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February 26, 2009 The year was 1983 and I was preparing to move from Dalton, Ga to Orlando, FL. I was watching some local news late one night. Drifting in and out of being awake. Then a report came on that shocked me completely back into the land of the living. It was actually a story from Alabama. An elderly disgruntled and unemployed man had called the local news with a question. Would they like to see a man set himself on fire? He had been drinking but the police were notified just the same. He made an appointment with the news for midnight in the town square. The camera crew showed up on schedule. Once the first big camera was out of the van, a drunken man quickly appeared out of the night. Face to face with the camera's big glass all seeing eye, the man poured lighter fluid all over himself. The camera was rolling. He then lit a match and set himself on fire. With the camera rolling, flames began to engulf the man. He began running across the town square, yelling as the heat of his decision began to melt his flesh. The camera man ran along behind filming all the while. Eventually some people got involved and put the fire out. The man survived though he had very serious burns. This story made the news in two big ways. One issue was the man himself. Why did he do it? What did he want to say? BUT, the other story quickly blew the first story out of the water. The really big story was, WHY would a camera man just stand there filming while another man set himself on fire? It made national news. People were outraged. Other news shows hashed and rehashed the shameful lack of action on the part of the camera man. Callers from TV Land flooded talk shows with calls spewing disgust for the camera man. It was unanimous, the camera man should be burned. Many other journalists and reporters voiced their shock and utter disdain for such a camera man as well. So much artificial self righteousness. We all feel like we're a little bit better of a person when we compare ourselves to the camera man. As I watched I had a little disdain for the camera man but I wasn't feeling as righteous as I should have been feeling. Something else was gnawing at me. A LOT of dogs were barking but I didn't feel they had treed a real coon. I've never been coon hunting but it makes my point. In other words, there was another deeper and bigger issue here that nobody was addressing. There was a white elephant in the room. Of course a lot of the reporters' scornful comments about the camera man were nothing less than professional hypocrisy. Hypocrisy seems to be a word reserved mainly for the pseudo religious but there's at least as much hypocrisy in the world as there is in the church. Being bad and admitting it doesn't make you good. Anyway, the more I watched people condemning the camera man, the more I began to feel some bad feelings toward the accusers. It was not in defense of the camera man, it was because the brutal reality is that most of us are camera men. The gnawing inside of me began to turn into fire. How? How are we camera men? How am I a camera man? The Lord brought to mind all of the suffering that I saw daily, and while my eyes and mind filmed, I did nothing. Just a normal drive to work would expose me to hospitals, nursing homes, soup kitchens, run down spooky neighborhoods, jails, street people, old people, needy people, hurting people, etc. None of which I chose to mess with. I WAS a camera man and so were most of the outraged callers in TV Land. Somebody somewhere once talked about what a terrible state the world was in when one half of the world could watch the other half of the world starve on TV. If I were bolder I'd say that sometimes we see so much and do so little. By the time I finished taking care of myself, there wasn't much left to be giving others. I began praying that the Lord would forgive me and deliver me from just being a camera man. Some folks try hard not to see anything so that they won't fall into the camera man slot but you judge which is worse. The Lord began to show me ways to help. Now here I am in Haiti all these years later. My eyes have been a camera to so much misery and suffering. But thankfully as Christians we can do more than film and take pictures. A journalist took an amazing picture of a dying child in one of Africa's famine stricken countries. A tiny Sudanese girl reduced literally to skin and bones is bowed down in the dust as a vulture waits behind her. The girl is at life's end and the vulture is waiting for a meal. You can see this heartrending picture here. The camera man took the picture and quickly left. He won a pulitzer prize for his picture. It truly captured the horror that was happening at the time. Unfortunately he did nothing to help the little girl and he stated that he never knew what became of her. How awesome it could've been for him to take the picture and then pick her up and carry her into the nearest refugee camp. Why he didn't, we will never know. Three months after receiving his award, he committed suicide. Without Christ, I believe Haiti would have put me in the grave long ago. I have literally stood before dump trucks full of bodies on their way to be