Steeple Times, Volume 9, Issue 9.1

the

Steeple Times

September 2014

Vol. 9, Issue 9.1: Special Mission Edition

First Presbyterian Church of Tyler, Texas 230 West Rusk Street, Tyler, Texas 75701-1696 // (903) 597-6317 // www.fpctyler.com

Haiti: Where Mission and Stewardship Combine Earlier this year, this congregation entered into a covenant with St. Etienne Church in Haiti to provide them with electricity and clean water through a solar-powered water filtration system. This covenant was made in partnership with Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, Arkansas (CPC Fort Smith), Solar Under the Sun (SUTS), and its sister organization, Living Waters for the World (LWW). Both SUTS and LWW are ministries of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and their mission is simple but vital. Through alliances with congregations across the country, they install solar-powered water filtration systems in Haiti and other developing nations, bringing sustainable power and clean water into communities where poor sanitation and nutrition compound poverty.

A woman and donkey carry supplies near a polluted waterway in the Haitian countryside in May 2014.

turned from their trip changed.

In May, FPC’s Mission Committee sent two Solar School–trained memBefore, they had been focused on bers to Haiti, Dan Daniel and Sally learning the technology and writing Smith Garmon, on an exploratory covenants and grants. Now, they trip whose mission was twofold. First, they planned to St. Etienne was no longer just a pipe visit the proposed installation dream, but a journey of shared faith. site for the solar-water system, trouble-shoot potential obstacles, and develop a game plan were invested in this community for installation. Second, they spent through personal connection and time building relationships with the spiritual bonds—St. Etienne was community at St. Etienne Church, no longer just a pipe dream, but a where the solar-water system will be journey of shared faith. They came located. They worshipped togethaway humbled by the stark poverty er, sang together, and shared meals and the gentle dignity of the Haitian together; and the mission team repeople, further inspired by God to

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help alleviate some of this human suffering.

As the mission team prepares to return to Haiti in a few short weeks for their installation trip, they want to share the impressions they brought back with them in May, hoping that the context and purpose of the mission will be illuminated for the congregation as it was for them.

In these pages, Sally Smith Garmon, Mission Committee chair, recounts the story of this most recent trip. Her travel companions were Dan Daniel, an electrical engineer by trade and FPC Tyler’s resident expert on SUTS

technology; Chris McRae, executive director of SUTS and leader of SUTS’s Solar School; and Chris’s wife Ruthie. Chris and Ruthie are members of CPC Fort Smith, FPC Tyler’s mission partner for this project.

Mission Trip Log: May 24–28, 2014

By Sally Smith Garmon We begin our journey with the sensory overload of the streets in Port au Prince. People are everywhere— on foot, motorbikes, trucks—and the buses contribute a persistent “tap-tap” to the melee, all honking their horns.

Marketplaces teem with people bartering, laughing, talking, and singing amidst piles of vegetables, fruits, animals, appliances, and clothing. The air is thick with exhaust and smoke from burning trash, the ground strewn with puddles of diesel and sewage. Smells seem more pungent this trip, as our rented Kia’s air conditioner is broken, our windows rolled down. We are feeling the two-hundred-degree temperature and the five-gazillion-percent humidity. It really makes me feel alive.

Top: The marketplace in Port au Prince bustles with activity.

Traffic moves surprisingly well, alBottom: The congregation at St. Etienne Church gathers for worship on Sunday morning though at times we find ourselves next door to the proposed building site for their solar-water system. nose to nose with another vehicle.

Lucson, our Haitian driver, intuitively ers have not yet begun crowing. I am their quarters. I am full of anticipaand deftly inches into almost imperlying under mosquito netting at the tion as I pray for our mission. ceptible gaps, and zigzags around six Catholic compound, Palmiste au Vin, vehicles in oncoming traffic with surAfter breakfast, we drive to St. Etiwhere we have spent the night, begical precision and nerves of steel. enne, where we are warmly welfore we meet and worship with our Miraculously, it seems, we make it comed by the priest, Pere Desire through yet another intersec(pronounced Pair Dez-i-ray; tion unscathed. Chris looks pere is Creole for father). Wor. . . their worship is ordered, inclusive. back over the front seat and ship starts shortly thereafter, We are in the body of Christ. smiles at us. We smile back. and Chris McRae preaches, with Frantzou Avril, LWW It’s early Sunday morning and covenant partner, the church at St. in-country technician, translating. eerily quiet. The dogs have tempoEtienne. Chris and Ruthie McRae We sing from hymnals, the words in rarily stopped barking and the roostand Dan Daniel are still asleep in

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Haitian Creole, and we join voices in prayer to the same triune God. Our mission partners share the same attributes of our own congregational families: dignity, grace, reverence, and joy. Their musical style is faintly reminiscent of reggae, and their language is mostly incomprehensible to us, but their worship is ordered, inclusive. We are in the body of Christ.

