When the rubble is cleared away, the roads repaved and the buildings rebuilt, will the people of Haiti be back on their feet?
Haiti Today: Rebuilding Haiti will not be easy, nor will it happen quickly, but some urban planners have suggested that there may be a silver lining in the city's destruction. As with so many places that have been gutted by natural disasters, the earthquake in Haiti may give the nation the opportunity to construct a new capital that is stronger, healthier and more resilient. Tomorrow's Port-au-Prince could have the soul of the past and the structure of the future.
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Helping Haitians recover from the personal trauma and devastating losses wrought by the earthquake will be a much more difficult task than the overwhelming job of physical reconstruction.
One of our family members, a true hero who survived the earthquake, flew to New York to make this urgent appeal: "If we don't do anything to rebuild the people of Haiti, rebuild the human beings -- all of our efforts are in vain." (Watch his passionate take on the subject.)
Especially now, at the six-month anniversary of Haiti's worst disaster, I am powerfully reminded that the most significant need of Haitians right now is hope.
As first responders during 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and now Haiti, our team at American Bible Society has witnessed the remarkable relationship between the physical recovery of a place and the emotional and spiritual recovery of a people. If we feed the body but don't feed the spirit, people cannot fully recover from tragedy.
The Bible has proven time and time again to be effective in uplifting the human spirit and providing the foundation for stabilizing a person following a traumatic event or a crisis. At a distribution of Bibles by the Haitian Bible Society, a near-riot broke out as people clamored for a copy of God's Word. "My people don't have anything," Haitian Bible Society Program Coordinator Marie Carme Derivois told us, "and when you don't have anything, only God's Word can bring you comfort -- that's why they are fighting for a Bible."
Food, shelter and water are getting attention, but Haitians are also crying out for spiritual resources to help sustain them through the long process of rebuilding their nation and their lives.
As relief workers continue to make their way to Haiti, we are able to supply them with a most important rebuilding tool -- God's word to Haitians in their "heart language." The Creole Bible was first brought to the Haitian people 50 years ago with the translation efforts led by current Haiti UN Ambassador Raymond Joseph. As a teenager in the 1950s, Joseph told his father, "We need a Bible in Creole." American Bible Society became the catalyst, publishing the first Creole Scriptures in 1960.
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SOURCE: The Huffington Post
Lamar Vest | President and CEO, The American Bible Society
