Almost on the road..........

Ok friends.....we are exactly one week out of the big ride. We're going to leave from Del Mar, California next Monday, September 27 and head east until we hit the Atlantic Ocean! As I've noted on the site we've slightly shifted our focus from building a building to filling a building. Let me explain what I mean by that. Originally, it was the goal of Pedal for Haiti to re-build a New Missions School on the Leogane Plain in Haiti. After discussing this goal with our friends at New Missions we determined that it would be easier to measure and much more tangible to focus on sending children to school. We loved the idea and New Missions had a school in mind that we could serve. Where you ask? Concrab. Concrab is a small oceanside village just a short walk from the New Missions compound. It's poverty and need isn't much different from the other 21 schools New Missions runs there on the Leogane Plain. As a matter of fact we had the privilege of visiting Concrab during our October 2009 trip to Haiti. Check out the pictures of the school/church on http://www.pedalforhaiti.org.

The girls in the photo at the top of this post were kind enough to pose for pics while we visited. They have the New Missions yellow and white gingham uniforms on. It's amazing how that pattern effects me now. If I see it anywhere it takes me to Haiti and reminds me of the children.

So, we are going to focus on filling the church/school at Concrab. We would like to see 100 children sponsored as a result of the ride and this is where you come in. Through your giving we can make this happen. Each $360 increment is one more child in the Concrab school. We're already approaching 10 children thanks to your generosity. Remember, you don't have to give $360 - you can give $5 or $10 or $100 - whatever works for you. When you do - you change the life of a child forever. In Haiti, going to school is a big, big deal. If you can go to school, you might be able to redirect your family tree. Going to school is a privilege and children and adults alike know the value. I've sat with mothers who've told me that their one wish is to get their children in school. That they'd give anything to see their children in school. Why you ask? Well there are many reasons - here are a few. Children in New Missions school have opportunity - opportunity for a better life. In a New Missions school they receive a meal a day, they are given special gifts for the holidays and most importantly they are taught biblical life changing truths. Combine all that with medical care and you can begin to see why it's so critical for these children to be part of a New Missions school.

Poverty of education is a terrible reality in Haiti. Its just one of many forms of poverty that grips this nation. Pastor George DeTellis set out 27 years ago to make a change and we can honor his dream - we can be a part of his legacy. New Missions has an opportunity to change the path of an entire country through the development of strong Christian leaders. Those of you who have spent time with New Missions kids or even better New Missions graduates know that this dream is entirely possible. Each child educated, nurtured and loved through the New Missions schools represents another opportunity to change Haiti forever. Through our ride you and I may be part of sponsoring a future lawyer, doctor or government official each capable of leading change in a nation so desperately in need of a brighter tomorrow. We love these kids! We believe in these kids! Help us help them make a change.

We truly love Haiti and it's people. We beleive in Haiti. One child at a time, Haiti is moving into a brighter future. Help us to help those in need. The least of these.

7 days to go! More to come.......

Hello Everyone!

As you can see the I've changed the name to "Pedal for Haiti" as this best fits our next big adventure. In September (3 months from this coming Sunday), Monty Patton and I will be heading out from San Diego, CA to pedal across the United States in an effort to raise money to rebuild schools and churches on the Leogane Plain.

We need you to "come along for the ride". This means you can do one or many of the following:

1. Ride with us! Side by side on our route across America. You pick the distance. We'd love to have you!
2. Meet us at one of our 39+ destination cities along the way! We'd love to meet you and we need all the encouragement we can get!
3. Donate to the cause. Be part of making Haiti a better place. We can't make all of it better, but we can make it better one person, one school, one church at a time!
4. Much more!!!

I'll have much more over the coming weeks as we ramp up training and fundraising.Our partner on the ride will be New Missions (www.newmissions.org) and outside of minor ride expenses all funds raised will go to New Missions - serving in Haiti for 27 years!

Talk to you all soon!

Dave

P.S. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter at pedalforhaiti!

Hope Now - Faces and Prayers

Haiti 2008 Slideshow

Serpent and the Rainbow

I know, I know......I'll be getting to the mission trip story shortly. I just keep coming up with little items I want to post.

