Mission To Haiti Transforms Lindale Members

By Tom Mitchell

LINVILLE-Duane Yoder had seen it all before. This time, members of Yoder's church got to share the experience.

Forty-three people from Lindale Mennonite returned Monday from a mission in Haiti, where the group remodeled an orphanage, a mission house and a pastor's home.

The mission, from July 1-7, was in Haiti's capital city of Port-au-Prince. It was the first trip to the Caribbean country for members from Lindale Mennonite, but the ninth such visit for Yoder, 55, the church's lead pastor from Harrisonburg.

When he came to Lindale Mennonite from Sarasota, Fla., five years ago, Yoder kept ties with the Christian Fellowship Mission, a mission group he'd represented on relief work in Haiti while preaching in Sarasota. Yoder's first trip to Haiti, in 1998, also involved inner-city repairs at Port-au-Prince.

The Christian Fellowship Mission has sponsored missions to Haiti since 1964, said Yoder, but stopped during Haiti's last civil war, from 1997-2003. Two years ago, said Yoder, U.N. troops restored calm to Haiti, said Yoder, but the impoverished nation remains a wilderness of want.

"Haiti has, by far, the poorest economy in the Caribbean and in the Western Hemisphere," said church member Galen Lehman, citing Haiti's annual median income of $700.

The group from Lindale worked four days, toured the coast on Saturday and worshiped with villagers on Sunday. The mission's younger members met with youth from the orphanage, ranging in age from preschoolers to teens.

Come Together

Lehman, 60, from Singers Glen serves as Caribbean regional director for Virginia Mennonite Missions, a mission agency for the Virginia Conference of Mennonite Church USA that is responsible for all mission programs in the Caribbean run by the conference.

One task for mission workers in Haiti, said Lehman, has been that of uniting local churches in a joint goal of improving life there.

Said Lehman: "You feel sometimes that your efforts are barely a drop in the ocean, but at least it's your drop. We made life [in Haiti] better, if only just a little bit."

Church member Alice Brubaker of Harrisonburg joined husband Dennis for the mission. Alice Brubaker, 60, an administrative assistant at the church, grew up as the daughter of missionary parents in Honduras. She and her husband, an industrial arts teacher at Eastern Mennonite High School, served on similar rebuilding missions in Puerto Rico in 1990 and in Honduras in 1999.

Said Alice Brubaker: "Haiti is much poorer. There is more hopelessness and unemployment, less opportunity."

Others from Lindale shared tales from a trip that stunned and moved them. A Harrisonburg couple, Teresa and Devon Anders, brought along their children: daughters Katrina, 16, and Stephanie, 13, and son Craig, 9. While Devon Anders, 42, had gone to China for cross-cultural study while a student at Eastern Mennonite University, going on a mission was new for Teresa Anders, 44. Devon Anders is president of Interchange, a warehousing logistics and real estate company in Harrisonburg, where his wife does bookkeeping and accounting.

"This trip was a perfect fit for our family," said Teresa Anders, who added that the mission altered her household's values. "In the few days we've been home, we've already had some conversations of what is necessary and what is extravagant."

Working For Others

Devon Anders said that helping in Haiti taught his family to "appreciate the value of working for others."

The Anders' oldest daughter marveled at the warmth that Haiti's poor displayed.

Said Katrina: "The pure love we felt from the Haitian people was incredible. We definitely took more from Haiti than we left."

Church members Cara and Tyler Kauffman of Harrisonburg serve as youth sponsors at Lindale Mennonite. The Kauffmans chaperoned 11 youths on the mission.

Cara Kauffman, 26, said that Lindale's youngsters "poured their hearts" into the mission's projects and people, in an area filled "with the most widespread poverty" she'd ever seen.

"The youth were amazing, how they poured themselves into the work," said Cara Kauffman. "It is really important that we keep going back."

The fact that more than 12 percent of Lindale's members went on the trip to Haiti means that most of the 340 people active in the church know, or will soon know, about the mission that Yoder calls "transforming" for its participants.

Said Yoder: "When an eighth of your congregation goes on a mission, that's bound to have a positive effect on your church."

Contact Tom Mitchell at 574-6275 or mitchell@dnronline.com