In the last 2 weeks, I was in Haiti for nine days.
It was an incredibly eye-opening experience for me, a key point that really stood out to me. We had the opportunity to walk through the halls of one of the prisons where we feed the inmates and the conditions of the prison were shocking. Around 750 prisoners were packed into seventeen cells. No electricity, no running water, and no air conditioning in the prison cells. The temperature was in the mid 90s and humid. And I could feel the lack of oxygen because of the heat, humidity, and the amount of people that were crowded in. The youngest prisoner I remember seeing was 11 years old.
We feed that prison once a week, and we have a church service there once a week. And the people expressed a lot of gratitude for the one meal a week, and for the church service that we offer in the prison. For a lot of them, that one meal a week is their main meal for the week. They may get a little bit of other food here and there but not a lot.
One of the problems that plays into it is that the judicial system is largely collapsed. These prisoners have no idea when or if they will ever get out of prison, no matter what the crime was. The court is not taking on trials to judge the prisoners, which means that the prisoners get locked up and just have to stay there with no end in sight.
With the opportunity to bring food into the prisons, countless opportunities opened up to bring the gospel into the prisons. And countless lives were touched and changed because of it. As far as we know, this opportunity to bring the gospel into the prisons has not happened in Haiti before. And it only opened up after we started bringing in the food into the prisons.
Through this experience, I experienced a level of thankfulness for what we have here in America more than I ever had before, and a bigger willingness to serve and share where God calls us to.
