hours.
No one came.
There are no police.
There are no medics.
His family never showed up.
Now all of a sudden the trip got very serious.
Up until this point it seemed dangerous and it seemed serious,
but in less than 2 hours I witnessed a ***
for the first time in my life.
And no one seemed to care.
It's not that they're indifferent.
It's that they see it so often and there's so many dead bodies
stacked in the streets that it'd become a normative occurrence.
And again, this is just feet from a bunch of children
sleeping outside at night.
Everyone's sleeping outside.
Why? Because their homes were destroyed or they're unstable
and the aftershocks are dangerous.
Right next to little kids sleeping under tarps
with serious physical injuries.
At this point we regrouped and we needed to find someone
who would be a guide and a translator.
We didn't speak Creole, of course.
And so we grabbed this man named Jacques.
Pray for Jacques, he's now the first hire
of Churches Helping Churches.
He was converted out of a voodoo family.
He went to law school, studied law.
He's a very bright man.
And then he got a full scholarship to come
to Dallas Theological Seminary in the U.S.,
where he got a Master's degree in Theology.
He is fluent in multiple languages.
He's a Haitian national.
He loves Jesus and is a good man and loves the Bible.
He is one of the senior directors of the seminary,
a professor, also a pastor and a Bible preacher.
And so we asked him, "Would you be willing to go with us
"in the car to show us churches and areas where we could get
"the story about God's people and how they're doing
"and what they need.
"And would you be willing to risk your life in doing that?
"Would you be willing to hit the streets with us
and also to translate?"
And he agreed to it.
So, by the end of the adventure we hired him.
And he is now our man on the ground, helping coordinate
efforts so that those who do give can be assured
that their finances are being well distributed.
He is essentially the lead financial overseer
for this large ministry.
And so this is his job professionally and he needs
a salary because with the seminary closed down
after the earthquake, he doesn't have an income.
So this will help his family and help us help churches.
We then jumped in the car and went right back down into
the chaos in the middle of the city and I wanna show you
some footage of that so you get an idea
of what it looked like on the ground.
We've been on the ground out in the city
a total of 2 hours so far.
I've already seen one guy shot in the head
a couple of feet from me.
It's pretty much overwhelming.
Food's getting scare.
Fuel's getting scare.
Water's getting scarce.
Tension's getting higher.
And there is one business that is booming.
Right here on the side of the street,
check it out for yourself.
Now, what's amazing is that we didn't see hardly
any businesses that were open.
You need to understand this.
For an American it's almost impossible.
There are no stores.
There was one large grocery store in town.
We drove by it.
It was completely destroyed. Gone.
Hospitals destroyed. Gone.
Prison destroyed.
Upwards of 6,000 of the worst felons let loose on the street.
People not entering into buildings, living in the street,
sleeping on blankets or towels or whatever they could find.
People outside bathing naked with buckets of dirty water.
Children running everywhere.
And the only real business that we saw in that first day
that was operational was casket-making.
And that's for those who can afford a casket.
We didn't see hardly any heavy machinery in the city.
We did, however, see a bulldozer and a dump truck
and the bulldozer would just scoop up
the dead bodies and dump them
into the dump truck and drive them out to mass graves.
Recently, in 1 day 10,000 bodies—
image bearers of God—were dropped into the hole anonymously.
They'll never be able to validate these people's identity
because their decomposed bodies are beyond recognition.
Water was hard to come by.
What's interesting is that *** wasn't.
We couldn't find a bottle of water for sale,
but we had people offering us ***.
That was still for sale in Haiti.
When a water truck would pull up to an area, it would be swarmed
by people seeking survival and when they ran out of water,
chaos would ensue.
I'll give you one example.
This is what the flowing water in the city looked like.
Obviously not safe for drinking.
Bodies were actually laying in that very ditch.
There were few water supply trucks that would show up.
People would come out with buckets and get as much
as they could, sometimes fighting over it because it was so scarce.
And when water would run out, people would be jostling
and fighting and arguing.
And as I'll show you in a moment,
to get the water they'd pull out a gun.
