Remembering The Boat To Haiti

Honestly, I’d forgotten all about the boat to Haiti till yesterday when I heard the news about the terrible earthquake, magnitude 7, that devastated that country on Tuesday afternoon.

Carel Pedre, a TV and radio presenter in Port-au-Prince, told the BBC (at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8455735.stm )…"I saw a lot of people crying for help, a lot of buildings collapsed, a lot of car damage, a lot of people without help, people bleeding."

He said he had seen a cinema, a supermarket, a cybercafe and an apartment building, all of which had crumbled in the quake.

Mr Pedre said he could feel aftershocks every 15 to 20 minutes, lasting from three to five seconds each. The darkness, he said, was compounding the fear and worry people were feeling.

"There is no electricity, all the phone networks are down, so there's no way that people can get in touch with their family and friends," he said.

He said he had not seen any emergency services, adding that while people in the neighbourhood were trying to help each other, they did not know "where to go or where to start".

Reuters reporter Joseph Guyler Delva said when the quake hit the city "everything started shaking, people were screaming, houses started collapsing".

Mr Delva said he had seen dozens of casualties. "I saw people under the rubble, and people killed. People were screaming 'Jesus, Jesus' and running in all directions." He described the scene as one of total chaos.

"Amid the crying and wailing, people are spending the night outside," the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) chief in Haiti, Ricardo Conti, said in a statement at http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2436152

"People are trying to comfort each other. What you are hearing in the streets are the prayers of thanks of those who survived," he added.

"It is extremely difficult to move around the city to assess needs. What is certain is that the quake has had a massive impact on a population already reeling from other recent disasters".

The Wall Street Journal: (at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704362004575000460345415900.html ) reported the disaster:

"I saw dead bodies, people are screaming, they are on the street panicking, people are hurt," Raphaelle Chenet, the administrator of Mercy and Sharing, a charity that takes care of 109 orphans, said in a telephone interview from the capital. "There are a lot of wounded, broken heads, broken arms."

A hospital in Port-au-Prince collapsed, along with dozens of other buildings, including one building in the presidential compound and one other government ministry building, according to Alice Blanchet, a special adviser to the Haitian government. Other landmark buildings in the capital, including the U.N. headquarters and the Hotel Montana, sustained heavy damage, witnesses said.

These news reports triggered my memory.

My memory of the boat to Haiti is hazy and I may have details garbled because as best I can remember this happened back in the late 1970s or early 1980s when our children were small.

It started with our regular family devotions after dinner one night.

Ginny and I always looked for way to instill a sense of Christian charity in our kids. Often during our family devotions we’d read newsletters from missionaries in exciting places. Once the kids folded paper airplanes as a project letting them know about the work of Mission Aviation Fellowship. And once we sponsored an orphan in Indonesia and read her letters at our dinner table. (I can’t remember her name or what happened to her). Now and then, we took them down to a rescue mission and let them serve the homeless in a soup kitchen. Once in a great while we’d have a missionary or evangelist visit for dinner… stuff like that to capture the kids’ interest and imagination and give them some concept of outreach and charity.

Of course Bible readings and prayer formed the mainstay of our after dinner devotions. Yet, in keeping with our strict religious ideals Saturday night devotions meant watching the Muppet Show on tv. And we had Joke Nights and Ask Dad Anything nights which were always good for a laugh.

Then I’d also sometimes give object lessons illustrating Bible verses… Like the night when it was my turn to cook and I filled the cast-iron dutch oven with rocks, water, and a rubber snake; I sprinkled cinnamon over the mixture and set it on the stove to boil. Delicious aroma. Imagine their surprise when the lid came off releasing a cloud of steam!

I then expounded on Matthew 7: 7-11 where Jesus said:

“Ask , and it shall be given you; seek , and ye shall find ; knock , and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened . Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him”?

Then we all walked around the corner to Famous Amos for our meal… Our kids had an interesting childhood.

I’d forgotten all that stuff.

I’m now 70 years old and I forget a lot of things nowadays.

Writing it down makes it sound like more than it was. Really, we are just mediocre comfort-loving Christians trying to survive and make our way in the world. My religious living motto is:

Avoid pain.

Enjoy pleasure.

Maybe God won’t notice.

