As a group, the Haiti team decided to take a week or two off, since life was getting busy toward the end of summer. In the interim, I've managed to connect with two NGOs and finagled dates and an offer of chauffering help around Port-au-Prince. Wow!
We've raised about 1/10th of our needed funds. Wow!
Most of the consultants where I work are back now from various vacations, so I'm faced with the normal Monday deluge, which has left me feeling cranky. Boo!
Summer's almost over; in fact, up here in New England, the temperatures will be somewhere around the early autumn normal temps. Boo!
Wanted to write about something witty and urbane, but inspiration has been very fleeting over the past few weeks. Boo!
I definitely need to boost up the Wow factor...
Friday, August 22, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
On the move...
So, the letters are in the mail and now we're in the process of actually planning the trip, as in, where do we go? Who do we see? I feel overwhelmed, even though Ezechiel's worked with the UN in Port au Prince and seems to have crazy contacts there.
I was flipping through a book I bought for my sister (and have so far neglected to actually give her) written by Tony Campolo, one of the more recent Christians to have brought social justice into the language of evangelical churches, and came across story after story he shared about work he and his organizations do in Haiti! Intrigued, I went on the website and discovered, sure enough, that www.beyondborders.net has a thriving ministry that seeks to help people come alongside the poor and learn from them while helping them. They do all sorts of relief work and even offer the opportunity to live with Haitians for a while. All very exciting.
I emailed them this morning, got an immediate response, so we're off and running. Apparently, they have a gathering in Jacmel the Sunday right before we arrive, so I'll have to see what to do about that.
Exciting...
I was flipping through a book I bought for my sister (and have so far neglected to actually give her) written by Tony Campolo, one of the more recent Christians to have brought social justice into the language of evangelical churches, and came across story after story he shared about work he and his organizations do in Haiti! Intrigued, I went on the website and discovered, sure enough, that www.beyondborders.net has a thriving ministry that seeks to help people come alongside the poor and learn from them while helping them. They do all sorts of relief work and even offer the opportunity to live with Haitians for a while. All very exciting.
I emailed them this morning, got an immediate response, so we're off and running. Apparently, they have a gathering in Jacmel the Sunday right before we arrive, so I'll have to see what to do about that.
Exciting...
Thursday, August 7, 2008
The letters are in the mail!!!!!
It's been a long time in coming, but the support letters are in the mail. It's official- we're going!
It's been a journey, to say the least. We've finally settled on an exploratory trip, keeping it small this time and focusing on connecting with NGOs in Port au Prince, while making connections with people in Ezechiel's church, so we can better understand what it is they need and how we can help out. We'll be doing this at the end of September.
We'll also start up a focus group in October to pull people from all over the church together in to take what info we've gathered and to help us shape a trip for next summer. I'll start a Facebook group to that effect.
If anybody's interested in keeping up with what's happening in the trip, I'll be posting on this blog what we're up to. If anybody's interested in supporting us, let me know and I'll send you info.
It's been a journey, to say the least. We've finally settled on an exploratory trip, keeping it small this time and focusing on connecting with NGOs in Port au Prince, while making connections with people in Ezechiel's church, so we can better understand what it is they need and how we can help out. We'll be doing this at the end of September.
We'll also start up a focus group in October to pull people from all over the church together in to take what info we've gathered and to help us shape a trip for next summer. I'll start a Facebook group to that effect.
If anybody's interested in keeping up with what's happening in the trip, I'll be posting on this blog what we're up to. If anybody's interested in supporting us, let me know and I'll send you info.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Millennium Campus Conference
For those who want more information about the Conference that happened back in April, here's the website for the group who planned and executed it:
www.millenniumcampusnetwork.org
They're posting the ongoing dialogue that started with the conference, and have articles and pictures from the conference.
www.millenniumcampusnetwork.org
They're posting the ongoing dialogue that started with the conference, and have articles and pictures from the conference.
Last night I heard from a friend from my IFES days, which brought back lots of memories. In keeping with the last post, I want to share my experience of 9/11/2001.
