In Haiti

We left Santo Domingo at 4:30 this morning and arrived at our location in Haiti around 12:30PM. It was a long, bumpy drive (imagine the roads in Peru) that came to a crawl (imagine rush hour in Atlanta) once we arrived in Port-au-Prince. The building that we are staying in is owned by the Florida Baptist Convention. It is used to give support to 964 churches that work with the convention.

Part of our team is driving around the city at this point. Our vehicle can not hold all of our team so some of us stayed behind.

It is amazing to see the devastation and at the same moment see so many believers working to share the love of Jesus with the people of Haiti. There is a medical clinic being conducted here at our building. They helped over a hundred people by lunch time and had the privilege of leading 10 of them to have a relationship with Jesus.

Thank you for all of your prayers. I still do not have my luggage - it did not arrive with today's flight. American Airlines simply does not know where the bag is - but God does and if He wants me to have it then it will show up. If not - I have much more in my little bag than many people here in Haiti have to call all of their belongings.

Bagless...

Well... I do have a bag. My small backpack that I carried onto the plane. My big pack with all of my clothes, food and all other important things are somewhere between Orlando and the Dominican Republic.

I met some neat folks from the states as a result of losing my bag. A group called Operation Smile had a team member lose his bag, too. We worked for about an hour to see if we could trace our bag (no success) and then they gave me a ride from the airport to our hotel. That was huge - a 30 minute ride would have cost me about $50. I also would have had to trust a taxi driver to get me to a hotel that I had no clue how to locate other than an address. God worked that out...

Our team is leaving here in at 4:30AM. Our time here is 1 hour ahead of Eastern time. So... I am heading to Haiti for 2 weeks without clothes, snacks or my toothbrush. :)

We have a medical team coming behind us at some point. We will find out tomorrow a little more. Terry Henderson, our Disaster Relief leader, said that this is our first glitch that we will have to work through. Glad I could help us get to work.

We travel about 8 hours today into Port-au-Prince. That is actually where we will be staying.

Thanks for your prayers. You may want to pray for my team members as they will now have a team member who will stink and have bad breath, too!

On a serious note, tomorrow really begins a hard journey. Please pray that God gives us His strength, grace and wisdom as we enter into the earthquake zone. Pray that we have opportunities to share the love of Jesus in word and action.

Headin' to Haiti

I am about to leave the airport for the Domincan Republic where I will join the efforts of the Florida Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board. Our Incident Command team will drive into Haiti on Friday. Please be praying for all of the logistics of getting into the country (transportation, etc.) and for our team to join God's activity in Haiti.

I will do my very best to send updates about our efforts through this blog. Your prayers are certainly cherished...