Christmas Shoeboxes for Haiti

The Christmas Shoebox team just returned from a week-long mission trip to Haiti, where we distributed over 2,000 Christmas Shoeboxes to the children of Haiti. A team of a dozen folks from around the country spread the joy of Christmas with these needy children, deliverying shoebox gifts donated by a number of churches from across the country.

The trip was focused on the northern part of the country, in and around the coastal city of Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. We made our base just south of Cap-Haitien in the wonderful little town of Milot, then left each morning to travel around the area distributing the shoeboxes to the churches and schools of the remote villages.

The following is a list of villages we visited, with Google Maps links so you can see where they are located in Haiti:

Church at Beudoret
Church at Terrier Rouge
Church at Dondon
Church at Fort St. Michel
Church at Haut du Trou
Church at Milot

Beudoret

Our first stop was the village of Beudoret, which is along the main road running from Cap-Haitien to Gonaives, near Plaissance. The church is renting a small building right by the road, while we continue to raise funds to continued construction of their new church building just down the road. The children were waiting for us when our trucks pulled up, so we quickly went inside.

Jesse gave a flip-chart presentation of the "Good News", accompanied by a Creole narration CD playing on a Sony Walkman wired up to a portable battery-powered amplifier. We unloaded the boxes while she finished the presentation.

We then went out on the back deck and made sandwiches for the kids. We had shipped jars of peanut butter and grape jelly along with the Christmas Shoebox shipment from the states and bought bread at a little store on the way out of Cap-Haitien earlier in the day. We all went out on the concrete deck behind the church and made sandwiches and Kool-Aid. The children thought it was a fabulous feast!

After that, we sang songs and said a few words, then handed out the presents. The children took the shoeboxes and sat quietly while we handed them out to the rest of the kids. When we started helping them open the boxes and the toys inside, they were so excited! I remember one little boy who had some glow-sticks and didn't know what they were. Ryan cracked one and shook it up and his eyes nearly popped out of his head! He had the biggest smile on his face!

Terrier Rouge

It was just about as far in the opposite direction to go to Terrier Rouge the next day. The church there meets under a tattered blue tarp in a donkey field just outside the village. When we arrived, they already had the tarp propped up with tree limbs and sticks, with a sound system ready to crank out praise music using microphones, a guitar, a Casio keyboard, and an aging drum set. Hundreds of kids were sitting under the tarp, looking for shade from the hot sun.

After introductions and a few words from Pastor Marc Aurel, the praise band played and the pastor led us in prayer. Emily showed the children the flip-chart presentation, the pastor led the children through some songs, then he had them line up to march back to his house, where the Christmas Shoeboxes were waiting. With a battery-powered amplifier in hand, Pastor Marcene started marching towards the house, singing songs on the microphone, with all the children following in a line to the house, where we handed out the gifts, then left to travel out to Dondon.

Dondon

The humble little church of Dondon is a short way up an alley off the main road, and when we pulled within sight of it, the small crowd of children who had been waiting by the road stood up and started cheering. They took us by the hands and walked us up to the church building while men from the village started unloading the boxes.

The children sang us a welcome song they had worked on all week long, then the pastors introduced us and we prayed and sang some songs together. We then distributed the gifts, and spent quite a bit of time helping the children open the gifts. It was a wonderful time of joy and sharing, but it was getting late and we needed to get back to the Mission to have dinner and prepare for the visit to Fort St. Michel the next day.

Fort St. Michel

This little suburb on the south end of Cap-Haitien is one of the toughest places in the world to have to live. By our American standards, every village we visited was very poor, but Fort St. Michel looked poor compared to the others.

Unfortunately, due to several issues, we were not able to bring enough gifts for all of the children, so we made arrangements for more to be brought the next day, then proceeded to pass out what we had. The people of the church greeted us and introduced us to the children. We all sang songs together, and handed out the gifts.

This church had never participated in a Christmas Shoeboxes distribution before, and because of their very poor circumstances, the children began to become very agitated, especially when the shoeboxes were almost all handed out and some children were still waiting.

In the end, it was the hardest visit of the whole week, since it produced anxiety and disappointment instead of the love and joy that was intended. Although we were not there to see it, the children who had missed out did receive the shoeboxes we had promised, as the pastor handed them out the next day.

Milot

The next morning was Sunday, and we walked down the road to enjoy services with the church in Milot. They had decorated the church for us, their "honored guests", and had prepared a number of special musical pieces for us. Chris preached, and it was a wonderful time of worship together.

We handed out the Christmas Shoeboxes immediately following the service, and the children loved it. Many of the team members had brought shoeboxes from their churches, schools and family, and we had saved those all week to hand out today, so we could take extra time to get photos of the children and gifts to take back home.

It was our New Year's Eve, which is also when Haiti begins their Independence Day celebration, so we had planned a rice-and-beans dinner party for the children that evening. We had given some money for the cooks to prepare the meal, so we left to load up boxes for the final trip out to Haut du Trou.

