Bernard has worked with Absolute as a translator in the Dominican since 2006. He is a Haitian living in DR, and he is one of my truest friends. He has impacted my life in ways he is not even aware of, as he has challenged me to love with compassion and to give unconditionally no matter the cost. Bernard grew up in Haiti, and was very poor. From the time he was 8 until he was 14, Bernard was a “restavek” in a home of a family living in Port-au-Prince. This term is really a Creole euphemism for a child slave. He told me that the people he had to serve were kind to him, but for those 6 years, they allowed him an education in school as long as he washed the car, cleaned the house, took care of the kids and did everything they demanded of him; if he did not, there were severe beatings as a consequence.  His own family couldn’t afford to care for him, so he was ‘loaned’ to this family in exchange for food, school, and many long and relentless days of child labor.

If you met Bernard today, you would never know of those times. Bernard is a man of joy, integrity, honesty, and true compassion. He is a trusted member in his community in DR, and he has become a refuge for many other kids who have experienced what he has walked through. This past summer, Absolute decided to make Bernard the recipient of one of our Hero Holiday projects. Bernard was living in a one room house and was continually taking in young men who had run away from slavery, violence, and who had been orphaned. He has spent the past 4 years volunteering in orphanages and supplementing his own income with translating, as well as sending almost all of his money back to Haiti to support his other brothers and sisters in hopes of keeping them out of slavery and exploitation. Bernard has given many of us a character value to aspire to and we are grateful for his time, his many talents, and most of all, his passion to serve and make a difference.

At the end of August, Vaden and I hosted some people from League Assets on a Hero Holiday in DR. The members of League have become a major sponsor of what we do, and because of them, much of what we do is even possible. As we showed them Bernard’s new house location, we shared with them the plan of what it is to become: Bernard wants to use this space to eventually have a safe house for young men needing some help getting on their feet, perhaps getting an education, and wants it to most of all be a place where they feel dignity, respect and hope for what they can grow into.  However, League Assets saw even more than that: they saw what could become a template for change in communities as they began to create a plan for home ownership for the desperately poor. Because of this inspiration, Bernard’s house has set off a chain of events that is leading to opening the way for more families to get homes through sweat equity, micro-finance, and many other creative and viable economic opportunities.

This home is a tribute to the lives of many people. It is a tribute to Bernard and people like him who have the courage to move past the limitations of poverty and exploitation.  It is a tribute to the many hundreds of Hero Holiday participants who have joined with us and others to become instruments of change and help to write a new history for the people we work with. And most of all, this home is a tribute to hope, because when we have hope, we have the ability to dream, and when we have the ability to dream, we have the ability to see lives changed. Thank you, Bernard. I believe in you, in what you do, and I am proud to be counted among your friends.

Today I joined our road team as they performed in a school in downtown Toronto. They did a great job (yay!) and we got a great response from the staff and students. I closed the show with my own life story (see my May 2007 post for the whole story) and it was well received…However, after the show, two teachers came up to me and were saying thanks for coming to their school, etc. They told me how they were both weeping as I was sharing my story, and then one of them asked me how I deal with loss. But before I could answer her, she asked me if my story was actually true!

It took me back for a moment, as I didn’t quite know what to say, and then she quickly replaced the question with a statement that was something to the effect of  her just wondering because it would be ok if we made up the story for dramatic effect…

No, I am sorry, but it wouldn’t be ok if we made up the story for dramatic effect. It’s not ok to blur those lines, even if there is an intended good outcome.

One of the topics that we are dealing with this year in our high school presentations is the character value of honesty. The video segments that we are using is from an amazing company called Make You Think, and the statistics that they highlight about honesty are quite disheartening: the average person lies about once every 7 minutes; 51% of high school students admitted to cheating on tests; fake ID’s run rampant.  Am I getting old, or does it seem like there is so much more open acceptance for dishonesty in our culture? People we trust seem to lie to us. National leaders seem to twist the truth. Spin doctors are actually getting paid great salaries for professionally spinning the facts. Vows made are easily broken.  Where is that line where truth is drawn and embraced-even if it isn’t comfortable to face?

All over the word right now, as I type this, we can only imagine some of the pain and anguish: young women murdered because of a hatred for their sex, people dying for their faith, children losing their parents to diseases that could be so easily prevented, families choosing who will eat tonight when the few tablespoons of food are prepared, and we are cheating on mid-terms because we couldn’t be bothered to get help or study a little more and we are lying to save face and try to win the approval of a group of friends that will probably change in a few months anyways…hmmm….I can totally see the equality in that!