Wade Davis wrote the Serpent and the Rainbow back in 1985 and it tells quite a story. Unfortunately, Hollywood got a hold of it a few years later and ruined it. Nonetheless, the book is excellent. I wanted to share one of my favorite quotes regarding Haiti. Having just returned, it sums up (and confirms) some of the emotion I feel.

"The nation baffled me. Stunned by her multitudes

awed by her mysteries, dumb founded by

her contradictions..........I paced."

- Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow

I love and miss Haiti already. Please pray for Haiti. - Dave

A Little Background Information

It'll be helpful if I provide a little bit of background information before I start detailing the journey. Most importantly the who's who. First of all - there are eight of us on the team. Four have been to Haiti before and four will be coming along for their first trip. That said - here's our team:

• Me, Steve, Barbara, Susan, Sarah, Christy, Nicole and Ralph
  

We also met up with six others in Miami who we did not know (yet). That completed our team and made it a nice 14 altogether. They are:

• Richard, Iva, Joseph, Eddie, Christy and Molly
  

There were many veteran Haiti Missionaries on this team. Richard, Iva and Joseph had all been coming for as many as eight years and Eddie was on his fourth trip this year! I knew as soon as we met up with these folks in the Miami airport that we were in for a great week. I was very excited.

As God does He put many different skill sets together on this team and the combination was perfect for the mission. Take a look at these skills:

Richard and Iva - Married couple who run an organization called Hope for Caribbean Kids Inc.

Molly - An ER nurse

Christy - A singer with a beautiful voice

Eddie - All around great guy who exudes joy; handyman and Mr. Fix It

Joseph - Photographer

Steve - Auto Repair, Small Engine Repair, everything repair, musician and a true servant

Nicole, Christy, Sarah, Ralph and Myself - Lovers of kids, uniform fabric cutters and distributors, picture takers, horse puncher (it's a long story - I'll share in another post) and lizard catchers.

Barbara and Susan - Worker bees, organizers, worshippers, bubble blowers, game players, lovers of kids, picture takers, gigglers and maternal figures for the rest of us.

These are not the complete list of skills within the team by any means but as you can tell we had quite the make up and were ready for action.

Disclaimer: Along the way I may skip a detail or not tell a story exactly right. Therefore I encourage comments from team members. If you're one of the 14 above and your reading along - please add comments and details. Get involved and make this blog come alive so we can share our experiences with more than just our loved ones. Sharing will help Haiti as others can be made aware of the great needs in this country we've all come to love so much.

Also, if you're not one of the 14 above and would like to comment - please do. It's how I know your out there and it makes it all the more exciting to know that someone is following along with our story. I'd love to hear from you.

An Attitude of Gratitude or 5 Days to Go!

And we're done! It's been quite a run. In the last sixty days we've had a restaurant fundraiser (Thanks Rubio's) a Car Wash (Thanks Mountain Ridge Baptist Church and Chick Fil A) and a fantastic fundraising dinner called "A Taste of Haiti" (Thanks Mountain Ridge, Chick Fil A, Mountain Ridge Youth and many more).

We are now 5 days out. All that stands between us are a Tropical Storm named Hannah, a Hurricane named Gustav and what the weather service calls a "potential disturbance" of high intensity which could be Ike. It's in God's hands though. Nothing is greater than God and His plans will prevail and we will accept whatever it is He lays before us.

I title this post "An Attitude of Gratitude" because that's exactly what I have right now. I wish I could share the excitement of Friday night's event with you. Like many other awesome events in our lives it went all too fast and appears as a blur in my memory. Nonetheless, I do know this. We were able to raise a good portion of money for Haiti. We were able to share the needs of the Haitian people with at least 140 people and best of all we saw people coming together as the hands and feet of Christ right there at the dinner. No - we weren't directly serving the poor and no we didn't run out and clothe the needy that evening but what we saw were people using their finances and giving up their evening to support the team, to fight against poverty and to learn more about what's happening in other parts of the world where there is need. I saw the Mountain Ridge Youth coming together to serve and many adults too. I saw people sacrificing items for the silent auction and I say people bidding and buying to raise funds. I heard from people who were touched by the videos we presented and I heard from others who said "Send Me! - I want to go!" How great is that!?