Haut du Trou

Earlier in the day, we had sent a truck with the boxes out to Haut du Trou while we attended church. We got the team loaded in the vehicles, but had barely gotten down the road when Yves became concerned about the storm clouds overhead. To get to the church, you must drive through a river with no bridge, and if it rains you can't make it. The storm looked like a bad one, and the team needed to be back in Milot for the party that evening, so we could not be delayed. It was decided that Yves and the pastor and I would go by ourselves and we took the rest of the team back to the Mission.

When we arrived, the children of the church were gathered together under a pole and thatch roof where they have church, right next to the road among the houses of the village. The men of the church had set up the shoeboxes in one room of a little two-room house next door. The children came in through one door, took their gift, and left through the other door. With only a few of us, it was a bit hectic trying to keep up with the flow of children. But, just as we started running out of boxes, the pastor came in and said "Finis!" (We are finished!)

We headed back for the Mission and arrived just as the team was sitting down to dinner, so we ate then headed down the street to the church for the Independence Day party.

The Party in Milot

We took the short walk to the church through the deep Haitian darkness and found that the cooks had prepared a huge pot of rice, beans and goat meat. The children and their parents were all assembled under the used automotive company awning they use as a covering for church next to the partially-complete concrete structure they use as a school.

We went into the building to make Kool-Aid and dish out the food to serve to the children. We did our work to the accompaniment of a number of children from the church who sang solos that had been prepared especially for the party. The serving took much longer than expected because of our inability to communicate with the cooks, and the fact that it took 15 minutes to hike down to the well to bring back a couple of quarts of water to mix the drinks.

We handed out the dishes of food with the pastors and the people of the church, which took quite a while in the partial light provided by a generator and a few shop lights that had been brought in for the event. The hungry children gobbled down the food as quickly as we could serve it, and we had to be careful in the end to try to not run out.

Then, we broke out the hundreds of glow-stick necklaces we brought with us, and the kids scrambled madly to make sure they got one. It was a beautiful sight, watching hundreds of children running around in the deep Haitian darkness, glowing red, green, blue and yellow with glow-sticks! The party was a great success and the kids had a great time. We got to spent a lot of time enjoying the kids and one another, then headed back to the Mission to pack up and get ready to leave Haiti the next morning.

The Rest of the Gifts

These were just the gifts that our team had the pleasure of distributing, which was only about half of what went to Haiti this year! A number of other Haitian pastors came to take cartons of shoeboxes back to their churches, which the team did not have time to deliver. Thousands of other shoeboxes and gift bags were left behind in Port-au-Prince to be delivered to churches around Port-au-Prince and on the Central Plateau, plus even more gifts were being brought into the country separately, destined for Thomassique.

We were also able to take advantage of the large shoebox shipment to send many other items which needed to go to Haiti. We shipped bibles, school supplies, medical supplies, enough French books to start libraries in a couple of schools, shoes, clothes, and many other items too numerous to list!

It was a wonderful Christmas in Haiti, thanks to your generosity! In particular, I would like thanks the following churches and individuals, who contributed to the success of this project:

• All the members of the Christmas Shoebox team who gave so generously of their time and treasure to travel to Haiti personally! Anthony, Kay, Beau, Toni, Lee, Jesse, Ryan, Emily, Chris, Jen and Cale ... it was wonderful serving God and the people of Haiti with you!
• The pastors and leaders of our Haitian churches, who were so gracious to us and worked so hard to help make this a success!
• The members of Westside Family Church, for the thousands of shoeboxes and donations they contributed.
• The people of Five Oaks Community Church, who put together gifts for all of the children of the Fedja orphanage, the Mirebalais church, and the other children of the village.
• The congregation of Christ's Church in Highlands Ranch who made gifts for the children in the church and school at Thomassique.
• The Riveras and others from Westlink Christian Church, who contributed medical supplies, school supplies and gifts!
• The Procuniers, who donated a huge box of French books for the children of GVCM's schools, along with several cartons of shoebox gifts.
• Hillside Christian Church and the Christian Women's Fellowship in Wichita and Clearwater, who donated money to have shoeboxes made in Haiti.
• The youth group at Lakeside Baptist Church, who sent gifts for the children.
• The students of Mrs. Prince's class, Mrs. Steinbeck's class and Miss Hughes' class, who made special shoebox gifts to send to Haiti.
• So many other churches and individual who gave gifts and donations that I fear I can't mention them all! Please forgive my poor memory, but know that our Lord has seen the love in your heart and the work of your hands!

Next Year

Even though we had over 3,000 gifts to distribute this year, we were still not able to deliver gifts to all of the churches, school and villages where GVCM operates. Please consider making plans to join us next year ... with your help, all of these children can be blessed with the love of Jesus as we celebrate His birthday together with our brothers and sisters in Haiti!

We would also love to have you come with us during Christmas 2007 to distribute the shoeboxes with us! We would love to be able to plan multiple mission trips to distribute shoeboxes to all of GVCM's schools and churches this year.

Please drop me a note today and ask me to follow up with you later in the year with more details. Christmas Shoeboxes are a simple ministry that will be as meaningful to you and your congregation as it will be to the children of Haiti!

Van Elliott
van@gvcm.org