Gunshots would be fired.
Lives would be threatened.
How many bottles of water did you drink today?
It's really unbelievable.
We proceeded to investigate a church that was literally
just a few blocks away.
We were at the end of a dead end getting
some filming and footage.
It was the same church that, about a week after the quake,
they'd pulled out an elderly woman
and she was featured on CNN, still alive.
We were just getting ready to enter that property
and examine the condition there.
And here's what happened.
Wow. We just went to visit the destroyed church
and we heard rioting begin down the street.
They were starting to hand out water.
I think they probably just ran out of water and so now a riot
is ready to ensue and we got to get out of this dead end,
otherwise we're gonna be rubble like that church.
Gunshots.
People killing one another for water.
At this point we'd been on the ground for a few hours
and we're looking for the story of the Church and God's people.
We went just around the corner and we met a man, a Christian
brother named Augustan.
We'll start telling you now some of the stories
of God's people and their churches.
I want you to meet our brother, Augustan.
We met Augustan.
We're actually near the epicenter of the quake
and we went to investigate some of the churches.
He is a Christian brother about 30 years of age
and serves here at this church.
And we'll take you for a walk and show you what happened.
It's actually a tragic story.
The rubble and ruins in front of us, that was the church.
The cars parked out front obviously belonged to members
of the congregation.
You can see the church bus off to the side.
There was a number of training programs as well.
Vocational training, music school.
Haiti is an incredibly poor country.
Roughly 80% of people live below the poverty line here,
which is $1300 a year.
And so this church had a ministry seeking to help people
find gainful employment.
Plumbers, electricians, and the like.
Augustan you just met, in fact, is a plumber himself.
Watch out for this downed electrical line.
And when this church went down, they lost many, many people
in their training program.
People actually died here.
Christian brothers and sisters, many of them in fact men
trying to learn a trade at the school.
They were taking classes trying to determine
how they could provide for their family
and when the church was destroyed, they died.
Augustan doesn't know the exact number.
He said that it was easily well over a dozen.
He used the word "beaucoup."
And he said that many victims were pulled
from this rubble and wreckage.
He was part of that rescue mission, helping out.
And many Christian brothers and sisters are presently still
in the hospital getting treatment for some life-threatening injuries,
so we hope and pray more don't die but he says
that is in fact a possibility.
As we turn around the corner,
the shot here is almost apocalyptic.
We came here looking for the story of the condition
of the Church in Haiti.
And before us is one of the largest cathedral churches
in all of Port-au-Prince and Haiti, reduced to rubble.
The stench is in the air.
There was rioting down the street
when temporary water supplies ran out just a few moments ago.
It's dirty.
There is no sanitation crew.
There is no bulldozer.
There is no police presence.
There is no medical aid.
There is no help on the way.
People are just wandering the streets and it is hopeless.
I mean, really, there is a pervading sense of hopelessness
and a complete and utter lack of any sense of urgency.
And in these kinds of crises, imagine if you're a Christian.
Crisis comes.
You run to your church and you find that it is destroyed,
that the members of your church are dead.
And so you go looking for another church in the neighborhood
to get with God's people and find a safe place to hide
and that's where you end up.
The great cathedral.
The most prominent, preeminent Christian building
perhaps in all of Port-au-Prince, devastated.
Nothing but ruins.
It's just surreal to even see it,
I mean, I've been back just a few days.
We haven't slept much.
The crew's been pulling all-nighters.
I mean, I broke down at various points on the trip,
just emotionally, pretty devastated.
I feel emotionally exhausted.
And I think if I come across as not being compassionate,
it's because I'm spent and I'm shocked
and I feel like a rung bell.
And for me, what kept haunting me was, I love the Church.
I know lots of people complain about the Church
and didn't like the music
or the pastor's sense of humor
or the website downloads real slow
or someone in the church hurt my feelings
or I didn't feel like my program was given the resources it needed
or things didn't go my way or somebody didn't love me.
I mean, imagine you're in a place where the church
physically collapses.