More to come - Pray for those in the path of Gustav and pray for our team as we make final preparations for the big trip! Be back soon. Thanks for all your patience with my intermittent blogging.

Quick Update

Come see some of the team this Sunday from 12pm to 4pm at the Cabelas at Westgate in Glendale. We're going to work with the "Fire Up Freedom" Fire Engine to attract some folks, create some awareness and possibly raise some funds. Here's the addresses and websites - We'd love to see you there!



Fire Up Freedom - Click Here to Check out their Site



Cabela's at Westgate - We'll be in the lot near the Fire Up Freedom Truck

Stop by and Say "Hello" - We appreciate the support! Talk to you soon!

The Next Step - More Details

We are now one month and four days from the trip! We had an awesome team meeting on Wednesday and this little group is excited and ready to work. I know it's only a week in Haiti, but just think, if more teams went down and just put in a week all year long.....more would happen.

Your now part of our journey as a reader and I hope you stay along for the ride. I'll blog up to the trip and then throughout it. You're going to live this one with us through this blog!

We've got exciting fundraisers coming up and I can't wait to share the needs and story of Haiti with my community. This is a message that we all need to hear. Here's what's coming up:

Saturday, August 16 - Blood Drive (benefit Red Cross locally) and Car Wash (for Haiti)

• This should be a fun day and we're hoping to have some additional things going on to attract passer-bys.

Friday, August 29 - Bondye Li Bon Tout Tan - God is Good All the Time - A Night for Haiti

• In the simplest form, this will be a nice evening with music and dinner


• Working on musical entertainment (ColdSoup) our local favorite


• Hoping to have additional things such as short clips of previous trips, speakers, Haitian food testing and more

We're meeting weekly now and the excitement of the team is growing. If you've got additional ideas for fundraising, we need it. Feel free to share in the comments section below. Anything we raise outside of airfare and mission expense will go to rice which has risen sharply in price in the past year. If you'd like to send a donation you can mail it to:

Mountain Ridge Church

Haiti Mission Team - Attention Barbara

23104 N. 67th Ave

Glendale, AZ 85310

More importantly prayer is appreciated. Money does alot, but our God is bigger and He can do alot more than money ever could. Thanks for reading - More to come!

I'm Still Here!!

I know, I know. I said I'd probably be writing more with school starting and here I am after a two week absence. I'm terribly sorry. It was exactly the opposite of what I expected. Not that I expected school to be easy - by all means no. But I did expect to be on-line more frequently and although true. I have not been on-line blogging. I've been researching and writing and contributing to discussion boards and so on and so on. All in all it's been a blast and I'm still carrying an "A" in both classes as we enter into week three of five. Thank God!

Haiti is now just 5 weeks away and the excitement is building. The team sits at about 7. We have some folks who have expressed recent interest, so who knows, it could grow a little more. I'm thrilled to be part of this group and their excitement is contagious. We are still in need of plenty of prayer on the finance side. I started fund raising a bit late and now we're in the predicament of having great fund raisers planned but all of them occur after the airline ticket purchase deadline as well as the final payment to New Missions deadline. Anyone interested in a short term loan for a team of six or seven to Haiti? We should be able to pay it off by the end of August and the dividends will be tremendous!! Just send me an email...... : )

On that same subject, today's sermon was part of a series titled "What to do When Life Happens" and although I've enjoyed all the messages, today's was especially personalized. Here's the pre-story: As I mentioned above, we're about two weeks out of our flight booking deadline and payment deadline for New Missions. In total, that's about $6500 dollars for the team. We're all actively collecting and we're all actively praying, but the reality is we're getting close. Today's sermon was about Abraham and the offering of his son Isaac. Pastor told us that as Abraham came up one side of the mountain, God had a ram coming up the other side. God had a plan in that ram. A plan to provide an offering for Abraham in place of Isaac. Abraham did not know that though. Abraham fully intended to follow through with God's command of offering his son. Abraham's faith and trust in God was all that was needed and when he heard "Do not lay a hand on the boy", Abraham looked into the thicket and saw a ram caught by the horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. Awesome!

