Container Update

Stuff always happens, and whatever you are doing always takes longer in 3rd world countries. Such is the story with our shipping container. Latest news is that the shipping company itself delayed the delivery into Port Au Prince, and by the time things make it through customs, it will be Monday afternoon by the time it arrives. So keep praying that it gets to the STEP seminary campus before the predicted time! I know, that just contradicted what I said in the first sentence, but our God is an awesome God!

Please pray not only for safety for our team as we travel to Haiti, but also for the expatriate Haitian pastors travelling to their homeland, and for the 200 pastors who will travel to this conference. I hope to be sending you updates daily if I have a working internet connection.

Blessings,
Dr. Paul

Understanding Post-Traumatic Stress

Many of you have asked me what I will be presenting to these Hatian pastors. I am responsible for 4 of the main sessions. In the first session, I will be describing what Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS) looks like, and how to distinguish it from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Next we will focus on what is the current standard for helping someone deal with PTS, and how the Bible and Christ provide a powerful and effective means to reach a person on the level of the heart. In other words, these pastors don't have to be a psychologist or psychiatrist to provide meaningful help to people hurting from PTS.

In a second session, a Hatian pastor will be presenting material I put together called "Jesus in the Tent City," a message based on Matthew 9:35-39. The focus here will be helping these pastors understand how to see as Jesus saw, to feel as Jesus felt, to pray as Jesus prayed, and to do as Jesus did. A third session will be on responding to grief. How can we as pastors help people who have lost so much? The final session I am presenting will be on following the model Jesus provides in His roles of Prophet, Priest, and King (Hebrews 1:1-5) as a way to minister more effectively to the people of Haiti. Within this framework, the pastors will learn very practical skills related things the Bible speaks very powerfully to, despair, guilt, anxiety, fear, etc.

Other members of the team will be speaking to biblical truths regarding faith, hope, and love, listening and understanding the person who is dealing wth PTS, and other insights. All of us will be dependent on translators as we not only communicate in the large group settings, but also as we interact with these pastors in small groups, and as we provide individual counseling.

Please pray that God would speak powerfully to the hearts of these hurting, traumatized pastors who have lost so much in their own lives. Pray that the insights we share will not only minister to their needs, but also to the people of their congregations and to the Haitian people as a whole.

Blessings,

Dr. Paul

Our First Snag: The Shipping Container

On Friday of last week, Churches Helping Churches hit a major milestone in our preparation for this conference: We shipped off a 40-foot container out of Miami.
But now we’ve got problems again: They’re not letting the container off the boat in Port-au-Prince so it can be processed through customs. Originally, we were expecting to have the container clear customs on Monday next week, the day our retreat starts.
The materials inside that container are critical for the conference. Here’s what’s inside:
Proclaimers: In a place where 1 out of every 2 people is illiterate, this is how you get the Word of God to them: solar-powered audio Bibles. Faith Comes by Hearing, the manufacturer of these products, is giving one to each attendee of this conference.
Haitian trauma books: David C. Cook has a 500-page counseling trauma kit. It was adapted to Haiti and translated into Creole. The first versions came off the press on Wednesday and were dropped shipped to Miami in time to ship for the container closing on Thursday. This is a phenomenal resource: Scripture-saturated, group discussion oriented, and knowledgeable. CHC is helping pay for the translation of these materials. Each pastor at the conference will receive one.
Tent: 5,000-square foot event tent and 250 cots: This will serve as one big bedroom where all the pastors will sleep.
Mosquito repellent: Malaria, typhoid fever, and dengue fever. Need we say more?
PLEASE COMMIT THIS TO PRAYER SO THAT WE CAN HAVE WHAT WE NEED TO SERVE THESE PASTORS!
Blessings,
Dr. Paul

How One Haitian Pastor Views the Need in Haiti

The other day the organization sponsoring the pastor's conference I will participate in sent a letter expressing his regret about not being able to attend. He recently returned to his home in Canada from being in Haiti and communicated the following:

Dear colleague in the LORD!
Thank you for this interesting invitation to participate in the May conference in Haiti. I find that it is a very good initiative…
I came back from Haiti last Tuesday exhausted, but happy to have served the Lord in this physically devastated, emotionally traumatized country … despite the big number of evangelicals, and of overcrowded churches. The biggest blessing which our country needs it is that of a spiritual awakening of the church of Jesus Christ, and it will have to begin with the leaders.
Post traumatic disturbances of our Haitian brothers and sisters are very real. I saw them myself, having made [sic] the terrible experience of earthquake in Port-au-Prince on January 12th. Training will be very much useful, but it will also be necessary to consider the counseling for the pastors themselves, because they are traumatized shepherds called to serve traumatized people. …
I give you the assurance of my prayers for the ministry which you are going to do for the glory of our common Lord and Savior. I shall ask that God provokes the necessary workers, and uses the team which will leave as good comforters and counselors.
I hope that this conference will be only the first stage of a plan of action which will touch as much soul as mind of the leaders and of their flock. Needed are new leaders for a new church, a new church for a new society, a new society for a new Haiti.
Brotherhood greetings in Jesus Christ,
F.N.Ottawa, Canada

I think this man captures our heart for the pastors and people of Haiti very well.
Blessings,
Dr. Paul

Pastors Helping Pastors

Imagine losing your home, your church, and members of your family. Imagine you are a pastor, someone people look to for guidance, but you are experiencing the same hurt, shock, and despair many of your people are dealing with. I can't imagine it, but I am about to see it once again as I leave for Haiti with Churches Helping Churches. Our focus will be on ministering to pastors as they have a key role in Haitian society. But as people come to them for help, guidance, encouragement, etc., to whom do they turn to when they are hurting.

