Discernment

I have been thinking about discernment a bit today, so please excuse me if I go off the deep end and become philosophical, reflective, and religious more than my norm. "Why?", you might ask. Well the reason is that it looks like the mission trip to Haiti has been postponed from January to likely sometime in March. The reason for the postponement is the potential safety issues due to the election run-off that seems to be scheduled to happen about the time we were planning to be in Haiti. The concern from M, a Haitian who helps with local planning for these trips, is that this continued election cycle may cause some social unrest.

Now, don't get me wrong, I respect M's opinion and even agree that there is a safety risk. I guess my general feeling is, so what. Isn't this a time when Haitians, particularly those that don't wish to take part in the social unrest, need others in their mist to stand with them; to let them know that they are not forgotten?

Part of the reason to go to Haiti is to share the stuggles with the Haitians, if only for a while. I don't want to be isolated from the dangers they must face and have them face them alone. I know my presence in Haiti won't mean much to the population and my being there won't help diminish their stuggles, but perhaps it will make a difference to one individual.

This is where discernment comes into play. Who's will am I listening to? God's or mine? I have always had a hard time with discernment. I simply have a difficult time listening to God's will and separating out and ignoring my own stubborn will.

From a practical point of view. If you have graciously helped fund this mission trip I will be contacting you shortly to understand better how you would like to handle your donation going forward. The options are that I can return your donation or the church can hold it to help pay for the trip when it is officially reschedule. If the trip is later canceled then it will be returned. In other word the funds won't go to a general fund; it will be used to support me in a mission trip to Haiti or returned.

Thank You

It is just before the US Thanksgiving holiday and I thought that this would be an appropriate time to thank all those you have contributed to help fund my mission trip to Haiti in January. The time is coming quickly and I am starting to prepare for the trip, which can be difficult with all the other things going on.

I continue to watch the activities that are going on in Haiti through various news and blog outlets. Between the earthquake rebuilding, attempting to establish agriculture capabilities, cholera outbreak, and the upcoming election Haiti has a lot of activities.

On this day I see hope for Haiti. I think it will be a long time before a sense of normalcy returns to Haiti I pray for the Haitian people and celebrate efforts to help move them in a healthy direction.

I am continuing my study of Creole as well. Right now I am on lesson 13 of around 34, so still a long way to go. I wish I knew some local native Creole speakers so I could get some sense if my pronunciation is actually close. Even so, I still wonder how much value it will be to be able to ask someone if they would like to drink something tomorrow evening at the restaurant on St. Joseph's Street. I wonder if there even is a St. Joseph's street.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I wish you and yours a relaxing, contemplative, and happy time.

Speaking of Haiti

S, K, and I spoke at the First Congregational Church in Sutton, MA this morning. Not sure I kept it together as well I would have liked. My experience is Haiti last March is still very vivid and I am able to very easily transport myself back to that time and re-live each and every moment and emotion. It is a pain sometimes, but it does point out how real that experience is to me.

While I had written about 3 pages of text that I was meant to share, I quickly went off script. I do hope I got most the message across, it is all a bit of a blur to me. Not quite sure how long I was up there. It felt short, but time has a funny was of passing when you are speaking to an audience.

Overall I think the talk went well and we showed the video from last years trip after the service as we chatted with a few people from the congregation. The church was very gracious to invite us to speak and I am truly grateful for the opportunity.

I met a gentleman who served in the South Pacific during World War II. We spoke about how you can still live past traumatic events. He was still able to go back to a couple days during the war were all but a few men (about 130) were lost in a battle. These were men that he considered brothers.

We learned some interesting things about the church as well. It was established in 1720, so it has been around quite a while. Their pulpit has a bullet hole. This happened way back when the town was under attach by the local natives. That same pulpit also almost went up in smoke once when the church caught fire. It was saved by a group of men who ran into the burning building and carried the pulpit to safety.

It was a good experience and I hope some from the church decide to join us on the trip. I think it is a worth while experience to participate in a trip like this and it definitively changes your life.

Haiti Trip is a Go

Just found out tonight that the trip to Haiti is a go, even though it looks like we will have far fewer people than we would like. So if you are interested in helping out in Haiti there is still room. As you can see to the left the fund raising continues. I have not yet reached that half way mark, so if you are willing to help I would surely appreciate it.

This Sunday, November 14th, I am planning to help out in a service in Sutton. I am meant to speak at the about the mission trip to Haiti last year. This will be the first time that I have spoken about the trip in a public forum like this and I am hopping I can keep it together. Last year's experience is still very real to me. It was a great experience, but that doesn't mean it is always easy to think back on it. If you are free this Sunday, please come and join us.