I still don't get it you say........Here's my thought and my encouragement. As we trudge up one side of this mountain worried about funds and paying for the trip, I truly believe God's got a ram (a financial ram) coming up the other side to meet us in our faith and trust. I don't know how, but I believe God wants this team in Haiti come September 6th. Trust and pray with us! If it's in your heart, give a little too! Most importantly, trust and pray. That's what this team is going to do. God Bless and Thanks for reading!

Freedom

I would guess that Galatians 5:1 was probably a frequently quoted verse in churches across the country this weekend. It says that "It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery." In Galatians, Paul is writing to the churches in Southern Galatia. In this particular passage he is referring to the freedom we receive from Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Through that sacrifice we are free to live unselfishly and free of the bonds of sin. Check it out.

When I reread that verse, the second sentence reminds of something I've read numerous times by many authors. That is that poverty is a form of slavery. Had I not seen it first hand, I may not have understood the comment. When your level of poverty effects your every day survival then you are enslaved to it. It rules you and keeps you from even the basics. The basics such as shelter, food, clean drinking water and sanitation. I know we've all seen it on Feed the Children infomercials and other TV specials, but it's not as real when your sitting on your living room couch with a cold drink and a bag of chips. It is real when you smell it and see it first hand. It's real when walk into a village and the children swarm around you. It's real when you peek into the simple thatched homes to find only a mat and some basic utensils. Most of all it's real when you look into their eyes and see the need. Poverty steals so much from the children of Haiti. It limits their opportunities and in many cases limits their lives.

Poverty has changed the way Haitian people act and react. For example, they are amazingly creative and talented. While there, you'll see normal everyday items ingeniously re-made into helpful tools, utensils or other necessities. They generally don't discard things (at least not in the country) because they are constantly thinking of another way to use and re-use. Not because they are "green" but because they are poor.

When it comes to poverty controlling how they react, I think of a recent blog I've been reading called the Pye's in Haiti. It appears that the worst has happened for this family recently and they've lost a child. It sounds like Jabez was three years old. The reason I mention this blog and family is because of a recent post on their site. They write about mourning the Haitian way. Their point in the writing is that the Haitian people know suffering and through this they mourn differently. The blog says that oftentimes a Haitian woman will have five or more children and rarely sees them all make it to their third birthday. A woman that I had the privilege to meet on our trip last year had 12 children. Can you imagine? That's with no hospitals, vaccines, prenatal or postnatal care for that matter.

The Haitian people are incredibly strong. They are proud and they are very, very hard working. All this and poverty still enslaves them. It's also important to note that Haiti is the first free black nation. Free in 1804 after a slave rebellion that Hollywood is currently trying to recreate on film. Go get em' Danny Glover. If it draws some focus to the modern day needs in Haiti, I'm all for it. We'll have to wait till next year for that one though.

Poverty is out there and it's ugly. It smells bad, it looks bad and saddens me to think of the children who as the least of these face the most suffering as result. I encourage you to think outside of your comfort zone. It may be uncomfortable and it may be bit of a downer, but you know what, starvation is a downer and it's happening as you read. It's happening in Haiti and many other places in our world. If you take away one thing from today's ramble consider giving. Give to the wonderful folks at New Missions. You can sponsor a child for about $30 a month or you can opt to pay for rice which is so desperately needed. Not to mention it's skyrocketed in cost this year.

Only a two months till our trip! Please be in prayer for our finances as we attempt to pay for the different things that are needed (travel, hotel, vaccines and time at the mission). I'm guessing we're going to need about $1200-1500 per person. It's a small team, but we'll join up with others and I know that we can make a difference. We won't change the world, but we'll be able to make a child who may not have smiled or experienced hope that day do exactly that. In some ways they can expereince a short respite from poverty or at least forget about it for a few moments. That's freedom and that's an accomplishment that pays great dividends.

As always, thanks for reading and check back soon!