So you can call this conference pastors helping pastors. We are going to Haiti to equip and train these men to understand Post-Traumatic Stress. Even more important, we want to encourage, help, and minister to these men of God and the needs and hurts they are trying to cope with. There are four of us who are pastors coming from the US, and another 15 pastors who are Haitian and living in the US. We will provide large group teaching sessions, small group sessions where pastors can share their experiences, and individual counseling with us.

Pray for God's blessing on this conference and even that it would be the start of revival among the peopleo of Haiti.

Blessings,

Dr. Paul

Preparations for Haiti

Plans are coming together for my upcoming trip to Haiti. I will be flying out of Philly on May 23, joining up with two of our team members, and flying into Port au Prince out of Miami. Thankfully, most of my shots from the Cambodia trip are applicable to Haiti! At this time, one of the biggest needs we have is for a prefabricated structure to be built at the STEP seminary location. Their main building, as seen in this picture, was destroyed in the earthquake, so we need a larger structure to accomodate the 200 pastors who will be attending. Churches Helping Churches is close to securing a contractor , so please pray for God to provide.
Haiti is a country that even before the earthquake was in a bad way. The population is about 9 million and ranks 88th in population. Life expectancy is 61 years and compared to the world it is 181st. AIDs is 2.2 per 100,00 which makes it 28th in the world. Health care is scarce and is definitely sub-standard. The literacy rate is about 53%. In terms of poverty, 80% live under the poverty line, and 54% live in abject poverty. Since the earthquake, many people have either fled the country, or have been displaced to other parts of Haiti. Many of these displaced people live in tent cities. These tent cities range in size from 800 to 15,000 tents in size. Regarding religion, 80% of the country is Roman Catholic, and 50% practice vodoo. Crime and violence are very prevalent, and the Haitian police are understaffed, poorly equipped, and unable to respond to most calls for help.
So, as you can see, this is one needy country. Please pray as we finalize our preparations.
Blessings,
Dr. Paul

Three Days in Seattle

I know I promised some more thoughts about changes in marriage and family in today's society, but I unexpectedly found myself in Seattle this week. I spent three days in Seattle with Mike Wilkerson and Justin Holcomb from the pastoral staff of Mars Hill Church, Pastor Robert Cheong from Sojourn Church in Louisville, KY, and Tom Kim, the director of a new ministry, Churches Helping Churches.

The reason for these meetings was to plan a conference for pastors in Haiti next month. The purpose is to minister to their needs, and then to encourage and equip them to minister to their congregations and the people of Haiti. Soon after the earthquake, Pastor Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill, and Pastor James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago flew to Haiti and were so moved by the devastation that they decided to start a new ministry, Churches Helping Churches.

So you ask what is my connection with all of this? Mark Wilkerson from MHC attended a seminar I gave in 2007 at the CCEF national conference on Responding to Disaster and Crisis. Mike called me last week and asked for me to join their planning team for the conference because of my experience in working with pastors and missionaries, and my work to develop a biblically based response to traumatic stress. So within a week of the first call, I found myself in the offices of Mars Hill Church located in a converted waterfront warehouse with a group of four other men who I didn’t know, putting together a 5 day program for Haitian pastors in crisis. Even though we come from diverse backgrounds, there was an uncanny unity in Christ as we focused on the task at hand. It was a priviledge to work with these men.

In about a month the team will be flying into Port of Prince to minister and provide biblical counseling to a group of 200 pastors. We will be working with STEP seminary at a yet to be determined location (the seminary was partially destroyed). Make no mistake about it, Haiti right now makes just about any other place poverty stricken country in the world look like a palace. Most of the displaced people are living in tent cities ranging in size from 800 to 15,000. Tom Kim has been to Haiti a number of times since the earthquake. He told us heart breaking stories of pastors who are simply shell shocked at the loss, not only for their communities and churches, but in their own lives. One pastor lost all five of his children. Another pastor walks around what’s left of his church building each day crying out to God. While the UN and other relief agencies are working to provide for the physical needs of the people, there is NO organized effort by any other organization to provide help for the pastors, or biblical counseling in traumatic stress (even among secular organizations, there is very little work to provide counseling support to the people). Please keep the team in prayer as we reach out to the church in Haiti. To find out more about Churches Helping Churches, go to their web site, www.churcheshelpingchurches.org, or you can find them on Facebook and Twitter. God be the glory! More to follow on this.

Blessings,

Dr. Paul