Each summer, three mission teams board a plane to assist fellow Christians in the city of Cap-Haitien (Cape Haitian), Haiti. According to Ken Graves, director of Global Outreach, due to heightened political concerns in the country, the Global Outreach office has decided to cancel mission trips to Haiti this year for the safety and well-being of students and faculty.
According to Al Jazeera, a state-funded broadcast media network out of Qatar, a devastating earthquake struck the already impoverished country in 2010, and conditions have not improved. Elections for a new president have been postponed due to violent protests.
According to Graves, three teams were going to be sent to Haiti this summer. Students and faculty from both the professional counseling and engineering programs planned to provide assistance to the churches in Cap-Haitien. Also, a group of four Harding students had plans to stay at Cap-Haitien Children’s Home, provide assistance to the children and staff there, teach conversational English using the Bible and help congregations in the Cap-Haitien region for a month.
“Elections have been postponed (three times), and I would have been sending all three teams right when they plan to install a new president in the summer,” Graves said. “If there ever was to be a time for political instability and chaos, I think that would be the most dangerous time to go. I don’t want to put any of my teams in that kind of jeopardy.”
Along with the professional counseling and engineering programs, four students, including junior Tiffany Beck, planned to go to Haiti this summer through Global Outreach.
“About a month ago, we were told we couldn’t go to Haiti due to security concerns,” Beck said. “I was in the middle of class when I got the news that we couldn’t go. The day the Haiti trip was canceled, missionaries from Ukraine asked Ken Graves if they could host a group for the first time … We will be doing various things for the newly established church there.”
Stephanie O’Brian, director of Academic Resources and assistant director of Stampede, began going to Haiti in 2012. She said she was inspired to go when Todd Patten, associate professor of education, asked some of his fellow students and colleagues if they would join him to assist Christians in Haiti. She agreed and has been going every summer since.
“Nothing fills my soul and my spirit more than being there with those beautiful children of God and getting to worship the same God as them,” O’Brian said. “The night Todd (Patten) called me and told me there was a good chance we couldn’t go to Haiti, I cathartically cried, because I feel closest to God when I’m there. It is 100 percent fragile in Haiti on an already broken and fragile system. For us to go to Cap-Haitien when they are supposed to be transitioning to a new president is highly dangerous for us. It would put the people we love so much and already have such deep relationships, because we go there every year, in danger.”
According to Graves, the four students who had work planned in Haiti will instead focus their efforts on Ukraine for their summer mission.