There is a verse in the Bible that says let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’. What would the world look like if you and I chose to actually not assimilate into the relativity of our culture but instead chose to take the high road, to be honest, and to not give any room for interpretation according to what we felt was best for us?  The real face of dishonesty is actually selfishness, because it is about getting my own way, no matter what the cost. No one would like to say that they are selfish, yet we would be willing to stretch the truth or blatently cheat to get our own way, and if it came down to it, we would probably even willingly compromise many things just for our own personal comfort…And sadly, somedays when I examine my own life, I am not much different. I have to continually examine my own motives, thoughts, words, and actions, and sometimes I fall terribly short because I, too, am painfully human.

But I am finding that character is not something that is given to me; it is something that is worked out in me. The only way I can see my character is to have it tested. I want to be someone who is known as being a person of integrity, and who is known as being honest. We all fall short many times, and like you, I am nowhere near where I wish I could say I was- but that isn’t a good enough reason to not try.

And that is the honest truth…

Garcia is a musician, a husband and father, a pastor, and a man with a vision bigger than what was in front of him. He had a community back on that road that we  found ourselves on that day, and he traveled  every day of the week from his own village, Maranatha, to serve that community and help it move forward in whatever way he could.  He came to help out because he loved them and believed in them. They had a local area where they had a church, held community meetings, and one day hoped to have a school. It was  a small area, about 20 feet by 30 feet, and it was covered by four posts and a tarpaulin. All around the area, many feet out, was a trench that had been dug at one time, but was now covered in by weeds, grass and life. Five years earlier, Garcia had inspired some men in the community to dream of what a school could like in that place, and so together, they dug the trench, in hopes that someday they might see a school for their children.

In that area, we, like Garcia, saw what could be, but not yet was: a school that could change the future of the hundred plus children in that community. This is what faith and dreams are made of  and what Absolute wanted to be a part of, so the following summer, our Hero Holiday teams began to work with Garcia and the people in Arroyo Seco to accomplish this dream. It is a labor of love that has filled our lives with laughter, warm memories, huge community parties, and tearful good-byes. And in some way, it has changed us all.

This past summer, we put the finishing touches on the school. As we drove away, I looked over my shoulder and saw a bunch of children waving good bye, with Garcia and his family in the middle of the crowd, smiling and shouting out blessings…It felt good to be a part of something so incredible. Over the time that we worked in their community, over 700 Canadian teenagers and adults who joined us on Hero Holiday had witnessed the fulfillment of a dream, and it inspired us all.

Yesterday, however, I got an email with an update of what has happened in Maranatha, the community where Garcia lives. This past Friday, while many of us got together with friends and had Halloween parties, Garcia, his family, and the thousands of people that live in Maranatha, his own village, fought for their lives and homes as they faced a flash flood. Many of their homes were covered under two to five feet of water and sewage, and many of them lost every last earthly possession that they had. Garcia and his family lost most of their possessions, but managed to salvage some valuable items such as beds and food. However, the local grocery store, where many of them were only able to buy their supplies on credit, was swept away and food is scarce.  Like so many of the world’s poor, they are now forced to rebuild their lives and start over…at the beginning.

Why is life so blatantly unjust? Why do the poor always keep losing, and the rich get drunk on the excess of the world? How is it that our governments can find trillions of dollars to bail out multi-national companies in a financial crunch and still manage to employ hundreds of thousands of people at salaries that keep growing, and yet many of the world silently slips away and struggles moment by moment to exist? What is my part in all of this? How do I live my life in light of what I know to be true both here and there?

I don’t have all the answers, I just have a conviction that I can’t give up: I can’t stop doing what I know I am called to do, and I MUST NOT quit just because things seem difficult where I am at.

So, Garcia, when I see you again, I will tell you this in person, but until then, I will put it in black and white: you are a great inspiration and friend, and your struggle is my struggle, and we are linked by a common faith and purpose that is deeper than culture, skin color and economics. I will continue to pray for you and will do what I can to help ease the burden. You and your family have done so much for a community, their children, and their future, and now it is time for a community of people to do something for you.

If you would like to help us get some money to Garcia and his family, please email me and I will let you know what you can do.

A victim is powerless: they are held captive by someone else’s actions and they cannot choose who they become. A victim bows to the circumstance and allows the situation to determine their actions and thoughts. A victim is reactionary, and not pro-active. A victim looks for someone else to blame and tries to avoid the truth: that perhaps I am in this place because of my own actions and I just need to man up and take responsibility.

