College students who are looking for something to do during their “spring break” might want to consider serving in Haiti.
LCMS World Relief and Human Care (WR-HC) is working with Lutheran Chu
rch Charities in Addison, Ill., to offer five weeklong mission trips:
- Feb. 27 to March 5,
- March 6-12,
- March 13-19,
- March 20-26 and
- March 28 to April 2.
Those who serve on a Haiti Spring Break Mission Trip will help build concrete-block homes as part of the WR-HC project “Building Homes and Hope in Haiti.”
A year after the devastating earthquake in that country, 95 percent of the rubble remains and nearly 1 million Haitians still live in tents.
“The people of Haiti are wonderful people, but they have been beaten down and are losing hope,” says Lutheran Church Charities (LCC) President Tim Hetzner, who was in Haiti in January. “That hope can come when they meet and work with others who act and share the mercy and compassion of Christ.”
Sofie Martin, a sophomore at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis., and a member of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Palatine, Ill., called her recent service in Haiti “a life-changing experience.”
“To work with and visit people who inhabit a Third World country was an incredible opportunity,” Martin said. “I learned so much about being grateful about what we have here at home.
“There is such a need for able-bodied, good-spirited youth to come and help rebuild Haiti, and more importantly, share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
LCC coordinates all WR-HC-related service trips to Haiti, arranging in-country transportation, food and lodging for volunteers, who are responsible for their own round-trip airfare to the Port-au-Prince airport, plus a $150 registration fee. Once in Haiti, WR-HC covers all transportation, food and lodging costs.
Hetzner says Lutherans are making a difference in Haiti. Building homes “is an instrument that is used to bring Christ,” he says. “And that is the key.”
Lutheran churches in Haiti are “busting at the seams” with worshipers, according to Hetzner.
“I’m so proud of our pastors over there — the pressure that they are under and the stress that they are under with everything,” he told Reporter. “And yet the work that they are doing — and the fruits of that labor for the kingdom — is powerful to see.”
For more information about serving in Haiti, contact LCC toll-free at 866-455-6466 or springbreak2011@lutheranchurchcharities.org. Or, visit the LCC website at www.lutheranchurchcharities.org.
Posted Feb. 9, 2011
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