You don't have phone, internet, you're poor.
You don't have a car, so you walk to the church because
your home's destroyed and because your relatives are dead
in that home and you can't pull 'em out of the rubble.
Where do you go?
Where would you go?
Would you go to your church?
You go to your church to see it's destroyed and your deacons
and worship leaders and maybe even your pastor,
they're dead in the rubble.
It's gone.
Go around the corner 'cause you know there's
another church nearby.
It's gone.
There's nowhere to go.
God's people are scattered.
There is no means of communication.
There is no means of gathering.
That just destroys me as a pastor who loves the Church
and loves our church.
Some of you would ask, "Well, where's the government?
Why aren't they doing something?"
I'll show you their equivalent of the White House.
That's it.
Destroyed.
Gone.
At this point, we decided to take a brief break and determine
where we would sleep at night because it was dangerous
in the streets, especially being Westerners
with cash on our person,
negotiating deals just for survival.
By God's grace, we met a Catholic Christian brother
who had a safe compound,
actually a small military operation of all things.
God provided amazing details along the way,
so thank you sincerely for all of you who prayed.
I, for the first time in my life,
I actually felt prayer absolutely surround me and go before us.
So we went there to regroup, to find a safe place to sleep
for the night, to make sure
that when it got dark we weren't dead.
And our brief bit of respite that we were hoping for,
being exhausted, up all night, was interrupted when, in the corner
of this compound, a small building had collapsed
and they were in the midst of digging a man out of the ruins.
It happens that he is a 26-year-old worship leader at a church.
And he was being dug out of the rubble
by his 24-year old Christian brother.
Who led worship for your church today
or the last time you attended?
Imagine they were gone for a week and you finally
got a lead on where their decomposed body was.
And for the first time in my life, I'd smelled
and tasted a decomposed body that'd been baking under
a pile of rubble for a week.
It was the most foul smell. I can't even explain it.
I brushed my teeth over and over and over.
I couldn't get the taste out for days.
In some of the footage you'll see people walking
around with orange peels shoved up their nose.
It's because they don't have anything else
and that has some scent to it to mitigate against the body.
That's also why many of them have their mouths covered.
Here's what we found. Here's our worship pastor brother.
What's going on here today, buddy?
That's my big brother.
He was 26.
Your 26-year-old brother's under there?
What?
Your 26-year old brother is buried in the rubble?
Yeah, of course.
Was your brother a Christian?
Yeah, of course.
Of course he was a Christian.
So, he was a musician here for the church.
He was a banjo man.
Like a banjo man like...
... a drummer.
He was a drummer in the church?
He was a drummer of the church.
He was a singer, too, in the church.
A singer and helped lead worship?
Of course.
Your brother was a worshiper in the church.
Now he's gone to heaven.
Is it okay if he prays for you?
He's also a pastor and we would like to pray for you.
We're terribly sorry.
What's your name?
Mine is Clairbe Wimu.
My first name is Clairbe.
My last name is Wimu.
We want to pray for you right now.
God, we pray for our brother, Clairbe.
His heart is broken and heavy.
He's here working to recover his brother
who's gone to heaven, but he sorrows.
God, I pray that you would comfort him as the man
who will lead his family now.
Comfort his family.
Give them strength, God, and give us wisdom to know
what we can do to help them.
We pray in the strong name of Jesus, amen.
Clairbe, our 24-year-old Christian brother,
dug, with his friends, excavated the body of his 26-year-old
worship-leading brother.
Changed his shirt into orange and so you saw him recovering
the body in the next segment.
And they took his boots off and his belt and his wallet because
they're poor and don't have those things and so they reuse them.
They put bags on their hands because they don't even have gloves.
Afterward, they washed their hands
in a bucket of diesel and smoked cigarettes.
For me, this moment was clarifying.
All of a sudden, almost everything on my schedule seemed unimportant.
Every email that I'd ever received
that was marked "urgent" seemed ridiculous.
And almost everything I was concerned
about seemed absolutely trivial.