The word victim suggests that it is more like a casualty. Like a natural disaster or predatorial action.  In moments like that, you don’t have time to choose who you become-you just go with gut instinct for survival. However, in most of my life, I have to learn to roll with the punches and not let my circumstances determine who I become.  “People are talking about me”. “I feel left out”. “I feel misunderstood”. “I have the urge to want to justify myself”. These are just perceptions - they are not necessarily the truth. The more I play into it, the more credit I give the situation and the more I allow it to determine who I am am rather than giving that power to the only person on earth who can really determine that: me.  And me is not a victim!

There is a little obscure verse in Isaiah 32:17 that says, “the fruit of rightness will be peace,  and its effects will be confidence forever.”This is true in life at every angle: why would we try to justify ourselves about anything if we feel the confidence that we made the right choice? What good does panicking at trying to win people’s approval do if we have the nagging feeling that we need to somehow justify something? There is so much to be said in admitting when we are wrong and realizing that we are ok with owning up to it.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a book that played a huge role in the end of slavery in the US in the mid-1860’s. It is a story about an amazing slave that everyone affectionately called “Uncle Tom”.  However, slavery to him was not what defined him: his faith and his dignity was what defined him. As a slave, he refused to consider himself a victim of injustice and cruelty, and instead decided to choose who he would be every day.  This is what I am choosing to do today. And this is what I will choose to do tomorrow. I will not allow anyone or anything else the privilege of detemining who I will become…that choice is mine alone.

We love what we do: we get to travel, see the country, create change and bring hope. We also love to be able to pass on cool info that we think students might benefit from…this is one of those moments:

Ashoka’s Youth Venture, recently launched in Canada, is proud to announce their first global competition to recognize and support young changemakers worldwide.

If you know young people with IDEAS or existing PROJECTS for change, please encourage them to enter the Staples Youth Social Entrepreneurship Competition by October 15, 2008.

The various prizes include seed funding to implement their ideas, a free trip to attend the next Youth Venture Summit in the U.S., and special opportunities involving MTV and Nike for environment and sports-related projects.

For more info, check out changemakers.net

When the time came for the party to start, it was pouring rain. So, because of this, we decided to go ahead with the party anyways! As we were trekking up with steep mountain roads towards the village we were hosting the party in, I was reminded of how this location ever came to be for us. Last summer, at the beginning of August, in the last days of her short life, we met a little girl named Danica. Danica’s life was lost to a totally preventable disease. She was 18 months old and was stateless, too poor to be helped in time, and basically abandoned. Her death rocked us to our core, and it actually was what provided the inspiration for the clinic that our friends, Phil and Donna Williams, have built in her name. It is called Danica’s Clinic and it is a clinic of hope in a poor community where health care is often a pipe dream and rarely attainable. Danica’s Clinic now provides this community and the surrounding area with a compassionate doctor and quality health teaching, and a stocked pharmacy, and all this is made possible because of people like the ones that joined us on this particular Hero Holiday. Because of all of this, this community seemed like the perfect community to celebrate friendship and solidarity…and really,  what says “I love you” better than a couple of roasted pigs?

As we pulled up and fishtailed up the mud hill beside the clinic in the pouring rain, I smiled as we saw a group of young boys out in the rain playing percussion on the five gallon pails and with a stick…it was festive, if not soggy! After spending the first two minutes trying to not get wet, we all gave up and stood in the rain and laughed. This is what memories are made of! Our roasted pigs were skillfully chopped up with a machete by Garcia, one of the our Dominican friends, and some rice, beans, and casava finished off the menu. Within moments, word had spread far and wide that we were serving the meal, and people came hurrying up the hill through the mud and sludge to get their meals. We set up a sound system and just began to celebrate life and love and friendship, and it was a beautiful thing to behold! Children laughed and danced and sang with the music, and many of our team laughed and danced right alongside of them.

In my mind, I had fully believed that by some stroke of divine intervention the rain would eventually stop and we would have a little time to just stand outside, but it never did. In fact, it only seemed to rain harder and harder the longer we stayed there. However, that meant little in a moment like this where for just a short time you can indulge in the gift of great food, great company, and great entertainment!