But as Ginny and I muddle through, Jesus Christ—His incarnation, death, resurrection, and continuing presence—does mean something to us and we tried to impart that to our kids as they grew up.

All that was so long ago I’d forgotten about it till I heard about the earthquake and I suddenly remembered that mission boat.

I forget how we heard about it—evening news maybe?—but we learned that a ship collecting foodstuffs and clothing for Haiti was docked in the St. Johns River behind Jacksonville’s (then) City Hall.

Seems to me that Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere, had just suffered a hurricane or something of the sort.

This looked like a good opportunity for a learning experience for our little kids.

During family devotions, Ginny told the kids about the situation and they gathered up black plastic leaf bags of clothes from their closets and she packed some canned goods and dried foods from our hurricane supplies, and we all drove downtown to the boat.

A shabby little thing, the ship hardly looked seaworthy. The captain, who appeared to be a godly and compassionate man, was from one of the Caribbean Islands himself. Nevertheless, he also appeared to me to be crazy as a loon. He felt the Holy Spirit had told him to take his little ship, load it with supplies, sail to Haiti, and help the poor.

Ok.

He let our kids roam his ship freely. They each carried a box or bag from our house and stow it in the ship’s hole in person. They explored lockers and swung from ropes and ran the bell and spun the wheel and spit over the side—a great adventure.

They all wanted to sail to Haiti with the old man.

Deadbeat Dad and Mom refused them passage.

Killjoys.

That may have been a good move on our part because a few days after the boat sailed from Jacksonville, it sank in the Atlantic. Coast Guard rescued the old man and his crew of two, but the boat and the donations for Haiti were lost at sea.

At the time, I remember feeling we’d been suckers. I begrudged the food and stuff we’d donated. I felt we’d wasted resources for a will ‘o wisp, half-baked religious fanatic.

Besides, we could have used those clothes and that food ourselves. We barely kept our own heads above water and had no business wasting stuff we needed.

That old guy could afford a boat, a ratty old boat it’s true, but more than I could afford. I have an aversion to giving money to people who earn more than I do. Still feel that way.

However, maybe our giving was not for the benefit of the people of Haiti but for the Cowart family. Giving may or may not help the poor, but it will surely help the giver. It may not change anything for them, but it does change us.

Funny thing, years later one of our daughters (was it Eve or Jennifer? Can’t remember) spent one summer on a mission trip helping an impoverished Indian tribe. And to this day both girls pack food baskets for the poor almost every holiday.

And years after that, our son Donald, organized a mission trip for his church and traveled to Haiti (or was it Cuba???) to build something or another for some poor church down there.

And there was the time Johnny brought Norman from under a bush to live with us for a week—the same Norman who said, “It feels good to be inside a building” and who would not walk in front of the tv because Dan Rather was watching him..

And my eldest son Fred, who is a gourmet cook, often prepares Sunday dinner for a group of guys who are not exactly homeless but appear to me to be disenfranchised loners. Fred was not in on the boat adventure,

And, of course, there was the time Patricia fed that poor homeless family with duck food and we all tease her about it unmercifully to this day. Or the time she fixed two of my pipes and my tobacco pouch to give to the craving homeless smoker she met outside her workplace.

Our children have all grown and established their own homes now. They have matured into different levels of understanding and faith from mine. Yet, again and again I have seen our grown kids put themselves out to spread God’s love by hands-on action in helping poor people.

I am so pleased with them.

So, the boat to Haiti sank.

Our meager attempt to send some cast-off clothes and a few cans of beans to Haiti never reached the island.

It never made any difference to them there.

But, it may have made some difference to us here.

You know, the problem with remembering this stuff from long long ago is that it reminds me of how little Christian service I do now.

Bummer.

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Oh, by the way, today is Johnny’s birthday; please stop by his new blog at http://godsinwaiting.blogspot.com/ and leave him a cheerful comment.

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One last thing: Yesterday, just for fun, my e-friend Sherri, whose Matter Of Fact blog is at http://matteroffactsite.blogspot.com/, asked readers to expose themselves by… Er, let me reword that… Sherri asked her readers to “unmask” themselves by posting an un-retouched, unflattering—but fully clothed—photograph of themselves.

I’ll play along. I just scanned in my most recent driver’s license photo. That shows the real me! Anybody got an air brush?