Corruption and the Real City…

I can’t quite explain it – but when we gave out all the food last week my spirit was still unsettled. Something still felt very wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it – but I did not have peace. So this week I sent some undercover Haitian employees (if you will) to investigate our little tent city. I wanted them to go tent by tent – look for what we had given away – talk with the people – and see if they turn up anything shady.

At first the people were afraid to talk. The thing that we found so odd was that there weren’t large bags of rice in their homes. You saw bowls of rice – but not the big bags. It had only been 24-hours since our give-away – – so where are all the bags of rice? Our tent city leader – Guy – was very shady! He took from the people the big bags of rice and their peanut butter. He said he was going to put it in a depot so that the food wouldn’t get stolen. So he gave a little bit out and said every few days they could come and get more. HE STOLE ALL OF IT! He threatened to hurt anyone who told me. But after a day or so of our employees wondering around down there – they finally opened up and told us what had happened. After our employees consoled them – they went to Guy’s tent in the middle of the night with sticks and machetes and literally ran him out of the city.

They were afraid to tell me the truth – afraid we would punish them for what Guy had done. These poor people  – even when you want to help them  – you can’t help them! We spent all day today at the tent city fellowshipping with them and taking down all the “real” information of the families and their sizes.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. But I told Guy before we started – if there is corruption God will reveal it. You will not steal from me – you will steal from HIM. God did not give me peace  – which is why we did the little investigation.

Tomorrow we will feed 52 families. Many of the names on the list were not correct. They were Guy’s people. Only when I said we would check the homes did he actually have the tent city people come. We fed the right people – but they told us how Guy gave them names -the names on the lists – even though those names really didn’t belong to them.

We gave tap tap money for the families to come find us tomorrow so we could give away the food. Each family now has a card – we are not working with any leaders – but the people directly. Today we walked in every single home -we prayed with them. They cried and thanked us for setting them free from Guy. His corruption there was long before we arrived – but because we showed the people we loved them – they found the courage to – stand back up!