June 3, 2007
Dear Everyone,
I’m sending you this letter because I think you would be interested in hearing about an adventure that I’m going on this summer. From July 12th until July 21st I will going on a Transformational Travel trip to Haiti. I will be going with Laura Tippens, a friend of mine from Covenant, and her father, Joel, who is part of a non-profit organization named Globalfolks.
Now, that’s all very vague, so let me fill in some of the details. I am very interested in doing missionary and community development work in the future, perhaps even moving to another country. God has laid on my heart a desire to help people. In non-specialized words, I’m considering being a missionary who focuses on preaching the gospel of Christ through word and deed in order to help a community develop out of poverty both economic and spiritual.
Right now I am considering working in Haiti, not least because it is the only third world country left in the western hemisphere. So this missions trip is going to be focused mainly on exploring and learning about the country. There will only be the three of us, plus our guide a community developer who lives in Haiti. We will basically be walking around Haiti for 9 days, experiencing the country the way that the normal, every day citizens do. The point of this is to discover what the Haitians themselves think about poverty – theirs and their country’s. We want to know how it has shaped their outlook on life, and how they are working to combat poverty. We want to know what Haiti is really like instead of the stereotype of political unrest so often portrayed on the news. We want to discover the richness of Haitian culture, and will be visiting an artisan community in Jacmel. We want to know first hand what it is like to be a Haitian, and how different that is from our middle-class American mindsets.
In short, we are going in order to try to discover how we could help bring in the kingdom of God and minister to the people in Haiti, while at the same time what God wants to teach us through them. We will also be doing a documentary on a reforestation project in a place destroyed by a hurricane.
I am sending you this letter because I believe that you desire the same things as I do that I discover how I can be used by God to help redeem the world for Christ. So, I need you to pray for me as I prepare to go to Haiti. This will be a hard, physically demanding, mentally draining time. I am dreadfully excited about it, but I know that I can only make it through the trip if God strengthens me continually. While you are praying for God to give me wisdom as I prepare for this trip, please also ask God if He wants you to help me by contributing financially. I am not asking for everyone to contribute – please don’t send me money unless you think it’s what God wants. However, please do ask God if you can help me by contributing to the Lord’s work. Each of us has to raise $1200 to cover our plane tickets, food, local travel expenses, and some hotel rooms.
If you would like to send the money directly to me, please mail it to my address at the bottom of this page. Or, if you would like it to be tax-deductible, please make the check out to Global Folks, and put July Haiti Trip in the memo line of the check. The address is at the bottom of the page. Also, if you would like more information about our trip, please visit this website. This link is to a blog post that Joel Tippens wrote about our upcoming trip. It has our tentative itinerary, as well as a more detailed description of what we will be doing, and what we hope to accomplish.
Thank you very much for reading this lengthy letter, and please please PLEASE lift me up in prayer to our Lord. We need His help to make this a good trip, and I need His help to discern if development in Haiti is what I should focus my life on. Thank you again for your time.
Love,
Sarah Thomas 🙂
4703 Florida Ave.
Chattanooga, TN 37409
For tax deductible checks, send to:
Salt of the Earth
211 Fairview Avenue
Daytona Beach, Florida 32114
Or, log on to www.globalfolks.org to make a secure donation through Paypal.