burned in a dump yard for the thousands of unclaimed bodies Haiti produces every year. It can be overwhelming, but if anybody can do it, it should be real Christians, with REAL compassion. It kills me to look at that picture. It also challenges me. It convicts me. It tears at me. But I have to get beyond what it does to me and do something about it. Earlier tonight I was showing the kids a news video about "restaveks" or child slaves in Haiti. They estimate roughly 300,000 kids to be in slave labor all over Haiti. I've written plenty about them already and will not start down that road right now. In a nutshell, poor families in the mountains give their kids to families in other areas that they think will take better care of them. Often the kids are abused horrendously. Sexually, physically, verbally. As we watched the news report about restaveks, it broke my heart. The cameras got some heartrending footage. One little girl who had no parents had been bought buy a wicked looking lady that beat her constantly. The little girl began to cry as she talked about the beatings. Her tiny little voice does not sound like it comes from a body that can endure too much more. Her day starts at 4 in the morning when she goes after water. The girl was dirty and had no shoes. She does not go to school. Her only purpose in the house is as a slave. I wanted to jump into the screen and grab her and bring her right into the Happy House. If I could I would in a heartbeat, but I cannot find this girl. She's somewhere among the 2 million people in PAP. I have showed a few people the video and told them if they ever see her, make contact. When we drive through the streets in PAP and all the kids come running up to our car begging in the traffic, my eyes scan for her face. She's a 10 year old slave. She might run away if she had anywhere to go. The camera man was there. The reporter was there. They saw her. They talked to her. They could have done something. They did, they filmed and took pictures and broke my heart. But where is the little slave girl? Are things any better for her now that more of us know about her suffering? She got to be on TV. She's on You Tube. They came, they filmed, they left. Sometimes in my heart I want to cry out. Another newscast found 14 kids that had all run away from abusive situations. They were selling their bodies in prostitution and pooling their money to rent a tin shack with a dirt floor. They sleep on pieces of cardboard in the mud. The camera man was there. Filmed their misery and moved on. Where are they now? You Tube. What happened to these kids? The camera man went to do another story but they had all moved on. WHERE ARE THEY?!?!?! We had a former restavek at our house the other day. Her parents sent her to live with some people in PAP. They soon began beating and abusing her. Her mother brought her back but still did not know what to do with the extra mouth. Then she found out about the Lacul/Ft Royale school and put her in. Now she is happy and staying at home. This is a very common story and we have so many kids that have done time as a slave. Not being able to put kids in school is often one of the big reasons parents give their kids away. A mother came over yesterday and asked us to take in her daughter as a Happy House resident. The mother is going to school in PAP and her daughter is here living with an aunt. We have seen Berline's condition continue to worsen. She used to be clean, now she is often dirty. She also starts the day at 4 in the morning doing chores. She is often late for school and is starting to fall behind in her once decent grades. Her aunt has been beating her with an electric cord and things are falling apart for Berline. Her mother is desperate. Berline is a restavek and working in her aunt's house is taking over her life. Her mother pleaded with us to take her in. Manno and I talked it over and told her that we'll give it a shot. She will be coming to stay for awhile in another week. It is a shameful thing when people choose to be camera men and not help. It is also pathetic when people try to avoid seeing any needs so that they can keep from feeling guilty. It is an AWESOME thing when people put their hands and hearts together and HELP. We are not called to be camera men that do nothing but watch. We are called to be the salt of the earth. A city on a hill. The light of the world. I am so thankful that when Jesus came to earth, He didn't just take pictures and leave. He could've gone back to heaven and broadcast our suffering on Angel News at 11. He didn't do that. He didn't just go back to heaven and lay around all depressed about what He saw here. He got very involved with us and our problems here. He did not leave us bowed over and starving in the dust with vultures waiting to tear apart our flesh. And that's about the equivalent of what I was when he found me. I am grateful to so many folks that have prayed for and supported the work here and turned so many impossibilities into possibilities and the effect that his has had on thousands of lives here. We see a lot of suffering, what are we doing about it? Let's get busier than ever. The harvest is ripe, the laborers are few, the camera men are many. fre Ed