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In early January, members of The Journey at First Baptist
Church in Orange City began to feel a need to venture out
of their comfortable daily life to lend a caring hand to the
poor and hurting of the world. After months of preparation,
a team of 14 missionaries - ranging in age from late
teens to early 60s - boarded a plane headed for the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti.
The name of their mission was "Taking Hope to Haiti,"
with the goal of spreading the love and joy of their faith to
the people of Haiti and also to to bring even the smallest
relief from their poverty through giving of time and supplies.
The team partners with a local church in the city of
St. Marc, Haiti, as well as a one high in the mountains and
another hours away in the rice patties. This partnership
gave church members the ability to minister to almost 2,
000 people, including nearly 600 children. Before the trip,
church and other Volusia County volunteers sewed more
than 600 cloth bags to leave with the children on the last
day of the trip, along with other items for the youth.
One night, upon arriving to a heavily forested area housing
a shack-like structure, Agenon, one of the five translators
that accompanied the team throughout their trip,
got out of the van for the night. The team realized as they
drove away to their hotel that the small run-down shack
was his home. To the team Agenon was their friend and
they couldn't understand how he could live in such a place.
Pastor John Smith, the team's leader, had been to Haiti already
before, but this experience hit him anew with the
realization of Haitians' abject poverty.
"There is one thing about Haiti.," he said. " you can absolutely
get lost in the poverty. It hits you as you drive and
as you walk by. I had been to Haiti one time before, but for
the first time poverty had a name. For the first time it had a
face. I had hugged poverty and his name is Agenor. "
The Journey plans on continuing to send mission teams
to Haiti three times each year, every April, July and October.
In the words of one of the mission team members,
Linda Labash, "The experience humbles me more than I can
describe."
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