From this point forward we visited as many churches as quickly
as we could and I'd like to just show them to you
and let you experience it for yourself.
Well, we're going as fast as we can
and wanted to show how churches can be helping churches.
Maybe give them a moment to tell them about Pastor Cherie's church
just behind us here, which is a church of God.
Well we're just blown away by it.
You can only tell by the shape of the windows this was a church.
Nothing else would even indicate it.
There's a little gate here crushed under a bunch of concrete
that says "L'Eternel" on it, eternal.
They were getting out the Good Message.
More than a thousand people in this church.
But honestly, the decomposing bodies inside the church,
not on a Sunday, but on a Tuesday, choir practice.
And lives lost.
Pastor, don't know where he is.
This is why we came, and it's not easy to see.
Yeah, this church obviously is physically done.
They're going to have to find a place to meet on Sunday.
There still are members of the church in the building.
We can actually taste the decomp in the air as the bodies
have been here for a week.
It's very thick and gross and a bit overwhelming.
And so you could pray for this church.
There are many churches like it.
We're moving as fast as we can throughout the city to show you
the need that is so great for churches to help churches.
Tell 'em what we're looking at here, buddy.
Well this is Seventh Day Adventist Church and it's pretty sad.
We stand beside a crushed baptistery,
a completely trashed worship center.
The good news is no one died here.
But no worship this Sunday or for a very long time.
The church doesn't exist anymore.
Emotionally, what do you feel like?
You're a pastor.
You started your church many years ago.
You've seen it through all its phases
and complexities and building programs.
You know how hard it is for a church to obtain a building.
What do you feel as a shepherd looking at this?
I feel devastated for the congregation.
I feel the sheep are scattered, the shepherd has to be broken-hearted.
You give your life to something,
I know how hard it is to build a congregation in North America.
It's exponentially harder here.
And now what tools for recovery?
They can't even get the bodies out of the rubble.
Without our help, what tools realistically do they have?
The Church of Christ in Haiti will be set back a generation
if we don't rise up and do something.
I'll tell you what, I'm getting fired up.
We're looking at the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
I don't see any way these churches rebuild themselves by themselves.
They're gonna need some serious support.
Well, here's one of the largest evangelical churches in the city.
The pastor was like a spiritual father.
Yeah, they said it was a church of a couple thousand.
Yeah, unbelievable.
They got a radio station destroyed, so the sound of the Gospel
going out to this whole area is silenced.
But you know, what's in my mind is that there's 2,000 worshipers,
they've got no place to worship.
Yeah, at least 2,000.
They said it was possibly the biggest church,
the biggest Protestant church in the whole city.
We're afraid to stand near the building,
that it could all come down.
Surely no one's going inside that.
It'll all have to be torn down and rebuilt.
No repair is going to get this to a place
where God's people can sing the praises of the Lord here.
Not a repair job.
No, that and they said that people did die here,
and looking at the condition, I am pretty certain
that there are still bodies of God's people in there.
I can't see a rescue team going through a facility of this size
room by room to do a body search and evacuation.
If you look at that computer monitor, that shows you
that there was one level and another level,
and they've absolutely collapsed down on top of one another.
And so we're missing whole floors in the building.
That's why this is shifted off to the side.
It's literally just dropped down and an entire floor
of the building is completely gone.
I don't even know how they're going to clear this space.
It's probably just a walk away and a 60-some-year-old pastor maybe
has to start completely over somewhere else as his congregation
is either dead or fleeing the city with no communication.
We're gonna help them.
We gotta find this guy and see what we can do to help him out.
We've gotta find this guy. For real. Team, we've got to find this guy
and say, "Look, dude. We're not your answer, but we are gonna help."
The Church is gonna help the church.
That's the way it should be.
Now, standing in front of a Wesleyan church that was running
over 1,000 until the earthquake a week ago today, wearing masks
'cause I just cannot handle tasting anymore decomp bodies in my mouth.
It's making me sick.
Flies everywhere.
This is the most somber thing we've seen at a church site all day.
One, two, three, four, five, six dead bodies
just laying literally in the street.