I left the United States on September 1, 2001 to move to Poland for the next couple of years to work, for lack of a better way to explain it, as a pastor to Polish university students. I flew into London and spent a couple of days with friends, then went out to Kent for a week, where I spent time getting to know other Brits and Americans who were also preparing to go to other countries to pastor and mentor students.
A group of us traveled back to London together and arrived at Victoria station. We decided we would check email, then see the sights, then go on to whatever it was we needed to do before we left England for other ports of call. However, none of us could log in at the internet cafe. It was fairly busy there, so we weren't sure if maybe there was a lot of internet traffic in general. Then one of us said, "You'll never belive what just happened!" and pointed to his computer screen where a live picture of one of the World Towers was displayed, in smoke. Another friend checked his cell phone and discovered a text message from his sister in the Philippines, who said that the World Trade Towers had been hit by airplanes in New York City. It was a surreal moment, with the pictures we were watching on the computer looking as if it were an action movie starring Will Smith.
Eventually, we noticed there were a lot of people on the streets. It turned out that Tony Blair was afraid the same thing might happen in England, and had declared a state of emergency. Businesses shut down in the middle of the day, and people were wandering the streets trying to get home. I went into Victoria station to call the friends I was staying with, and saw an incredible amount of people cramming on the Tube and getting on any train possible. I met up with my friend, and we came across a number of Americans who said that all trans-Atlantic flights were canceled, with no idea of when they would resume again.
As it was, my flight to Poland was for the next day and was still scheduled to leave. I arrived at the airport the next morning and had to check every piece of luggage, including any carryon items. Surprisingly, check-in went fairly quickly and we flew out pretty much on time. I changed planes in Germany, and the security guard who checked my passport looked at mine and said, "I'm so sorry."
For me, it was a bundle of feelings- I wanted to go back to the States, not so much because I was afraid for my own safety, but it felt like the kind of "family crisis" where you want to be with the people you love. I found family in my new home of Poland and was touched by the ways the people around me showed their support in the face of such an awful tragedy, especially because they had experienced tragedy several times over. It felt strange to be experiencing such a national event overseas- almost as if I weren't really an American. It also made me sort of a local celebrity as my new coworkers asked me what I thought our president would do in response, and what the mood among my countrymen was in the face of this tragedy (I had to tell them, "I don't know," which added to my sense of estrangement).
What memories do you have of 9/11?
I left the United States on September 1, 2001 to move to Poland for the next couple of years to work, for lack of a better way to explain it, as a pastor to Polish university students. I flew into London and spent a couple of days with friends, then went out to Kent for a week, where I spent time getting to know other Brits and Americans who were also preparing to go to other countries to pastor and mentor students.
A group of us traveled back to London together and arrived at Victoria station. We decided we would check email, then see the sights, then go on to whatever it was we needed to do before we left England for other ports of call. However, none of us could log in at the internet cafe. It was fairly busy there, so we weren't sure if maybe there was a lot of internet traffic in general. Then one of us said, "You'll never belive what just happened!" and pointed to his computer screen where a live picture of one of the World Towers was displayed, in smoke. Another friend checked his cell phone and discovered a text message from his sister in the Philippines, who said that the World Trade Towers had been hit by airplanes in New York City. It was a surreal moment, with the pictures we were watching on the computer looking as if it were an action movie starring Will Smith.
Eventually, we noticed there were a lot of people on the streets. It turned out that Tony Blair was afraid the same thing might happen in England, and had declared a state of emergency. Businesses shut down in the middle of the day, and people were wandering the streets trying to get home. I went into Victoria station to call the friends I was staying with, and saw an incredible amount of people cramming on the Tube and getting on any train possible. I met up with my friend, and we came across a number of Americans who said that all trans-Atlantic flights were canceled, with no idea of when they would resume again.
As it was, my flight to Poland was for the next day and was still scheduled to leave. I arrived at the airport the next morning and had to check every piece of luggage, including any carryon items. Surprisingly, check-in went fairly quickly and we flew out pretty much on time. I changed planes in Germany, and the security guard who checked my passport looked at mine and said, "I'm so sorry."
