Saturday, May 5, 2012

Pape Poze

“Pape Poze” is an interesting name, especially for a truck.  It’s a truck I got very familiar with during a week I spent in Haiti last summer. This truck was part of everything we did.  It seemed that anything we needed transported, Papa Poze could carry.  Cement blocks, rebar, concrete mix, huge containers of water, food supplies—you name it—we loaded, transported, and unload stuff from Papa Poze.
Marcel Destiny is the owner and driver. Marcel is a Haitian pastor who has given his life to seeing churches and schools grow in Haiti. Marcel leads a network of eleven churches and schools in the St. Marc, Haiti area. With each of these churches and schools, there’s always a building project of some sort.  Piece by piece, load by load, Papa Poze delivers all the supplies for these projects. Marcel seems rather close with his truck—I guess close enough to give it a name and paint it on the front.   
But, Pape Poze has also been used for things beyond Marcel’s building projects.  Marcel told us stories about the days that followed the devastating earthquake in Port-a-Prince.  St. Marc is a two-hour drive north of the capital city and though they felt the ripples of the earthquake, the damage was quite minimal.  Word trickled into St. Marc of the enormous damage in the capital, the lives lost and thousands of people displaced from their ruined homes. Marcel told of his church loading up Pape Poze with small bags of water and then daily for three straight weeks, they delivered water to the damaged areas.  He said after the first day, they had to park the truck a few miles away and hand-carry the water into the city to avoid mobs that may overturn the truck in their desperation for water. What a vital piece of equipment this truck is to Marcel!
On Sunday of that week I spent in Haiti, the work projects stopped. No cement blocks, rebar, or gravel.  Instead, Pape Poze picked up people. Marcel took the long route to church through the streets of St. Marc, stopping on several occasions where people would pile in the back of truck.  Lots of people! More people than I would have considered possible for Papa Poze to handle. People packed in the cab.  People on top of the cab. People sitting on each other’s laps on the benches in the back.  People standing, holding onto bars and rails to keep their balance.  At one point, I asked one of the guys on top of the cab to get a headcount. After a few minutes, he reported with a huge smile on his face, “Forty one! There’s 41 people on this truck right now!”
Moments later, we pulled into the church driveway.  We piled out and I began to observe one of the most powerful church experiences I’ve ever seen. People were coming from everywhere; some by foot, some by motorcycle, even an old bus filled with kids from a local orphanage.  Everyone dressed in their clean Sunday-best clothes. The music started and people gathered in the auditorium, every seat filled with people standing in the back while others stood outside participating through open doors and windows.  The worship was loud, long, and very expressive. Marcel preached his heart out and people engaged and affirmed his words with their expressions and words. 
After five days in Haiti, what happened on Sunday answered my question: “Why?” Why do this? Why the building projects? Why the poverty and earthquake relief efforts? Why not leave the mess of Haiti to the Red Cross and other global relief agencies?  The answer: the Gospel. Only when the good news about the resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ, takes hold, does true relief and rebuilding take place.  Marcel and Pape Poze were living out this truth. Preach the Gospel. Take care of the needy.
This is what I love about the message of Acts 6.  As the first church formed and came together, needs began to arise. The most vulnerable and needy members of their group, the widows, came into conflict with each other. The Greek-speaking widows were feeling slighted as they saw the Hebrew-speaking widows receiving better care. The Apostles, commissioned to preach, teach, and pray, had a crisis and conflict on their hands. The care of the widows needed attention and oversight. If they neglected the needy in their midst, their message would be hollow. If they focused all their attention on the human crisis in front of them, the spiritual work of teaching and training would be put on the back burner, compromising their mission.  I love their solution. They chose good men to attend to the physical needs of their congregation, freeing them to do what God asked them to do. Leadership expanded, needs were met, and the Good News was proclaimed.
I love how the Gospel and humanitarian efforts work together. God calls us to bring healing to a broken world; to bring truth to injustice, to feed the hungry, to care for the widows and orphans, to bring hope to the destitute and care for the weary.  But, what makes the church powerful in these endeavors is the hope, forgiveness, and freedom that is given through the message of the Resurrected Jesus. What a wonderful mission for us to embrace—bring hope and relief in Jesus’ name! 

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