There is other fund raising continuing for the Haiti trip as well. We have been put in contact with an organization called Spirit of Hope. This is an organizations "founded to fund individuals and groups that give direct service in Haiti". We are hopeful that they will provide us with some funds to help build the school in Haiti. Another person that is going on trip is working to organize a fund raiser in December up in Nashua, NH. It sounds like it will be a lot of fun as it is being held at a club. Details are not yet firm, but you can be sure when they are I will let people know.

I did read an interesting blog from Hope for Haiti Foundation. It speaks about the level of schooling typically available in Haiti. The more you read about Haiti the more you see how much need in Haiti there was even before the earthquake. It really boggles my mind how easily I was able to turn a blind eye to Haiti for so long. It makes you wonder what else we are missing.

Haiti, Cholera, and Funding

The time is quickly passing by before the the Haiti mission trip and with the news this week of cholera in Haiti the situation on the ground is quite desperate. Now, to be fair, our plan in Haiti is to build a school, which will do nothing to help ease the physical pain or suffering of those that are still reeling from the earthquake or have been stricken by cholera. We do feel the school will represent hope to a community and without hope it can be hard to move forward in situations such as those in Haiti.

On a more practical level, we are are looking at some water purification technology we might be able to bring with us or build out of local materials. Some water filtration has been done on the previous trips in the Dominican Republic and we hope to learn from that as well as other inventions we have seen such as sterilization of water by sunlight or clay pot filter.

I promised an update of the fund raising for this trip. I am currently at $350 out of $2000. So please, if you feel you would like to donate to help support me on this trip I would truly appreciate it. You can donate electronically or send donations to the address below. Any amount is appreciate.

Acton Congregational Church

c/o Haitian Mission Trip / David Bainbridge

12 Concord Road

Acton, MA 01720

Haiti Fund Raising Progress (and more)

Well it has been a little under a month since I announced my fund raising efforts for the Haiti mision trip and as you can see by the tracker on the left I have not been too successful to date, but I do want to thank those who have contributed: thanks Mom! $100 down, $1,900 to go.

It has been a fairly busy month. I have been working on raising awareness of the trip at church by manning a table during the coffee hour and talking about last year's trip and the plans for for this year's trip. I was also sharing the video I made from the photos of the last trip.

I set up a Facebook group so that people interested in the trip can track activities, get event notifications, etc. And finally I printed up some cards (below) for both the Haiti and Dominican Republic Mission trips.

So while there is lots of activities the funds are still moving slowly. If you would like to donate please send anything, and I do mean anything to:

Acton Congregational Church
c/o Haitian Mission Trip / David Bainbridge
12 Concord Road
Acton, MA 01720

Haiti Planning Continues

It is scary how fast it seems that January is going to be upon us. I have announced the mission trip on my Facebook account, but so far not too much traffic from that. I suspect no new donations have come in, but I will let it simmer for a while, before I go an check.

I have been attempting to learn Creole by tape. At points it is hard to believe that Creole has a common heritage with French. Someone made the comment to me that Creole is almost like a slang version of French. I can see that. The one thing that I like about it so far is it hasn't yet made me deal with the gender of nouns. Maybe that will come later, but it is always an aspect of language that I hated and could never get right.

I am also wondering about the best way to start spreading the word abou the mission trip at the Church. I suspect I will try to set up a small table in the coffee hour after church, but not sure yet what I would put on the table and not sure what questions I can actually answer about the trip. All I really know are the dates. I don't know where we will be staying or the location that the school will be built. I am going a bit on faith here and assume it will all work out in the end. I do wish I had some idea of what the school would look like so that maybe I could bring pictures or a mockup of some type.

Tonight I will have to spend some time praying on this. One thing that came up in last Monday's Bible study is that as Christians we are meant to pray before action. This is something I need to work on as I usually focus on the action.

Helping to Build a School in Haiti

In March 2010 I participated on a mission trip to Haiti that provided medical clinics and food distribution. This trip made quite an impact on me and I vowed to return to Haiti when I could. I had originally planned to go back to Haiti in October, then November, but as you might expect plans and Haiti sometimes do not always see eye to eye.

The trip is now firming up and it will be from January 8 to the 16th. The group will consist of 10 to 20 people and we will be helping build a school in the suburbs of Haiti. Within the Haitian culture a building, such as this, is far more than a school as it becomes a focal point for the community.

This January, it will be a year since the earthquake, but if you look at Port-au-Prince the signs of change are few. There is still rubble in the street, trash in the storm drains, and tent cities cover any open space. This is truly a people still in need.

Part of a mission trip is helping others; another part is learning to rely on others. On this mission trip I will be striving, with God's help, to help the Haitian community through friendship and construction. In order to participate on this missions trip I have to rely on others; not only while in Haiti, but while preparing to go to Haiti.

To this end, the cost of the mission trip is between $1,900 to $2,000, which is used to cover travel, housing, food, translators, cooks, drivers, vehicles, construction materials, and construction supervisors. The philosophy of the mission group with which I participate is to hire local people, so cooks, drivers, translators, and construction supervisors tend to be local Haitians so that we are not simply a group that comes in and leaves a void. The point is to start a project so that after we leave it can be continued both with future mission trips and local workers.

