World View: Haiti

In late January 2010, Mark Oestreicher (former president of Youth Specialties and regular YWJ contributor) and Seth Barnes (founder and president of Adventures in Missions) put together a roving team of youth ministry bloggers. The team was dubbed YMATH, an acronym for Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti.

Marko wanted the team (which also included Anne Jackson, Jeremy Zach, Rhett Smith, Adam McLane, Tim Schmoyer and Clint Bokelman of AIM; videographer Ian Robertson; and me) to use social media to encourage youth ministries and churches to embrace mission-minded responses to the Haiti tragedy.

The concept behind the trip was pretty simple: Find youth workers who already had a wide influence in the social media world and unleash them to “tell stories” of people surviving after the deadly earthquakes Haiti. These leaders would engage their network of readers/followers to experience Haiti at the same time as they did and feel a connection that would move them to become involved in some way, as well.

Most of our team members never had been to Haiti before; and we only had about three weeks to reschedule our lives, get shots, pack and mentally prepare for the trip. Early on, the team experienced backlash as members told others that we were going to Haiti. Several prominent news organizations and churches said that if we weren’t medical professionals then we shouldn’t go. Explaining to people that we were going to tell stories and blog garnered negative responses, but as we began to explain more about sharing our stories and providing a voice, as well as preparing the way for other youth workers, more people began to see the value of the trip.

A New Reality in Missions
One area in which individuals involved in mission trips historically have struggled is the reentry experience. It’s hard to share the stories afterward and recapture the experience during a short explanation in front of a congregation. With social media, a new paradigm has been created that is perfectly suited for missions. The experiences and stories can be told as they occur, which actively engages the congregation, friends and family while the team is physically still on the trip.

Adam McLane, social media guru for Youth Specialties, put the media strategy together. His philosophy was to “seed” the social media world with info, being careful not to over-saturate it. Before the trip, he created a Facebook page (Facebook.com/ymath) and started a Twitter account (Twitter.com/ymath) to provide a place for content from the teams to be posted in one place.

The Trip
On Feb. 11, 2010, the team boarded planes in San Diego, Orange County, Minneapolis, Nashville, Dallas and Atlanta. Although we had interacted much online before the trip, we all met in person for the first time on the plane heading to the Dominican Republic. Once we landed, we finally sat down to learn more about each other and hear about the final details of the trip.

Then, after a long, bumpy six-hour drive, the team arrived at a village hospital on the boarder of the Dominican Republic and Haiti with more than 40 Haitian patients. As we spent time talking with the patients, we met a man with a crushed leg who sang for us on camera a rendition of “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley. He expressed a belief that something good was going to happen in Haiti out of the devastation. This uploaded video was one of the more powerful stories from the trip and was viewed online more than 2,000 times within the first few days.

We crossed the border into Haiti and visited another hospital in which a woman told us her story. During the earthquake she witnessed the death of her young, twin sons. During a time of prayer with us, her husband shouted, “Why Jesus, why?” over and over again as we prayed. This was one of the more intense experiences the team had during the trip. He didn’t need a doctor; he just needed someone to listen to him and engage in his experience. This story, shared via social media, has had much impact back in the States as people asked themselves the same question, “Why Jesus, why?”

Redemption
During the course of five days, the team met with more than 300 Haitian pastors. Many expressed an amazing hope that things in Haiti were changing in a positive way for the church. They told stories of people flocking to their churches and about new converts to the Christian faith. During the weekend, Haiti called for a National Day of Prayer and Fasting. Hundreds of thousands of people crowded the streets in worship services, something unprecedented in Haiti. The team had the incredible opportunity to be a part of several of these gatherings.

Because traditional news agencies from the United States already had left the area and the Olympics had started on worldwide media, this story was disseminated mostly through the YMATH team. Social media told the story of hope for the Haitian Christians that was not being shown by other media outlets.

Two Villages Without Aid
The team visited two tarp villages of about 2,500 people each where no aid, supplies or food had been delivered since the earthquake. Though one of the villages had a newly dug well, villagers were not allowing members of other villages to access it.

The YMATH team started a social media campaign to see what could be done to help resolve this situation and meet the need for water. A Twitter message with a video was sent. Thanks to loyal Twitter followers retweeting the message, word got out with exponential growth. The next morning, a team of Cuban doctors and nurses arrived at the villages. UNICEF arrived and in a strange turn of events several team members went to a secure compound of the United Nations and got the two villages listed on the official register—all thanks to social media. People back in the United States responded to the call for help and donated funds. Later that night, food was delivered to the villages and more aid was promised by the United Nations. Eventually, they were included in the official U.N. registration of tarp villages.

Utilizing social media to get more people to team up with the YMATH team has resulted in a huge outpouring of support and a desire within others to go to Haiti. The experiment of using social media to engage people with the stories of Haiti has proven to be an incredible new way of doing missions. No longer will parents drop off students at an airport and have to wonder what they are doing during their trip. Church congregations don’t have to be separated from their ambassadors as they serve in far-away lands. Using all the available technology will help families, churches and friends experience the trip and feel as though they are a part or the experience. This is a new reality for missions.

Lars Rood has been involved in Youth Ministry for the past 20 years. He obtained his M.Div. from Fuller and a doctorate in Leadership to Emerging Cultures from George Fox Evangelical Seminary. He now works as Lead Youth Minister at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas. You can interact with him at LarsRood.com or Twitter.com/larsrood.

More Haiti Info:
To gain insight regarding the emotions and mindset of the team as we experienced Haiti, visit the following sites.
Seth Barnes: Feeling inadequate for your dream
Mark Oestreicher: a missional social media prayer, and being part of the answer
Lars Rood: Haiti: The difficult side of providing food