Here are some of my thoughts on Haiti and
specifically how God prepared the team and I for our trip. It was (and still
is) an incredible journey of seeing God move and work. I hope that you'll come
back throughout the next few weeks to read my blogs on Haiti as we will
continue to post them every few days. You'll also be hearing from some of the
members of the team and what God did in and through them as well.
John 4:25 “I tell you open your eyes and look at the
fields. They are ripe for harvest.”
When we arrived at
the town of Belladere, we stayed at the Germain Guest House. Right across the street was a 60 foot
tall mango tree laden with mangoes about 25 days away from harvest. I had read the Catholic Relief Service
Assessment on the Value chain of Mangoes before I left. I had learned that the mango is the
most exported fruit in the world.
Asia, China, India and the Philippines export the most mangoes. In the Americas, Mexico, Brazil and
Peru import the most into the U.S.
It began to dawn on
me that God has blessed Haiti with 10 million mango trees and 80% of their
harvest goes un-harvested. They
have so many mangoes they feed mangoes to the pigs! They sell them in their markets a half-bushel of mangos for
a dollar.
I asked Odines and
Wilson if a meeting could be arranged to meet with the mango and coffee growers
of the Belladere region.
On a Thursday
afternoon I sat with the mango growers under a mango tree and we talked
mangoes. I explained to them that
in America we pay $1 to $2 for a fresh mango. They looked at me like I stepped off a space ship! They were selling their whole tree of
mangoes to the Dominicans for $10 and then trying to take them to the market
and selling a whole basket for a $1.
I explained to them I
did not know how we could make this happen but would they be willing to pray
that we could find a way to pay them ‘the fair trade price’ for their mangoes,
dehydrate them, export them to America and then return some of the profits to
them for community development.
Then we prayed and asked God to move a mountain. When we finished one elderly mango
grower with a big smile on his face said “Can you make this happen in my
lifetime? I am an old man and I
don’t know how many more harvests I have.”
It was an amazing
encounter. By now Wilson, my translator,
understood the concept very well.
He was explaining that we were only in the talking and the praying
phase. I left hearing their hope
for a better life, their dream of educating their children, their faith in a
very big God began to grow.
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