Buckets of Hope spread love to still weary Haitians

Jun 30, 2010
By BARBARA DENMAN
Florida Baptist Convention

Related Coverage:

Hope for Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE—They may be called Buckets of Hope, but to the people of Haiti, containers of food products prepared by Southern Baptist hands and currently being disbursed across their hungry nation, is manna from heaven.

Forming two lines, gaunt and weary-looking Haitians waited in the searing sun, Sunday, June 20, for buckets to be unloaded from the back of a truck near the Eglise Baptiste Canaan. The church named for the Promised Land ironically is planted in a garbage dump on the northern outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

Pastor Moreno Robert coordinated the food distribution to the makeshift tent city.

THANKFUL These Haitian youngsters take home their Bucket of Hope, labeled in yellow with a Gospel message. FBC photo by Ken Touchton

“Normally we don’t ask strangers to give food to our families,” he said through a translator. “But since Jan. 12 there is little work so there is little food. We are obliged.”

The vivid blue-tarped structures dotting the mounds of refuse became a source of refuge to these Haitians after the Jan. 12 earthquake created a fear for their safety. Living in wide, open spaces away from concrete debris falling off city buildings is surely safer, they reasoned.

Like many Haitians, they have repeated a similar phrase—“my home has become my enemy.”

The pastor started the church in the dump after an evangelistic crusade resulted in new Christian believers. Sweeping his hand across to the sea of blue tents along the mountain ridge, he said, “What you see here was not here before the earthquake.”

As the buckets were handed to those first in line, each recipient quickly fled the scene, unwilling to chance losing their buckets to someone else.

Despite having to stand in line for the promise of food, the crowd waited for their turn, never becoming unruly or disorderly.

That same day, nearly 250 people crowded inside Eglise Baptiste Bethaniem in Port-au-Prince as others stood outside waiting for the bucket distribution at the end of the service. As Pastor Louis Joseph called each name, some families sent their children to the front of the church to receive their bucket.

The buckets were given to church members as well as others in the community who attended the nearly two-hour worship service and heard the Gospel message proclaimed.

An air of solemn excitement filled the congregation while the 150 buckets were given. Guarding their newly acquired prize, families raced to their homes to open the five-gallon buckets.

The contents of each Bucket of Hope include flour, rice, beans, oil, pasta and peanut butter—foodstuffs valued at nearly a month’s wages for the average Haitian family. The buckets will feed a family for at least a week, depending on the size of their extended family.

Not only will the family consume the food but the buckets themselves will be used to carry water from wells and in numerous other ways as Haitians survive in abject poverty and a trying daily existence.

The buckets had been languishing in the capital city’s port for two months before Haitian customs officials, overwhelmed by the processing of other shipments of supplies since the earthquake, would release the shipping containers transporting the buckets. Five containers filled with 6,750 buckets have been released by government officials as of June 25.

Another 13 containers remain at the port, while Florida Baptist Convention staff work through government bureaucratic channels for their release. For the disaster relief team on the ground in Haiti, which includes Southern Baptist volunteers and Florida Baptist Convention staff, each day brings additional meetings and the processing of paperwork to satisfy government officials. Each day the team wonders if more containers will be accessed so more Haitians will have food that night.

BLESSING Fritz Wilson, left, Florida Baptist Disaster Relief director, who conceived the idea for Buckets of Hope, stacks the container at the front of the Eglise Baptiste Bethaniem before distributing them to the community. FBC photo by Ken Touchton

In all, Southern Baptists packed just more than 155,000 buckets for the Haitian people after the earthquake. Other containers of buckets remain in Florida until the ones currently in Haiti can be systematically worked through customs.

Jean Phito Francois, director of missions for the North Association in Port-a-Prince, said he had been telling his churches that the buckets were coming.

“Many people asked, ‘when did the U.S. people get time to do this?’” said Pastor Francois.

“This is a great blessing unto God,” he added. “See the buckets—the people are so happy to receive [them]. Especially for me, it has touched my heart.”

Francois reported that even though the containers were delayed in customs, everything was “extraordinarily in good shape” once the buckets were opened.

The concept for the Buckets of Hope originated with Fritz Wilson, director of Florida’s Disaster Relief and Recovery department who serves as the NAMB Disaster Relief Incident Commander, during his first trip to Haiti after the quake.

He determined the buckets’ ingredients after consultation with the Haitian kitchen workers at the Florida Baptist Mission House. He and his family assembled the first bucket when he returned.

“As I watched a family in Haiti open their bucket, I thought about my family going up and down the aisle of a Wal-Mart putting the very first bucket together. We knew that the food bucket would be a blessing to a family but could not really comprehend the enormity of it all,” Wilson said.

While the challenge of working the containers through Haitian customs has been frustrating, Wilson looks at the challenges as a “God-thing.”

“The need for the buckets continues to be great, even as Haiti is recovering,” Wilson said.

JOYOUS A young Haitian woman carries her Bible and a Bucket of Hope along the streets of Port-au-Prince. FBC photo by Ken Touchton

The rainy season in the tropical Haitian climate is in full force. Wilson constantly tracks Weather Underground to determine if any hurricanes or tropical storms are threatening the island of Hispaniola which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic.

The need for food could become increasingly critical during the next few months, he said.

“I have said it often, God in His perfect timing will release the containers at the perfect juncture. Our job is to wait on Him,” Wilson said.

Wilson equated seeing the first bucket distributed to the “the first water station in a marathon. It was a welcome site. It was refreshing and re-energizing but there are still many miles to go.”

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