Decomposed, flies all over 'em, rotting flesh.
There might be two under the sheet over there.
Some of 'em just wrapped in baling wire.
Who are these people?
God knows every one of them.
Were they dragged out of the rubble?
Were they—I mean, who knows?
Yeah, God's image bearers just laying in the street, decomposing.
Every one of them known and loved by God. Into eternity.
This is a church and Bible college that during
the quake we heard 40 students died.
So we are letting ourselves in.
It looks like the front door is open.
We'll go see what's happening.
Mr. Smith, good to meet you, sir.
What did you do here at the church?
Okay, this is my church.
- You are the pastor? - Yes.
- What an honor. - I'm the evangelist.
You're the evangelist, and you had 4,000 people here on a Sunday?
Or a couple thousand on Sundays?
No. For the three services, there is 3,000, 3,050, 3,045...
[Speaking in Creole]
A lot of dead bodies inside.
So you still have dead bodies in there of members of your congregation?
Yes.
[wailing]
Every Sunday this is where we sit.
[wailing]
We need the prayer.
We need the prayer.
It's a Bible college where students died,
it was attached to the church.
You're going to meet a man later, Keno.
His wife's body, his wife's body is in there.
I mean, for me, I just love the Church.
And I know the church isn't just a building, but a building is
a place where God's people gather,
particularly in times of crisis and need.
And to see it was just, I mean, it was just devastating.
It started getting dark and so we had to take Jacques back
to the seminary and Christian compound,
then head into a safe place to sleep for the night.
Met the president of the school, a wonderful man named Jean.
I'm partnering with him now.
Of all things, he went to Western Seminary,
the same school I went to.
You talk about the providence of God putting this all together.
We got a plane in a day.
We got to fly in with medical supplies and doctors.
We actually landed.
Other relief agencies and workers circled for 6 hours and went home.
We actually got cars, which is a miracle, and a driver
and an interpreter and a guide
and we just put this together as we're going.
And then we meet Jean, who runs the seminary.
And lo and behold, he graduated from the same seminary that I did
and studied under some of the exact same professors, so theologically,
biblically, we agree on the big issues, which is amazing.
It is God's providential partnership for Churches Helping Churches.
I want to introduce you to him.
You could definitely pray for him.
He just about lost it.
I am emotionally exhausted. We've driven all over the city.
We've seen stacks of dead bodies, homeless people just wandering
the streets, destroyed churches, lots of destroyed churches.
It's beyond any movies that I have seen, you know?
Whatever type of imagination that I can think of.
You train pastors, network churches and leaders.
How many people do you personally know that died?
You know a lot of people.
A lot of people.
Personally?
At least, I mean, close enough, at least 100.
At least 100?
At least 100.
How many different pastors...
Like I know a pastor who lost his entire family.
Pastor lost his entire family?
A graduate of this school.
How are you doing, emotionally?
Honestly, I think that, it seems to me,
that I have gone through different stages.
At first, it's kind of a disbelief type of thing.
Just shock.
Yeah. Is it?
I noticed that through the streets. People aren't crying.
It's just like they're stunned and shocked.
Yes. Yes.
And afterwards, there is a bit of anger, I must confess.
It's like, "Why does this happen?"
But we need to be very careful not to be desperate in terms of,
like, losing hope.
I don't know if you're going to spend enough time tonight.
We could easily be 5,000 people here.
Maybe 5,000 people staying at your school?
At the school.
A lot of people are waiting here for an answer.
And if you don't have certain things...
it could get bad pretty easily.
We found a safe place to sleep that night.
Very thankful to God and thank you for those of you
who prayed for our safety.
We slept on cement, used our backpacks as pillows.
By God's grace, I slept 4 hours, great.
Got up, worked for 2 hours, and then slept a little bit more.
We got up with the sun in the morning so as not to waste any time
to try and get the stories of the churches and God's people.
We went back up to pick up Jacques at the seminary
where we left him with Jean.
He had duties to tend to there.
As you see all of this, I don't say this in any bragging way,
but I know that some of you will wonder, "Well, did you do anything?"
