“There is no faithfulness or loyalty, and no knowledge of God in the land. Swearing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish…” Hosea 4:1-3a

             As we rocked gently on the front porch of the guesthouse we carried on a leisurely debate: How do you spell the word “(w)holistic”?  With or without the “w”?  Scott Sabin finally went inside and rummaged around with his flashlight to find a book using the word.

             That author spelled it without the “w”.

             The word comes from the healing arts and describes whole entities having an existence other than the sum of their parts. This is how we got into the debate in the first place.

             It was Westminster Presbyterian Church’s fifth trip to Haiti, and we were reflecting that with each trip we had become more aware of how complex the healing process will be for the people and the land of Haiti. Just as Hosea put it, there is an intimate connection between how people treat each other and how they treat the land. Everything is connected. But by the same token, herein lay the strategy of Floresta: follow the logic of Hosea’s words - work with people in deepening their sense of God’s presence in their lives, individually and communally. One outcome will be a different way of using God’s gift of the land.  

But does that strategy work? I’m here to tell you that it does.

As a member of the Floresta-Haiti Board, I recently had the pleasure of visiting several Floresta farmers’ cooperatives. We heard eloquent testimony to their commitment to faith in the midst of very difficult challenges. One of Floresta’s technicians in a particularly poor region called us back to the basics: “Let’s not forget 1 Corinthians 15: 58!” We all sat there looking at each other shrugging, “What does 1 Corinthians 15:58 say? Anybody have a Bible?”

I pulled a rather beaten-up French translation from my day pack, and read the passage out loud:

“Therefore my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

There was a moment of silence as we all took in the power of these words. Once again, my time with the Floresta farmers had taught me the true meaning of faith, vision, and courage.

Healing the land and its people will require no less.

It’s my hope that in coming back to the same place again and again we discover the complexity, but also the opportunity for God’s work in this torn up and fragmented world. I call it the “power of the particular.” It’s a matter of picking a place on the globe and investing ourselves in seeking its healing. It’s about “suiting up” and getting in the game. It’s signing the check. And it’s exciting.

During our last trip, some of us had the privilege of staying with Floresta cooperative members in the village of Kavanac. It’s a beautiful place, in an austere kind of way. My friend Ben Small and I spent the evening with Kavanac’s leader, Cheristone.  His energy for his family, his farm, and the village is boundless. A cistern had just been constructed above the village to help provide precious water. A church sanctuary is on the drawing board.

At our request and with smiles all around, Cheristone showed us how the farmers work side-by-side to plant beans. Never have I seen so many rocks strewn across “farmland”! With backbreaking determination, generations of families marked their plots by using this rock to build walls about three feet high around their fields. Now with a sickle in one hand and beans in another, we crouched over to toss beans in the pocket made by the sickle.  My back began singing in less than five minutes.

That evening we joined Cheristone and his eleven-year-old son in a vigorous game of dominoes by kerosene lamp. As it got later, I asked Cheristone what time he needed to go to bed. Finally he acknowledged that he normally retired around 7:30 in order to get up at 4:00 to tend the animals and have time for his community work during the day. After several rounds of dominoes Ben and I insisted that Cheristone call it a day—we were ready ourselves!

The next morning we emerged to find the dining table spread with fresh mango, roasted chicken, potatoes, yams, La Vache Qui Rit cheese, bread, dark and rich Haitian coffee, and a pineapple upside-down cake! As I took this in it dawned on me to ask, “Cheristone, what time did you and your wife get up to prepare this wonderful meal?” He smiled a little sheepishly. “We got up at 2:00 to go down the mountain to fetch water so that we could be back in time.”

He and his wife had hiked an hour down the mountain to a spring and back, carrying several gallons of water each, in order to take care of us!  That experience gave new meaning to “hospitality” (which in the New Testament comes from a Greek word that translates literally as “love of the stranger”).

Holistic ministry is immensely challenging, yet at the same time it is very engaging. We cannot do this kind of work without a deepening sense of connection to our brothers and sisters. That’s one reason we return to the same place year after year. It’s as it should be, if we’re going to be as holistic as the gospel calls us to be.