| By
Michael Wacht
LAKELAND — When the Rev. Linda Standifer
visited Haiti more than three years ago, she felt that any help
Florida Conference churches sent to the Caribbean nation would be like
flushing money down the toilet.
“There was so much need, we couldn’t do
anything to affect it,” she said. “Now, we need to go to give the
people hope. We need for them to know that people are standing beside
them.”
Standifer is pastor of First United Methodist
Church, Hobe Sound, and chairwoman of the Florida Conference’s
Mission Ministry team. She traveled to Haiti for five days last month
to help with the Florida Conference-sponsored Institute of Preaching.
The Institute of Preaching is an annual pastor
training event held in the Florida Conference. The Rev. Raphael
Dessieu, president of the Methodist Church of Haiti, asked the Florida
Conference’s Mission Ministry Team for assistance training the
nearly 400 pastors there. The Florida Conference’s Institute of
Preaching funded the event in Haiti, and the Mission team provided
some of the leadership.
Standifer said conditions were worse than during
her first visit three years ago. She said the nation’s
infrastructure is deteriorating. People have electricity for a few
hours each day, so they can’t store food in their refrigerators.
Their water comes from cisterns and is not safe to drink.
“The roads are full of potholes,” she said.
“I watched one car trying to maneuver through a place where five
roads converge without any stop signs. The whole front end of the car
fell into a hole. We have so much in this country, things people here
would not consider luxuries.
“You can’t walk on the sidewalks because
they’re packed with people selling things that we throw away. I
think it’s wonderful… it gives the people who are selling some
income and the people who are buying some dignity.”
Since Standifer does not speak Creole or French,
she wasn’t able to negotiate prices with the street vendors. Her
Haitian guide helped her, but when the vendors saw she had American
money, they jumped into her car to exchange it for their Haitian
money. “You get a better exchange rate on the street than in the
banks,” she said. “I’ve been around a lot of people and a lot of
diverse groups, but that was very frightening.”
In the midst of Haiti’s needs, Standifer said
she saw the Methodist Church of Haiti acting as a catalyst for change
and giving people hope. “The Methodist Church is the only source of
education, power and hope,” she said. “Methodist churches are at
risk of getting blown up by the Aristide government. There are some
outspoken people in the churches…trying to get the people to say
what they want…trying to sell democracy.”
Many of the 138 Haitian Methodist churches have
schools that educate more than 20,000 Haitian children. The churches
struggle to pay the teachers, and some use volunteers. Most of the
churches don’t pay their pastors, either, Standifer said. Of more
than 400 pastors, only 10 are paid.
The pastors Standifer met were interested in
knowledge. “At the Institute the students were so hungry for
information,” she said. “They even asked about Maslow’s
Hierarchy of Needs…which says you fulfill someone’s basic needs
before trying to offer them spirituality. I thought, ‘Man! These
people are brilliant.’ If they can’t pay them, at least they can
educate them.”
Standifer said the paper Florida Conference
churches have been asked to collect and take to this year’s Florida
Annual Conference Event May 28-31 in Lakeland will help the Haitian
church create educational material for its pastors and students. The
paper will also allow the Methodist Church to supply educational
materials to the nation’s other parochial schools.
The Haitian people are very anxious to connect
with new people, according to Standifer. “People were very, very
eager for me to communicate with them and to communicate with me,”
she said. “The children were precious. I didn’t understand what
they were saying, but I knew what they were singing, because I knew
the melodies. It was so wonderful to be connected through music, which
opens the soul.” |