Yeah, we prayed for people.
We shared the Gospel.
And we also brought a large sum of cash on our person
and we distributed it between our team,
those who came with Pastor MacDonald,
my now good friend, and also the guys that rolled
with me from Mars Hill,
and we were handing out money as we go.
"Here, feed your family.
"Buy some water.
Get some fuel."
And so, yeah, we were trying to help these people as much as we could
and then devise a plan to get them more help because obviously they need it.
So, the next morning we rolled out with the sunrise
and we went back up to see the 5,000 people that had slept there
at the campus and to pick up Jacques.
And I met one pastor.
And this is the one that just— this one hit me,
I think, the hardest.
I just kept thinking of my oldest daughter, Ashley.
Hurt for a week, suffering.
Nobody there to help.
I just lost it.
I mean, seeing women and children suffer.
Dead bodies are horrible and collapsed churches are bad,
but something in me when I see women and children
suffering and hurting...
I'll let you meet them.
Christian pastor, Bible teacher,
he's got a wife, three older children.
The church was destroyed, 15 members of his congregation died
when the building collapsed on them.
Their home is destroyed so he's been displaced and homeless.
They're sleeping up at the seminary underneath a tarp.
His daughter was in the school.
She was studying to be a medical doctor,
and an enormous stone, probably a cinder block most likely,
fell on her face and she's been laying there
in agonizing pain with an open wound for a week.
And they don't have enough money to hire a tap-tap.
It's sort of a cab.
You tap the side and then they pull over and you give them money
and they transport you.
Could you pay someone to drive her to the hospital?
Oui. Yes.
How much?
One, one, one, one...
Fifteen dollars. Fifteen dollars.
- Fifteen dollars? - Fifteen.
Pastor's church is destroyed, family members gone, home destroyed,
daughter took a cinder block to the face.
I mean, I just think I...
I just kept thinking about my oldest daughter.
Laying there for a week, needing to get to a temporary hospital.
"Sir, how much do you need?"
"Fifteen dollars."
I mean, of course we gave it to him and more and, of course.
From there, we walked down the hill to see the school
where 800 children study, trying to battle that illiteracy.
Many of these children have come to Christ
and gone through the seminary and now they are professors
and church planters and pastors, ministry leaders.
So, we're definitely going to support that school
because it's doing so much good.
Many of those 800 children are from
the destroyed slums around the school.
You'll see it in a moment.
And they were being educated for free
on the kind gifts of Christians.
To the left is the school.
Classes, bathrooms.
They tell us there were 500 elementary students who were here.
Many of their families have fled the city.
Some are sleeping up the hill at the seminary.
This entire compound is run by the partnership between
some American mission organizations and also local Haitian oversight.
It's actually a beautiful campus and they've done a great job
and this is where kids are going for refuge.
And these kids have got it a lot better
than the kids down in the city.
Five hundred kids are in the paid program.
Eight hundred total if you include the free program.
All of that rubble you looked at?
That was their basketball court that is utterly destroyed.
There was a very simple soccer field around the corner and no ball
in sight and a bunch of kids with nothing to do.
We continued back down into the city and we went back to this location.
This is the church that was destroyed
that was running thousands.
And what you'll see is the location of the Bible college
where students did die.
We were told that this church had moved.
They had a school many miles away.
The congregation would have to walk to get there, many miles.
And so we wanted to go investigate how the people were faring there
and what they were doing.
We did meet the pastor.
He'd been down in the tent cities ministering to people,
praying for people, doing evangelism.
You could pray for them.
These men have more funerals to do than you can imagine.
As we showed up at the compound, I'll show you one of the ushers
at the church property.
Under armed guard.
Imagine the ushers in your church carrying shotguns.
This church had relocated to their school property and they wanted
to protect the women and children who were sleeping there outside
at night from looters and those who would do harm.
I didn't confirm this, but we were told that a few people
had tried to do harm and the ushers in the church shot 'em.
But God's people were determined to worship.
This was one of the most wonderful sites that we saw.