For me, it was a bundle of feelings- I wanted to go back to the States, not so much because I was afraid for my own safety, but it felt like the kind of "family crisis" where you want to be with the people you love. I found family in my new home of Poland and was touched by the ways the people around me showed their support in the face of such an awful tragedy, especially because they had experienced tragedy several times over. It felt strange to be experiencing such a national event overseas- almost as if I weren't really an American. It also made me sort of a local celebrity as my new coworkers asked me what I thought our president would do in response, and what the mood among my countrymen was in the face of this tragedy (I had to tell them, "I don't know," which added to my sense of estrangement).
What memories do you have of 9/11?
Friday, August 1, 2008
Warsaw Uprising
It's strange being in another culture and seeing well-celebrated events or happenings through different eyes.
Friday marked the 64th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. While that isn't a celebrated event in the US, being in Poland when the 60th Anniversary was being commemorated put a new spin on World War II for me.
Poland, of course, was invaded and then occupied by the Nazis, and most Americans don't know much beyond that. I didn't know much beyond that until I lived in Poland, and I'm still learning bits and pieces.
What I wanted to write about today is one memory that struck a chord with me during that 60th anniversary commemoration, only because it seemed so familiar.
I woke up the morning of August 1st and left my apartment early because Warsaw was opening its Uprising museum that day, and I wanted to both see it and get an autograph from Norman Davies, a British historian who's well-loved in Poland because he's written several books about Poland's history. I got on the tram and found myself amongst a huge assortment of men and women in their 70's and 80's, each with what looked like their grandchildren. They all were chatting with one another, and I realized these were men and women who had fought with the Polish Home Army during the Uprising. They were finally being decorated for their heroic service to Poland and to Warsaw in that brutal battle in 1944 to save Poland from the Nazis.
It was amazingly moving to me, especially since I had grown up among World War II veterans at home. It was particularly moving the more I got to know the story: men, women and children banded together and fought off the Nazis in absolutely brutal conditions for about 2 months before they finally had to capitulate. The city was systematically destroyed after that. The people I was seeing were the survivors from that battle, people who were willing to stand up and fight no matter what, not knowing what the outcome was going to be.
I'm so used to the American perspective of the war- we fighting against the powers of evil with a glorious victory at the end. It was humbling to see the pictures and be in a city that experienced that war with all of its consequences more directly than we had.
Friday marked the 64th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising. While that isn't a celebrated event in the US, being in Poland when the 60th Anniversary was being commemorated put a new spin on World War II for me.
Poland, of course, was invaded and then occupied by the Nazis, and most Americans don't know much beyond that. I didn't know much beyond that until I lived in Poland, and I'm still learning bits and pieces.
What I wanted to write about today is one memory that struck a chord with me during that 60th anniversary commemoration, only because it seemed so familiar.
I woke up the morning of August 1st and left my apartment early because Warsaw was opening its Uprising museum that day, and I wanted to both see it and get an autograph from Norman Davies, a British historian who's well-loved in Poland because he's written several books about Poland's history. I got on the tram and found myself amongst a huge assortment of men and women in their 70's and 80's, each with what looked like their grandchildren. They all were chatting with one another, and I realized these were men and women who had fought with the Polish Home Army during the Uprising. They were finally being decorated for their heroic service to Poland and to Warsaw in that brutal battle in 1944 to save Poland from the Nazis.
It was amazingly moving to me, especially since I had grown up among World War II veterans at home. It was particularly moving the more I got to know the story: men, women and children banded together and fought off the Nazis in absolutely brutal conditions for about 2 months before they finally had to capitulate. The city was systematically destroyed after that. The people I was seeing were the survivors from that battle, people who were willing to stand up and fight no matter what, not knowing what the outcome was going to be.
I'm so used to the American perspective of the war- we fighting against the powers of evil with a glorious victory at the end. It was humbling to see the pictures and be in a city that experienced that war with all of its consequences more directly than we had.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
