coming full circle...

"And if you give yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness, and your gloom will become like midday. And the LORD will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail."  Is. 58:10 

I recently read a sobering statistic regarding the expected life span for a man in Haiti…at birth, a man, in Haiti, is expected to live to the age of 60. That hit me kind of hard for two reasons. First, I will be going there soon and witnessing why this is first hand... and secondly…I will be 60 next year. I cannot even imagine that at the age of 60 I will have outlived most men in Haiti and be at the end of my days. But wait… there’s more…Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Infrastructure was virtually nonexistent before the earthquake — no electricity, sanitation system, trash pickup, public school system or source of safe water. The literacy rate is about 50 percent and the average Haitian earns about $1 a day. Vital indicators on child health are infant mortality, under-age-5 mortality and maternal mortality; in Haiti all these are quite grim. While the infant mortality rate was halved from 105 per 1,000 in 1990 to 57 per thousand in 2007, it still is high when compared with the CDC’s latest number from 2006, which shows 6.7 deaths per 1,000 in the United States. Consider that 21 per 1,000 Haitian children younger than 5 will die annually, compared with 8 per 1,000 in the U.S. Maternal mortality is 523 deaths per 100,000 births in Haiti, compared with 13 per 100,000 in U.S. Sadly many of these deaths are entirely preventable. Diseases spread by unsafe water cause 3 million deaths a year, disproportionately affecting young children. Diarrhea, primarily a disease of dirty water, is the biggest killer of children under five in poor countries, resulting in nearly 4,000 preventable deaths each day – nearly 3 deaths every minute of every day. Almost 50 kids just died while I sit writing these words…Water projects are one of the most effective ways of saving lives and one of the most cost-effective investments in disease prevention. Potable water projects typically reduce diarrheal disease by upwards of 50 percent, with even higher reductions during water-borne epidemics, such as cholera which is adding insult to injury in Haiti. The WHO estimates that every $1 invested in water and sanitation yields between $3 and $34 in reduced medical costs and increased productivity, depending on the region. So, this is what I will be doing…I will be part of a team installing 2 water systems and doing health and hygiene teaching in northern Haiti. I never imagined that my life would be taking this turn but it all seems to be making such sense and coming full circle. It started with an unplanned, unprepared and unforeseen bicycle ride in 2008 across the US to raise funds for Blood Water Mission. Blood Water Mission is an organization in Nashville Tennessee which is working very hard to address this issue of clean water in six areas of Africa with an assortment of projects and initiatives. I was part of a team of cyclist who believed that something as simple as a bike combined with our passion to love and serve others well could impact this need. Thus the name of the tour became the RideWell tour focusing on riding well, serving well, loving well, and of course, digging well(s). So, here I am four years later…the story continues, and I will be in Haiti in less than two weeks. I never imagined it, never planned on it, never dreamed about it…but God did. You see, God has this incredible vision for us and we each have a place to enter into this amazing story of redemption and restoration. I realized that this is exactly what is happening in Haiti and now my story continues within the context of a larger one and that is EXACTLY what He wants us to see. I can tell you this revelation has me very excited to see what He has to show me. Stay tuned…I have a sneaky feeling this is going to be a wild ride…maybe even literally.