This place is amazing.
They had a cargo of food.
They normally feed the poor and they had,
by God's grace in His providence,
received a shipment just prior to the earthquake.
So they are now feeding, at least until their supplies run out,
10,000 people a day.
And they're still gathering as the church.
I wept.
I just had to sit down and cry for awhile.
Man, I hope, I really hope that people would love our church
or their church enough that if it ended up like this,
that they would walk the miles that it took to worship
at a place like this.
We are behind the walls of a church compound.
And we had just visited in the town a church of 3,000 people
that was destroyed and they've got another piece of property here
they want to build another facility on.
And you can see down here, this is where the church
is meeting on Sundays at present.
And this will work until maybe March or April, we are told.
And then, when the rainy season comes,
obviously this church will no longer be able to have multiple services
in this location under these conditions.
Many of the people who are displaced and homeless are camping here.
Members of the church being cared for.
It's actually quite a beautiful compound.
Much safer and better tended to than anywhere else we have seen,
but the building we just left in the city,
this is its temporary replacement,
which is pretty amazing if you think of 90-something degree heat
and a bunch of people basically treating their church property
as a refugee camp.
But that is what is happening here until some churches are able
to help this church get a new church.
I can just see, can you see it?
Can you see God's people there together, trying to meet?
They have no communication.
I don't even know how they're going to inform one another
of where they're meeting.
They have no cars.
They're gonna have to walk in very dangerous circumstances.
They're gonna gather there on Sunday and they're gonna raise their hands
and their voices and in worshipful celebration to Jesus Christ as Lord,
God, Savior, King, and Deliverer.
If you really love Jesus, you really love the Church.
If you don't love the Church, you don't love Jesus.
And it was so amazing in the midst of devastation to see the people
that love Jesus also love the Church, and no matter what were
committed to being the Church and being on mission as the Church.
And as we went back up the hill, we were getting ready to leave.
I saw a man and I felt the Holy Spirit
compel me to go speak with him.
His name is Keno.
The Bible college that fell is where he was a professor
and he was one of the pastors there as well and an evangelist.
And he was dressed nicely.
He's living outside in a basketball court now
that his home is destroyed.
When I asked him why he was dressed so nicely,
he said that he had just returned from his wife's funeral.
This man had just buried his wife.
And I want you to meet him because he is a hero to me.
And I hope he would be an inspiration to you.
Hi. Pastor Mark here in Port-au-Prince, Haiti with my brother here.
Your name again, sir?
Pastor Keno Bernal.
And you are a pastor here in Haiti.
And could you introduce us to your sons real quick? Who's this?
Is Kris, this is Kris.
And this is Oliver.
And this is Joshua. Joshua?
This is Joshua.
They are four boys.
He's got four young boys and,
so this is where you're living and sleeping.
This was a Christian school.
Your home has been destroyed or just damaged?
Completely destroyed and this is where you're sleeping at night.
I'm going to ask you a very hard question.
Where is your wife?
She's died.
Your wife died.
Yeah, she's died.
And how did she die?
What happened?
I know you're a Bible college professor.
You teach the Bible.
While I was teaching the class, I felt the earth shaking
and I have time to go out and see what's going on.
And right after the house collapsed on everybody.
So there was three stories of the Bible college.
What floor were you lecturing on?
In the second.
In the second floor?
So you would have died.
Yeah, I would have.
Because students died on that floor.
And you felt a little bit of a tremor and went to investigate?
Yeah.
And then the building collapsed and where was your wife?
She was in the class.
She was in the class?
Yeah.
And so your wife died in the class?
Did you try to pull her from the rubble?
What did you do?
Well as the house collapsed there was no way to get in
and to rescue people, you know.
But they were all died.
And so what did you do?
What was your response? I can't even imagine.
I was going crazy because by the time the house—
the school was broken, I was thinking about them at home.
Right, thinking about your children.
Yeah, you know?
And at the time, it was hard for me.
I was going crazy, crazy, crazy.