I would appreciate your help in funding this trip. If you would like to help you can send checks to:

Acton Congregational Church

c/o Haitian Mission Trip / David Bainbridge

12 Concord Road

Acton, MA 01720

If you have any questions please drop me an email at davidk.bainbridge@gmail.com or comment on this or any post and I will reply as best as I am able.

Haiti in January

I have not updated this blog as often as I had plan and I need to become more disciplined about that. But, I wanted to let everyone know that the mission trip to Haiti to work on construction of a school/clinic looks to be on track for January 8 to 16, 2011. The costs for this trip have greatly increased over what I expected and that of the trip to the Dominican Republic last year. The projected cost is about $1,900 to $2,000 v. the $1,400 the Dominican trip cost last year.

I have been prayerfully considering this mission trip as with a daughter now in college, another in a private high school, and our other commitments, expenses can be rather tight. An additional issues is that there is another mission trip to the Dominican in March as our church works to make the trip to the Dominican an annual event. Based on everything, I have to make a choice to participate in only a single trip as it does not seem possible to be able to afford both. Based on my prayer, I feel that I am being pulled toward Haiti and thus plan to go on this trip and not the Dominican trip. This is a hard choice because of the trip to the Dominican will have an aspect of a reunion as it will likely involve some of the same individuals that participated from last year.

Now the hard work begins. That hard work is the preparation for the mission trip. This includes the fund raising effort. In general I find fund raising hard as I have difficulty asking others for "personal" help, but that is required for the mission trip and is part of my training for mission work as it requires an individual to humble themselves and ask for and receive help.

Mahalo and God Bless,

/david

PS. The photo above is not of the actual school we will be working on, it is a photo I found on the internet, but felt a visual of some sort was needed.

There and Back Again

I was raised in the church, a Methodist church to be specific. I attended regularly, went to youth group, was an acolyte, went throughout confirmation, and all the other things one would expect of someone who was raised in a church. What I didn't do is really think about my faith, even when going through confirmation. What this meant is that despite my parent's and the church's best effort I did not have a strong grounding in my faith.

This lack of a faith grounding was set free as I entered my later years of high school and college. When you take the lack of grounding and combine it with a technical leaning and education, what you get is a agnostic who is just lazy enough at times to identify himself as an atheist. This worked out well for me for the most part. It allowed me to completely ignore faith issues and allowed me to justify it with a label. It also conveniently allowed me not to worry about ethics (not that I really did anything that was horrible) and the question of how or if I am living a life that follows God's will.

I should mention at this time that my girl friend, now my wife, had a strong faith and while I fluctuated, she did not. We tended not to talk too much about religion as it conveniently allowed us not to get in to areas of discussion that could cause conflict. But, all the while she stayed constant and ever so slowly I came to change. And when I say "ever so slowly", I mean it as it was a good 15 years after college that I would say my heart and mind truly changed.

The idea that really changed me was the concept of love and how it is applied to my children. For if there was no God then I could not love my children. I could have chemical reactions and hormones that made me want to protect them, but that is not the same as love. Either I was a machine controlled by a series of chemical and biological switches or I loved my children. And if I loved my children then there is something more than simply biology; and that, in a round about way, means God exists and can no longer be denied or ignored.

I suppose the exact logic path isn't as important as the fact that it led me to the conclusion and conviction of God and that meant I had to change. This meant going to church willing with the family as opposed to begrudgingly, praying at meals, reading scripture, etc. Often times I led with action; belief or conviction followed. But it did come and I have grown stronger in my faith over time. I still am what I consider a "baby" Christian with lots to go, but I am willing to follow that path.

God Bless

Hello, World?

It has been quite a while since I have considered blogging. In the past most my blogging has been both of a technical nature and for the most part done within the firewall of the company for which I work. This will be my first attempt to blog on something non-technical and non-work related.

What I have decided to do is blog about a quest I am under taking to continue mission work in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. This topic allows for a rather wide range of subjects as I plan to begin with how I got to this point in my life as well as cover the past mission trip to DR/Haiti and plans for future trips to DR/Haiti.

The other thing you may notice is this blog is probably being written for an audience of one, me. I say this because the blog is an attempt to get my thoughts, feelings, etc. documented in a clear fashion so that I may get a better understanding of the situation as opposed to allow people to see what is going on in my head.

This does beg the question, that if this is the purpose, why on earth would you blog as opposed to just write a diary. It is a fair question and I suspect I don't have a good answer, except that perhaps blogging about my mission quest might provide the opportunity for someone else to get in touch with their inner missionary and they could take the plunge too. I don't know much, but I am pretty sure that if you do put yourself out there and stretch your faith and comfort zone, you will be changed.

God Bless