September 16, 2002
South Park members don't park
at home but keep trail hot to Haiti
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___HOUSTON--Three trips to Haiti have changed the missions perspective of South Park Baptist Church in Houston.
___"These trips and the reports and excitement of the people who go to those who stay at home are getting our people to not be parochial in scope, but to have a global perspective," Pastor Marvin Delaney explained. "People are being moved to serve the Lord more zealously as we see the way we have been blessed with resources."
___While the differences between life in America and life in the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince are plain, they are even more stark in the villages of Gantier and Tubé, Delaney said.
___Residents of those villages not only live below any definition of a poverty line, they don't even approach such a high standard as poverty, the pastor explained. They have no plumbing, electricity or other modern conveniences. They share long, narrow trenches of water where everyone in the village comes to cook, wash clothes and bathe.
___The people are not malnourished, however, because they live off the natural flora and the subsistence crops of yams and corn that they cultivate.
___Cinder blocks are a prized construction material in many of the homes, but few people have enough blocks to complete their houses. Homes started with cinder blocks almost always must be completed with grasses or pieces of tin. Some homes have no blocks at all and are totally constructed of grass and tin.
___While these villages lie only 40 miles from the capital city, if the "good road" is not blocked, it still takes two to three hours to drive between the villages and the capital. If the good road is not available, the rocky road must be taken--meaning an even longer trip and a bone-jarring one at that.
___Each time South Park Baptist Church has taken a group to Haiti, native Haitian Elisten Plymouth has led about 15 people through three days in Port-au-Prince before heading to the villages.
___While in Port-au-Prince, the team carries banners through the streets announcing revival meetings in the evenings.
___"These revivals meetings get us ready to go into the countryside," Delaney said.
___In the villages, the volunteers focus on church-starting efforts and Christian training. "There is no electricity or anything there, so when we wire it up so that we can have a television and a VCR, people come from everywhere," Delaney explained.
___With assistance from the Southern Baptist Convention's hunger relief fund and the Well of Salvation Project, the Texans helped build a church and created a clean-water system for the Haitians to use for drinking and cooking.
___They also brought food, clothing and musical instruments to the music-loving people of the island.
___While the Texas volunteers are making a difference on the Caribbean island nation, the church's mission efforts also are impacting the Houston congregation. Flags of the countries where the church has ministered adorn the walls of the sanctuary, reminding the 1,900 members of where the church has ministered and of people who need their continued prayers.
___"Our focus has always been missions sending and missions going, but this has changed our perspective," Delaney said. "More people are seeing that missions is not just putting a dollar in the plate and sending it to Lottie Moon, but may be more hands-on."
___Direct experiences have made preaching about missions more real, the pastor said. "Now it's not coming to the table and saying, 'The same old greens and corn bread.' Now, it's still the same old greens and cornbread, but the presentation is different."
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