Follow-up: Sleep Out 4 Haiti

I am happy to say that we have reached half our goal and are on track to be entirely funded for the November Medical Mission to Haiti, with your help of course.

Let's first talk about our meteoric success! We spent three days and two nights camped out in the heart of Modesto, CA at Orangeburg Ave. Church. While it was was difficult to find other who would brave the elements with us out doors, we had several visitors and support.

The first day was hot, 100 degrees actually. At night, the humidity level swelled to 88% (that is unusually high for central California) and the temperature hung in at 84 degrees all night. This made for a long night of sleeping, but before any of us could go to bed, we made a camp fire, enjoyed some s'mores and a camp fire sing along type setting (as much as is possible with our eclectic array young-adults and youth). We got to meet some of the local night crawlers, a few drunks who were somewhat belligerent with the ladies and a homeless couple looking for some money (we all wished they would have stayed longer than a few moments). We had no money on us... no really... but we had a lot of snacks and junk food that had been donated and tried to pawn that off to every wanderer-by we could.

From Left to Right: Roni, Matt, Me (in the ballcap), and Abbi

It rained a little the first night, but that was no comparison to what day 2 had in store for us. Our camp was ravaged by seemingly unnatural winds with gusts up to 25 mph and sustained breeze at about 12-15 mph. Sure, we have weather like this all the time during the Winter and Spring, but never in September. The "tent city"" and boxes were destroyed. The dwellings, though, weren't our primary concern. Our 4 foot by 8 foot Styrofoam signs were the biggest problem.

Right next to a main artery from East to West Modesto, our signs became sails threatening to fly out into the 5 lane avenue and give someone some very targeted advertisement, that they surely wouldn't be able to ignore. We attempted several ways to secure these signs and ended up just relying on my sons to hold cardboard signs and run up and down the sidewalk yelling "Donate to Haiti!"

Don't laugh, it worked. Donations started raining in. Not big donations, but the cars apparently found our humble abode to be a bit more approachable with the little kids at the helm. Even before that though, a woman, not known to any of us, dropped by with drinks and snacks for the the team hanging out with the tents.

We had hoped for more visibility and had called several news and radio stations as well as the Modesto Bee. In all we contacted Air1 (who said they needed more notice), KOVR 13 News, Good Morning Sacramento, KCRA 3 News, and our Local News 10. No one came out, which was both surprising and disheartening. The lessons we learned from this and the edification we derived from this experience was more than made up for it. Among our youth and college young adults (many of whom I've taught in the college and youth Bible studies) one thing was understood: living in tent cities, even just for a couple of days, is NOT like camping out in the forest. There's a lot more noise and much less sense of security, which we surmise would be even more so in the historically violent and unstable urban environment in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

All said and done, we have several people to thank for an unprecedented amount of moral and material support from our community and church. In total, that wee we raised $1327.53.

Our Corporate Sponsors:

Gary's Rent A Car, Inc.

KAMB (Celebration Radio)101.5FM
Linda's Pampered Pets

Magic Shoe Repair

Multi Business Systems

Speer Floors

Vision Graphix & Design

West Coast Heating & Air Conditioning

Our friends who provided much needed and generous material and morale support:

Andrew and Vivian Birch

David and Debra Cline

Lois Fruendorfer

Mark and Debbie Greenlee

Judd and Nancy Hubbard

Dr. Peter and Kathleen Lai

Armando and Nora Magana

Richard and Leisa Proctor

Tegan Wells

and the anonymous givers and those of you who've pledged to donate... 

We love you guys too!

Our Friends who hung out with us:

Matt Bitz

Mary Blaine (Gigi!)

Karen Farrell

Johnny Farrell

Kaila Farrell

Tyler Gallasso

Liam Greenlee

Mark Greenlee

Owen Greenlee

Matt Magana

Drew Mathews

Roni Mathews

Alexandra Parker

Riannon Parker

Sierra Parker

Tina New Parker

Gabe Proctor

Leisa Proctor

Richard Proctor

Mary Willingham

and last but not least...

 that crazy drunk guy who confused us all with his random rants about how to run a waffle house

Most of all, Abigail, the rest of the crew, and I thank and praise the almighty God who is steadfast and faithful through all things and cares more deeply for the people of Haiti than any one of us could ever fathom...