My mom recently pointed out to me a piece (True Gentlemen Go Global) from my brother’s fraternity alumni magazine. It dealt with a group of SAE frat guys going down to work on a school and hospital in Haiti – very similar to the work our church has done with New Life for Haiti. Having heard Mike’s take on such a project, I was curious about the frat boy response. These guys referred to themselves as missionaries since they were vaguely connected to a missions group, but they were clear that they were different. They were not the typical missionaries with “guilt complexes” ready to serve.
Even still as they reflected on the trip, their reasons made sense. They said, “coming to Haiti, being a missionary — it wasn’t about doing something good in a poor country or helping paint a room even bringing medical supplies to a village in the middle of nowhere. It was about a promise. It was about an obligation. It was about the realization that you have the capacity to give, which means you have the duty to give.” The men felt good about (as it was described) fitting into the “traditional Baptist framework of Haiti, [where] it’s understood that those who are blessed to turn those good fortunes into blessings for others. You receive a blessing in order to give them away.” (I don’t think they’ve heard that that is a traditional biblical framework…)
This sounded very similar to the Christian groups I’ve heard report on their experiences. But then the article continued to go on about all the hardships the guys suffered – getting their parents to let them go someplace so dangerous, sleeping in stuffy cabins, having to walk in unlit areas at night, and having the local children get in their way while they tried to help improve their school. But most saw that it was worthwhile to give up a week of vacation so their presence could be “a gift to the Haitians.” But even with all the talk about having a duty to give and be a blessing, there was this incident reported –
In our American hometowns, we’re used to streetlights and headlights and constant illumination, but the streets of Pignon, Haiti, where only a few lights shine on a few street corners, most of the village sits in darkness. Dirt roads, winding and confusing in the daylight, became pockmarked mine fields. Low cinder-block walls become tripwires. To make matters worse, we had been told that things at night were not nearly as friendly for Americans as they were during the day. Nothing we encountered helped the general sense of unease that had settled on the group since a breathless messenger five minutes prior had told us we were needed urgently. “Will,” he said, out of breath and speaking to the trip’s leader, “the doctors need you at the hospital. Now.”
This was a problem. Either someone from our group had done something colossally stupid, something that couldn’t wait to be remedied in the morning, or the hospital’s owner had returned early from his trip and needed our help. After carefully making our way through trash and dirt-filled streets — praying that the village’s sole generator didn’t switch off, leaving us in total darkness — we stepped through the hospital’s iron gate, the one that warned us to leave our guns at the door, and looked for friendly faces. We were alone; no one spoke English. The only others around were poor Haitians, looking for healing the way the faithful congregate at a church in times of distress. The scene was looking even more grim until we found a friendly face: The doctor who sent for us.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “A woman on the operating table needs a blood transfusion. She is very sick.”
We didn’t know what to say, so we looked at him blankly.
“We need one of you to donate blood.”
This wasn’t what we expected. These 11 men, undergraduates from the University of Arkansas, had signed up for a mission trip to build things and make friends, not to serve as donors for a woman in danger of bleeding out from an emergency hysterectomy. The next three minutes were a flurry of discussion. “What’s your blood type?” they asked each other. “What if we’re not a match?” “Is anyone O-positive?” “Is it even safe to give blood?”
Very few things prepare anyone for decisions like these. One week before Christmas, when friends and loved ones 1,600 miles away were making plans to go out on a Saturday night and were finalizing holiday travel plans, we were wondering who was going to save the life of a poor Haitian woman. It soon became apparent that no one was going to volunteer.
Will Smith, our man in charge, made the final decision. We weren’t going to serve as donors. Making difficult decisions is part of being a leader, part of showing the right path. Without warning, Smith faced a choice he didn’t want to face and, using his best judgment, decided he couldn’t put any of his men at risk.
“Thank you for considering helping us,” the doctor said when Smith told him of the group’s decision. “I will do my best to save this woman.” Our walk to the hospital was through the fading twilight, which did little to calm any fears, but the black night sky that greeted us on the walk home was as dark as our thoughts. Haiti needed our help in more ways than we could give.
The article never tells what happened to the woman, although it does later call the hospital the “Mayo clinic of Haiti.” To be honest I don’t know what I would have done in that situation. But I was shocked at how different their response to the trip and this situation were from the typical Christian response. Maybe it is our “guilt complex,” but the sense of obligation Christians have to care for others no matter the cost didn’t factor into this story. I have no problem with what these guys are doing – serving others and moving out of one’s comfort zone are always good things. But I found the whole thing curious and a bit depressing. How much can we really help and love others when we aren’t willing to really be with them and learn from them? A few days ago I blogged about how compassion is part of what Christ called us to. So this example of what service without Christ’s call to love looks like grabbed my attention. Honestly, I don’t want to disparage these efforts, I’m just pondering what it does take to move people to true compassion.
So I just noticed a few of the recent links to my blog. Over the last few days, I’ve been labeled as “feminist priestess blogger” and given a Subversive Blogger Award (thanks 
Yesterday we took Emma to a local children’s museum. She calls the place the “museum house” and begs to go there. Basically it’s a place where the kids get to “play” with all sorts of educational installations that supposedly teach them about gravity, light, sound, wind… Mike had never been, so we braved a museum on a Saturday in winter (if it feels like winter, it’s still winter – the picture’s from last summer btw). To clarify, Mike braved the masses and interacted with Emma and I sorta waddled around and claimed whatever chair/bench I could find.