The Dark Side of Haitian Orphanages Part 10
This is finally part 10 of a 10-part series. Hopefully you have learned a little bit about ministering to orphans in a 3rd world country through all of this. I have not been overly opinionated (though I do have strong opinions on some things) or critical throughout the blog series because I wanted to be informative, but it is important to know these 3 things:
1. Orphan ministry is messy and not always what it might look like on social media or marketing materials.
2. It takes more than effort to do it correctly. It takes planning, praying, hard work, good employees, and the ability to put a plan into action.
3. It is very important to know the ministry that you are supporting.
If you missed any of the other blogs, just click these links to read them: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9
The last thing that I want to talk about in this series is a simple and sad fact of orphan ministry around the world:
It is the children who need us the most that are most often forgotten.
From corrupt men and women who profit off of children to men and women who argue and theorize about the best way to care for orphans without actually caring for them to people who do not even take the time to realize there is a problem, it is the children who get left behind. We fight when it is convenient, but the moment things get difficult we step away.
Have you ever noticed that is how our world goes. Rather than giving a voice to the voiceless, we speak. Rather than protecting the vulnerable, we come up with theories about why they are vulnerable. Rather than acting on behalf of those who need it, we sit back and believe that they either deserve it or that it is not our problem. As followers of Christ, the exact opposite of all of these things is true.
I am not saying this as someone who is speaking down to anyone. The truth is, working in this ministry has been the most difficult thing I have ever done. When we first started out, I could not tell you how many times I thought about how life used to be. A life with air conditioning, 2 incomes, a church family who spoke my language, a consistent schedule, a job that you could disconnect from, friends with shared experiences, and a country that I understood. I can completely understand getting wrapped up in my own needs and wants at the expense of others, please understand that.
It is the children and the people in our world who need us the most that we forget and that we ignore. This is not just the "Dark Side of Haitian Orphanages" but this is the dark side of our world. My last plea for all of us in the last part of this series is simple:
Do Not Forget! Do Not Ignore!
Let us not get so caught up in ourselves that we forget about the people in this world who need us the most. The biggest travesty of all is that children who are put in orphanages, especially in a place like Haiti, is that they enter these places to be forgotten. Our kids are not All Things New. They are Herbison, Misthafa, Mimi, Maekin, Malayika, Babyson, Tilene, Apolon, Fransline. Our kids are not "orphans," they are Fefe, Gladine, Samara, Tony, BiGuedy, and Dada.
Most orphans do not have people fighting for them, pushing them, or loving them. This is the biggest travesty in our world. That we, as followers of Christ, would forget the very people for whom He came to save. The outcast, the downtrodden, the poor of this world...The Orphan and The Widow.
We get so caught up in ourselves that we can even convince ourselves we are living exactly how GOD would want. We convince ourselves that taking care of our own children, our family, and providing them with everything that they could want or need is what it means to live for Christ. Our life matters when we bring glory to GOD. We bring glory to GOD when we love Him first and foremost and when we love others as ourself. Join with us and
Do Not Forget! Do Not Ignore!