To all the Danica’s Dream Team, I would like to say, “Thank you”. You made that party a success, and your gifts made that clinic possible. The world needs people like you to do things like this. Thank you for giving of your time, your talents, your passion, and your love.  I think a little girl would be very proud of you right now…

There were about 20 of us at the garbage dump today working with the people there who collect bottles for income and scrounge for food and provision. We are honored to be able to work alongside them, even if it is for such a short time. Today, while working, Smith, my translator and friend, walked toward me, laughing, and said, “I have to tell you what the people there are talking about. They have a theory on Creation, and I thought you might be interested to hear it: they say that when God made people, He had two piles, one with paper and the other with sand. The paper was white people like you, and the sand was people like the Haitians. The paper gets to learn and grow and become something else, but the sand has to work hard and nothing ever seems to change.” I stopped walking and looked at him. “Is that really how they see it? Do they really think that it is because of my skin color that I can move ahead?” Smith, who is Haitian, said, “People have no answers for their hurt and hard times, and it just seems like it would be easier to be you.”

This afternoon, some of the participants joined me as we brought out rice, beans, and oil to our friends in the village that work at the dump. As we pulled up, it started to rain really hard, so we jumped out of the car and followed them to where it was out of the rain to get organized for delivering the food. We ran under a tiny tin roof on a porch that was held up by sugar cane stalks, and everyone followed us. So here we were:  4 Canadians  and  about  55 Haitians jammed together listening to the rain pound on the tin roof. I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden the hilarity of the situation struck me and I couldn’t stop laughing as chickens were dodging our feet (I guess they didn’t like the rain either) a dog was leaning up against me, a little boy was holding my hand, and I watched our translator wrestle with a Winnie the Pooh umbrella (that someone handed him) that wouldn’t open and probably was a ‘treasure’ from the dump. Just another Saturday at the office, I guess! To the people that lived there, this was life as normal, with the exception of a few extra Canadian faces in the mix. As I kept looking at my watch and wishing the stupid rain would finish because I had other places that I needed to get to before the day was out, they patiently waited in the rain for the food that they desperately needed to feed their families. We really do live worlds apart in so many ways, and I could really learn a few things from these amazing individuals who have lived through more than I can even comprehend.

I have to admit, I guess I can see how my friends’ theories on Creation could seem to be more real than either of us care to acknowledge. Here I am, sitting at my laptop, trying to get my work done, but knowing that in a few minutes I am going to have food, that tonight I will get sleep and be safe, and that for me, the garbage dump is a place to visit, not the place where my existence currently depends on. Nothing but mere location of birth truly separates me and them, and today, after sharing our rainstorm moment, I am even more keenly aware of it.

As we drove back from the village, the car smelled like a wet dog, but we all had a great laugh at the seemingly random moment that we just experienced with total strangers. One of the students with me in the vehicle said, “That’s it - this is definitely what I want to do with my life.”  I assumed she was referring to working with those less fortunate and experiencing change, not standing in the rain with humans, dogs and chickens all vying for dry space, and so my response to her was, “Then if this is what you want to do, I think you should definitely make it happen. This experience can not only be a memory, but it can be a major moment in your life that you will look back on as the moment that changed your way of thinking.”

So, on behalf of changed lives everywhere, I need to thank the dogs, chickens, and humans that shared today’s experience with us. You people are what make it worth it all! Thanks for making this Saturday at the office another great moment in my life where I can learn and make a memory with you. You give so much meaning and perspective to who we are and you inspire us to want to grow to be able to help you grow and move ahead as well…Thanks!

Jacqui Goddard in Miami
As the creator of some of America’s most opulent mansions Frank McKinney knows a thing or two about luxury. So when it came to marking his 45th birthday, the flamboyant tycoon was likely to treat his guests to an extravagant party.

Indeed, a tour of his latest construction — a $29 million (£15 million) affair in Manalapan, Florida, with glass staircases, fish swimming in the ceiling, indoor waterfalls and two wine cellars, one for red and one for white — proved a perfect start to the three-day celebration. Then came dinner and champagne at his beachfront estate near by.

But there was barely time for the maverick millionaire’s 55 guests to sleep off their hangovers before they were whisked away for the next phase of his $5,000-a-ticket birthday experience — a sobering trip to the festering slums of Haiti. The Tour of Extremes took them from Florida’s Palm Beach County — among the nation’s wealthiest communities — to Cité Soleil, the poorest suburb of the poorest city in the western hemisphere’s poorest country.

There, Mr McKinney has built more than 500 homes for 4,000 people living in abject poverty through his charity, Caring House Project Foundation. His guests’ ticket money will fund the construction of 55 more.

“It’s not everyone’s idea of a birthday, but it is mine,” he told The Times. “I’m a modern-day Robin Hood. Here I am providing property to the world’s most wealthy; should I not be providing it to the world’s poorest and homeless too?”

