Haiti UnChanged?

January 10, 2011
by Dwight Lehman, International Director

I viewed a video and read an article today from CNN titled, One year later, Haiti's symbolic sites are sadly unchanged. With all due respect to the writer and the news organization, the symbolic sites may be sadly unchanged but the Haitian people are changed...most for the rest of their lives on this earth.

In typical fashion for US reporting, the focus is on the external. But Haiti has changed. There would be no Haiti without the resilient, friendly and resourceful people that make up that country. Let me relate how I see Haiti changed.

For many of the Haitians their lives are changed because of the loss of loved ones or loss of health or limbs. If anything, Haitians could teach us about suffering and being long-suffering. The nation has seen numerous disasters, strikes, riots, deaths, tragedies, and political strife. Many have suffered through all of these and some have struggled as a result, but they are changed. The people of Haiti now realize there is a power greater than anyone or anything outside of them that can change their world. That power is the God of the Bible.

Then there are the many Haitians whose hearts are changed forever. Many hundreds, if not thousands, have come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. They have new life, new purpose, a hope beyond the grave, and peace in the midst of it all. Granted some of those decisions may have been "foxhole conversions" as we call them, but isn't this what making disciples is all about? It begins with trusting Christ as Savior and Lord, and then growing in the grace and knowledge of Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son.

Yes, Haiti's landscape and symbolic sights are pretty much unchanged from a year ago and it is sad, but we celebrate the change that God is doing in the nation that has been dubbed the poorest in the Western hemisphere. Haiti is not unchanged because the people have been changed.

Dwight A. Lehman
International Director for the Americas
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