Urban Acacia is Going to Haiti This Week!

May 17th-23rd a group of 16 of us young adults from around the country (Seattle, LA, Virginia, Chicago, New York . . . ) will be meeting in Port Au Prince Haiti for a week of fellowship and service.We will be hosted by a wonderful organization called Praying Pelican Missions, a group I've had the pleasure of working with now for four years.  Once we fly into Port Au Prince, we will be taking a four-hour bus ride to the other side of the island to a small mountain community near Jacmel, Haiti.  We will be staying in the village there, in tents and a Church building.Other than building relationships and playing with kids, which is our primary objective, our work there will consist of finishing a flood reservoir and starting the construction of a Mill.  We are thrilled about the work on the Mill in particular because this is a sustainable project that promises not only to help provide food for the community, but it also promises to bring income into the community as others use the Mill.One note I wanted to make about this trip is in regards to the impact of short-term missions in developing countries. It is easy to think that we are shipping a group of middle class young adults to a developing nation because the Haitians need our help, or something equally demeaning.  In reality, however, that is far from the truth. The Haitians are a versatile, strong and faithful people. We are not going to Haiti because they need our help, we are going because we (our Haitian brothers and sisters, and all of us in the group) need each other.  All of us benefit from broadening our experience of fellowship in the Kingdom, especially in the midst of hardship. In doing so, we forge our mutual identity as children of God and come to know our Creator in the midst of our fellowship.We are going to Haiti to commune with our brothers and sisters, and to return with our hearts marked with the stories and faces of our time together.Please pray for us as we travel, and experience these life-changing encounters! We are excited to return and tell you all about it!If you'd like to follow along with us, feel free to subscribe to the blog below!http://www.prayingpelicanmissions.org/journals(click on Urban Acacia underneath Haiti)