Mr McKinney, who started working life with $50 to his name and who now creates properties worth up to $135 million, is a regular on the motivational speaking circuit, giving tips on how to succeed in real estate.

A brazen self-promoter, he even sells $250 talking action figures of himself — in aid of his charity — which come complete with his trademark long blond hair and which spout his mantras: “Make it big!” and “Don’t let fear stop ya!” His favourite, though, is: “Be sure to share your blessings with others.”

With stomachs still groaning from their birthday banquet, Mr McKinney and his friends — largely business owners and real-estate entrepreneurs — toured the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, passing roadside stalls that sold cakes made of mud to fill the stomachs of the starving.

In Cité Soleil, a squalid shantytown where 300,000 people live without running water, electricity or sewage disposal, violent crime and gang wars are commonplace and few outsiders will enter without an armed United Nations escort. But to those he has helped there, Mr McKinney is known as “Bon Papa” and greeted as a hero.

“Here in the US, people miss one episode of Desperate Housewives and they have to go and see their therapist. In Haiti, they have so little yet they are a faith-filled and happy people — they are desperate, but also full of hope,” he said.

“When you take care of sustainable needs like housing and water, they flourish. It has an impact on generations, not just the here and now.”

Angel Aloma, executive director of Food for the Poor, a US charity whose feeding centres in Haiti have received thousands of tonnes of rice from Mr McKinney, said: “His contributions are nothing short of huge.”

In a final cultural twist, Mr McKinney and friends wound up their tour with a night at Haiti’s five-star Hotel Montana, where they ate birthday cake and partied to a calypso band.

“You can have maybe a handful of epiphanous moments in your life and the Tour of Extremes was one, for almost every one of those 55 people who came,” he said. “When they shared their reflections afterwards, not a single one mentioned the mansion or the hotel. They spoke about Haiti.”

Mr McKinney says that he takes his inspiration from “biblical wisdom”. A parable in the Gospel of Luke, is paraphrased into a personal motto: “To whom much is entrusted, much will be expected.”

Hero Holiday DR was over, and Vaden, myself, and three others had taken the long trek to the southern border with Haiti and now found ourselves in the middle of the poorest neighbourhood in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The area was called Cite-Soleil, and my life was changed by what happened that day. As we crossed over the foot bridge that spanned over a river of deep black sludge, human waste, and rotting garbage, I held Vaden’s hand, and tried to imagine what a place like this could look like if it didn’t look like this. In truthfulness, it was a very difficult image to conjure up in that moment. As we walked up to the group of people staring at us, she caught my eye almost immediately.

Her name was Analiecia, and she looked so tired. Her eyes were sad, her hands weathered, and her clothes looked like they were doomed to be eternally filthy. She was a single mother of 7 kids, and but it was what she said when she looked me in the eye that struck me: “We have nothing and no one cares. We watch as our children starve to death in front of us, with no hope of feeding them enough to survive. Yesterday, 15 of us put our money together to buy one pound of rice between us for our families. Why does no one care?”

I had no answer for Analiecia, only the silent tears in my eyes as I bowed my head in recognition of her intense need. I didn’t even have money on myself, as we were too scared to come into this dangerous neighbourhood with anything of value, and I wondered what it would be like if, in that moment, her eyes were mine and mine were hers. What would I see differently? What would I view as important and worth giving my life for? What would I be willing to do for what I loved?

This past month I have spent many hours and days with incredible people in a very bizarre set of circumstances. With Hero Holiday, we have the privilege of leading Canadians on a journey of self-discovery and global awareness. Through the course of time that our trips take, I am always in awe of one thing more than anything else…Everytime I hand out food, or shoes, or reach out to a hand that needs to be pulled up, I am struck by one simple truth: there is nothing except birth that has separated my hands from theirs-my eyes see life from this view purely because of where I am born, and not because of anything I could have ever done to deserve it.

Analiecia’s eyes held mine that afternoon because they were eyes that reminded me to keep going, to keep believing that something can change, to keep joining hands with those who love the poor and reach out to the exploited.

Analiecia, your eyes have told me of deep truths that I needed to be reminded of and they have stirred a compassion that is not letting me sleep at night. I can’t not become a voice for you; I can’t not see your pain as my own. I can’t not want to be changed by what I now know.

Thank you, Analiecia for having the courage to look me in the eye. It was what I needed to realize that I need to look back into yours and recognize that which I can do to begin to change things for all of us.

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”
C.S. Lewis