Haiti Mission Trips

One of the significant parts of my faith journey has been the Mission trips I had the opportunity to be apart of. Over the course of five years, between 2013 and 2017, I was blessed to experience four mission trips with Our Saviours Lutheran Church and Urban Acacia ministries to Marianne and Manze Marie Haiti. The trips taught me a lot about my faith and helped re-center my priorities each and every time I went. What I found in Haiti were the most amazing people. Their joyful spirit and giving nature inspired me to take a look at my own life with a better perspective and understand what was truly important. I was shown that while we were there to work, the real significance of the trip was the relationships we built with our Haitian counterparts. The pastor of the Church we worked with can be paraphrased as saying that, "while one day the buildings and physical labor we performed will be knocked down by another hurricane or earthquake, the relationships we built will last forever." I hope someday to return and reconnect with the many friends I met.

I was able to understand what I got out of these trips most clearly during my final trip to Haiti after my freshman year of college. During this trip, I decided to read the book of James. James is often overlooked in the New Testament because it doesn't fit well with the books written by paul. While Paul focuses on what has become know as justification by faith alone, emphasizing that only belief in Christ can save someone. James emphasizes the important works in a Christian's life. He presents his argument using a metaphor of someone looking at themselves in a mirror. James 1:22-25 states,

"But be doers of the word, and not hears only, deceiving yourself. For if anyone is a hearer and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he looks like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing."

This verse emphasizes the importance of action in the Christian life. It sets the groundwork for expecting those who follow Christ to not just show up at Church on Sundays but instead live a life full of service and sacrifice to others. It's easy to get distracted and become self-centered, but these trips to Haiti reminded me that I needed to work day in and day out to live out my faith if I wanted to truly follow God's will in this world.