Recently, a Midwest Food Bank sea container arrived in Port au Prince, only to realize that the route to our long-time storage depot with Double Harvest in Croix de Bouquet was impassable. It was barricaded and controlled by the notorious 400 Mawozo gang. With no place to go, the container with 20 tons of desperately needed food was placed in temporary storage near the Port au Prince International airport. There it began accruing daily demurrage and detention fees. At the same time, we wrestled with solutions and waited on God.
Meanwhile, 1,500 nautical miles away in Texas, a man associated with Cross to Light Ministry, which had a Bible Training Center in the Delmas area of Port au Prince, Haiti, picked up the phone and called Midwest Food Bank. He had run across MFB and our Tender Mercies product online and was wondering if there might be an opportunity to partner to feed Haiti's hungry and alleviate suffering.
In the subsequent few weeks since the "miracle" phone call, MFB has partnered with Cross to Light to facilitate multiple life-saving food distributions. Destinations have included the starving children in the teeming slums of Cite Soleil, the main prison in Port au Prince with its hundreds of emaciated inmates, and difficult-to-reach villages in the southern peninsula.
We rejoice in this Christmas season that amidst circumstances and conditions that are almost indescribably despairing, God is working in Haiti. He, whose "greatness is unsearchable" (Psalm 145:3), still moves mountains ... and he moves sea containers too.