Yeah, because your wife is dead in the rubble and your sons are far
away at home and you want to be there to mourn your wife
but you've got to go check on your sons.
And so what did you find when you arrived home?
Well, God saved the kids for me.
And I found them with my servant.
Yeah, they were very well.
They're okay.
But now you're homeless. What is your plan?
I am homeless. I have no plan.
God only has a plan. I can do nothing.
I don't know what to do. It's over.
You love Jesus. You teach the Bible.
You marry a woman. You have four children.
You're serving the Lord in ministry.
And now your wife is gone, your church is gone, your home is gone.
The Bible college is gone.
And my avenue is gone.
So why do you smile?
Where is your joy?
Well, it's from the Lord.
Because right after the funeral when I bury my wife, God told me—
Did you preach at your wife's funeral?
Well, I just said something.
You said something?
I could not preach, really.
But God told me, "Keno, it's time to get up and put something to work."
You know?
To accompany the call.
What is God's call for you?
The call of God in my life is to preach the Gospel.
To teach others.
Because I been a teacher for 14 years.
I been teacher, you know?
I went to Bible college.
I have a doctorate degree in theology, you know?
That's all I do, all my life.
Teach the Gospel, preach the Gospel, teach the Bible.
And for me, for the work.
You know, crusades everywhere, evangelize everywhere.
That's what I do all my life.
You have a sweet spirit.
It is an honor to meet you.
I am terribly sorry for your loss.
Would you mind if I prayed for you and your sons?
Thank you. Thank you. You can.
Father God, I pray against the enemy, his servants,
their works and effects.
I pray for my brother here, God, that he would be filled
with the Holy Spirit, and that Lord God, you have a plan.
He doesn't know what it is, but please reveal it to him.
And God, I pray for his four sons, that they would grow up to be
mighty men of God, that they, too, would love the Bible and love Jesus,
and that they would preach the Gospel and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
And God, as they sleep here, your eye is on them,
you know them and love them.
Please direct their steps and provide for them.
And God, as devastating as it is that he lost his wife,
and we mourn and grieve that, we thank you that she knew Jesus
and that he will be reunited with her
and there will be no more tears
and this family will be intact again one day.
And so we pray for that day in Jesus' good name. Amen.
♪ When peace like a river attendeth my way, ♪
♪ when sorrows like sea billows roll; ♪
♪ Whatever my lot, ♪
♪ Thou hast taught me to say, ♪
♪ it is well, it is well ♪
♪ with my soul. ♪
♪ Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, ♪
♪ let this blest assurance control, ♪
♪ that Christ has regarded my helpless estate ♪
♪ and has shed His own blood for my soul. ♪
♪ It is well with my soul. ♪
♪ It is well, it is well with my soul. ♪
♪ My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! ♪
♪ My sin, not in part but the whole, ♪
♪ is nailed to the Cross, ♪
♪ and I bear it no more. ♪
♪ Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! ♪
♪ It is well with my soul. ♪
♪ It is well, it is well with my soul. ♪
♪ And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, ♪
♪ the clouds be rolled back as a scroll. ♪
♪ The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend. ♪
♪ Even so, it is well with my soul. ♪
♪ It is well with my soul. ♪
♪ It is well, it is well with my soul. ♪
♪ It is well with my soul. ♪
♪ It is well, it is well with my soul. ♪
You love Jesus. You teach the Bible.
You marry a woman. You have four children.
You're serving the Lord in ministry.
And now your wife is gone, your church is gone,
your home is gone. The Bible college is gone.
So why do you smile? Where is your joy?
Well, it's from the Lord.
♪ It is well with my soul. ♪
♪ Even still, it is well ♪
♪ with my soul. ♪
♪ Even still, it is well ♪
♪ with my soul. ♪
♪ Even still, it is well ♪
♪ with my soul. ♪
♪ Even still, it is well ♪
♪ with my soul. ♪
♪ Even still, it is well ♪
♪ with my soul. ♪
♪ Even still, it is well ♪
♪ with my soul. ♪
♪ With my soul, ♪
♪ Even still, it is well. ♪♪
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