Gateway Chapel has been sending teams to Haiti since 2011. Each year, the team has stayed at and worked with Mission of Hope Haiti in Titanyen. This year, the team wanted to focus on medical clinics, and chose to partner with Tytoo Gardens in Simonette. We expected something new, but what we got was a glorious mixture of familiar faces and friends, along with new freedoms and ministries. The team began claiming each day as better than the last, and by the end of the trip, it became very difficult to leave. This film is a short glimpse into the 7 days we spent in our new home away from home, Tytoo Gardens.

You can check out photos from the trip here on Facebook.

You can find Tytoo Gardens website here.

I will be traveling to Nicaragua again this summer in a similar media production role…so if you are interested in supporting that trip, feel free to do so using the tip jar feature here on vimeo. Thanks!

This link is my “one take” commentary on the film. If you can only watch one of these films however, make sure you watch the actual film…the commentary is kinda like a bonus feature. I’m hoping to have some more bonus content out in the next day or so…

Grangou-Etymology-Possibly from French grand goût (“big taste”)
1. Adjective-hungry
2. Noun-hunger

When is the last time that you were hungry? I don’t mean a little peckish, I mean truly hungry. The “I haven’t eaten in 3 days” kind of hungry. The “Was that my stomach rumbling or did a 747 just fly overhead?” kind of hungry. If you are like me, you may have never gone more than a couple of days without food. On those rare occasions where I don’t eat regularly, I am completely and utterly miserable. I can barely concentrate on the task at hand because I am distracted by my stomach’s constant cries for sustenance. It is amazing how quickly I can convince myself that I “must be dying” because I’m a little dizzy or lightheaded. I’m basically a wimp.

In a few weeks I will be going to Haiti for the 4th time. If I asked the people I will be meeting when the last time they were hungry was, many of them would be able to honestly say “right now” or “always”. I understand that there are hungry people in the United States as well, but the percentages are vastly different. Every time I have been in Haiti, someone asks us to help them because they are grangou. They are hungry.

Here’s the problem though. Our little team of 5 people can’t feed everyone we meet who is hungry. We will gladly help those that we can help, but sooner or later we will run out of resources to do so. Even if we had spent the last year fundraising and somehow saved up enough money to buy everyone in Haiti dinner, the next day, people would be hungry again. That’s the thing about hunger, you can’t cure it, you can only treat it. We can’t feed everyone. There will never be enough.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells us that we are blessed if we hunger and thirst for righteousness.

I’ll ask again…when is the last time you were hungry?

When is the last time your heart was hungry?

In the United States, we can find food if we are hungry. It may not be what we would choose to eat, it may not be in the quantities we want, but we can find it. We may have to humble ourselves or steal, but we can eat enough to stay alive. Most of us don’t have this problem and can choose what we want to eat, where we want to eat, and probably even how often we want to eat. We do the same with our hearts. It may not be healthy for us, it might not be what we really want, we may have to do something we didn’t want to do, but we find ways to make sure our heart isn’t hungry. Maybe we choose an abusive relationship, because we need the small taste of love that we get from it. Perhaps we choose to become workaholics because we find fulfillment in being needed. Some of us begin a rabid search for satisfaction, chasing anything and everything to fill the rumbling void inside. The next day we set out again to fill our hearts again, because they growl and rumble and tear us apart from the inside until we put something in them. It doesn’t matter how often we fill our hearts up, because we will always want more.

There will never be enough.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells us that we are blessed if we hunger and thirst for righteousness, BECAUSE we will be filled.

We aren’t just heart hungry here in the United States, it is a global need. We all find ways to fill our hearts up just enough to “take the edge off”, but what we really need is a hunger and thirst for righteousness, because only then will we be filled. God doesn’t make promises he doesn’t intend to keep. We can go to Haiti and know that even though we can only do so much for the physical hunger of the Haitians, we have an inexhaustible store of heart food we can share with them. If we go with our own hearts filled by God, we can share freely without fear of being left wanting. The cup will never run dry.

If we continually chase righteousness to fill our hearts, we will be filled.

There will ALWAYS be enough.