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  A letter from Mark Hare in Haiti  
             
 

December 7, 2004

Hey Friend,

You may know by now that I have been working with the agricultural technical team of an organization in Haiti called MPP—Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Farmer’s Movement of Papaye) for the past seven months. This opportunity opened up in 2003. I visited MPP in October 2003 and committed to working here during that visit. However, it took until May 2004 to wrap up most of the loose ends at Rancho Ebenezer in Nicaragua, the agricultural production and training center where I had worked for six years, starting in May 1998. It was not easy to leave good work and good friends behind in Nicaragua, and I still miss the comradeship of the Ebenezer Center crew. Despite all of the annoying jokes, or perhaps because of them, I still feel strong connections to the whole Ebenezer gang and hope that I can maintain and nurture those relationships even as I hope to maintain and strengthen contact with you.

  
             
  Photograph of two boys in a vegetable garden. One looks at the camera with his hands on his hips. The other works with a long-handled hoe.
Children in Haiti are one of the joys. Hardworking, with few material resources, they nevertheless seem to lack for nothing when it comes to a sense of humor and playfulness. 		  Christmas seems for me to be a time for reflecting on ties and friendships. I don’t know how it is for folks in more “traditional” work paths, but as a mission worker immersed in an almost entirely new culture, the ties to family and friends are essential for maintaining my equilibrium, especially during these months of transition. I say “months” but in Nicaragua, I would have to say, looking back, that the transition period was more a matter of years and perhaps still hadn’t ended even as I moved on to Haiti.  
             
  It is both a good and a difficult thing that I began to feel so comfortable in Nicaragua. Good, because if it happened in Nicaragua, surely it can happen in Haiti. Difficult, because I would so very much like for that sense of familiarity to happen now.  
             
  But that is not how our Creator seems to work. Relationships are valuable because they are built out of mutual experiences—working together, eating together, praying together, struggling together, getting angry one with the other and finding paths to mutual respect. It is not normally an easy process, but it seems to me that some of my most important relationships have developed through difficult times. I would say that the Holy Spirit has manifested Itself in my life, not in providing me an easy path through difficult places, but in providing the vision that the path actually exists, as difficult or impossible as it is to see at times, and that the pain in following the path is worth it. There is no shortage of difficult times here in Haiti, and as a newcomer to a new land, cultural quirks lurk in every corner, waiting to trip me up, or just plain make for a bad day. But there are also times of clarity and even moments of deep joy.  

Photograph of two men standing in a vegetable garden, resting from their work, looking into the camera.
Duveron (left) and myself in front of one of our vegetable growing spaces. Working with Duveron has been good, but also challenging. We have not yet entirely found all of the boundaries that clearly separate an easy-going work environment from sloppy work habits.

Photograph of two people on the cultured slope of a hill. In the foreground is a woman among spikey plants. In the background is a man sitting on a bank of earth looking toward the woman.
MPP worker Magali (left) and Duveron (right) looking at an area where we have aloe vera planted between rows of double hedgerows¾the SALT (Sloping Agricultural Land Technology) system that I learned and helped implement at Rancho Ebenezer in Nicaragua.

 
             
 

For some reason, one morning I was reflecting on Christ’s enormous sacrifice in going to the cross. It suddenly occurred to me that Christ was his own best example of the parable of the lost coin, the treasure found in the field, the pearl of great price. Christ sold all that he had, swept the house clean, gave everything he had, confident that in giving his all, his recompense was the ushering in of the time of joyful feasting, brotherhood and sisterhood, justice and peace—God’s Kingdom present and accounted for on Earth. The pharisees, the sadducees, and the Roman officials thought they were taking a life. They could not understand that Christ was exchanging all that he had for something he valued much more. Those of us who call ourselves Christ Followers are called to offer the same quality of our all, plumbing the depths and scaling the heights of our love and faith. Finding our limits and then going beyond them. Witnessing to God’s Kingdom—present and accounted for.

It is not a task I feel I am particularly cut out for most days. I wonder if Christ also had moments of doubt?

May the Spirit illuminate your path and bring clarity to your soul.

In Love,

Mark

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 50

 
             
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