After worship and lunch, we move forward in our discussions with St. Etienne’s water council, a body of people who, along with Pere Desire, will be entrusted with helping install and maintain their solar-water system. The water council develops business plans to promote the system’s sustainability, taking into consideration the potential for growth in their community and congregation. Just as in our most beloved biblical stories, this story has deep roots that began simply. As embodied by the cistern they built months before we arrived at St. Etienne, this story is about faith—in forming this partnership—and hope—that someday the people of St. Etienne would have pure water for their people to drink.

We do walk-throughs of their church and administration buildings, trying to discern their lighting and electrical needs, climbing atop the roof to decide where to place the solar panels, measuring distances, calculating wiring requirements, and establishing where the people of St. Etienne want to construct the building which will house their solar-water system.

This ordered planning makes me thankful for the people of FPC Tyler and CPC Fort Smith for supporting this mission which brings hope to these people and reduces the consequences of poverty and disease.

After our visit to St. Etienne, we travel over mountains to the Ascension Church and School in the coastal

city of Bainet. Last year our mission partner, CPC Fort Smith, rebuilt a solar-water system there that serves not just the church and school, but the entire community. We’re here now to check on the system and provide help with any maintenance issues that have arisen.

At Ascension, Dan and Frantzou ascend a ladder, using an improvised

rod to ground the rooftop solar panels. Afterward, Dan teaches battery equalization to the Haitian operators while we observe the meticulousness with which the Haitians care for and operate their system.

Ruthie teaches health and hygiene to bright and attentive high school students who, later, animatedly play charades enacting the principles of

FPC Tyler Mission Committee chair, Sally Smith Garmon, reunites with Pere Michaud, priest at Ascension Church and School in Bainet, Haiti. They stand in front of the solar-water system at Ascension that was refurbished by members of CPC Fort Smith last year. Bon dlo means good water in Creole.

fpc tyler @ sol ar school & clean water u To date, five members of this congregation have attended SUTS’s Solar School, which trains volunteers in one of two crucial areas.

Solar 1 teaches leadership development, focusing on team formation, trip management, site evaluation, and covenant negotiation (covenant is SUTS’s term for contract). Solar 2 emphasizes technical know-how, preparing participants to assemble off-grid solar energy systems, assess electrical loads, and practice safety and maintenance.

Our mission team hopes to continue growing with more members educated in the leadership and technology so essential to this mission. Next month, another team member will be the first from FPC Tyler to attend Clean Water U, LWW’s volunteer training program—and who knows, you could be next!

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The cooks at St. Innocents School use water ferried up the moun- Students are prepared for their day in the school room at St. Intain from the Ascension solar-water system to prepare food for a nocents. meal program that provides daily lunches for the students.

her lessons. Health and hygiene instruction is part of the curriculum taught by LWW at Clean Water U.

ing stove, and built a secure storage room on campus for the food, which comes from a U.S.-based program administered in Haiti. The nutritional requirements of each child are recalculated monthly, based on their weight, and each child’s portions are adjusted accordingly to meet their

the question. The water to cook the food is now ferried up the mountain daily on a motorcycle that holds four saddlebags, each carrying five Later that day we visit St. Innocent’s gallons of water purified by the soSchool, a trek up a remote mountainlar-water system at Ascension. I feel top where the school sits on an imas if I have come full circle, having penetrable rock foundation where shadowed the team from Johnson no well can be dug. Against all odds, City on my first trip to Haiti, a meal program has been esas they formed the covenant tablished there for eighty-five Before the meal program, some of these for this remarkable initiative. students using water from children only ate two meals per week.

I marvel at the things God has the restored solar-water fashown me of his grand design cility down the mountain at and purpose! needs. Before the meal program, Ascension Church and School. The some of these children only ate two meal program is the outcome of FPC The principal at St. Innocent’s meals per week.

Johnson City, Tennessee’s covenant School, Roger Jean Baptiste, is frugal: with the parents, teachers, principal, and priest (who oversees the school). Together they built a rudimentary kitchen on the mountaintop, supplied it with a wood-burn-

The key obstacle in establishing the school’s meal program was the lack of available water on the rock mountaintop, where a well is out of

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Pam Leach gives a SUTS pamphlet to MC

SUTS LWW FPCT CPC FPCJC MC

Solar Under the Sun Living Waters for the World FPC Tyler Central PC Fort Smith, AR FPC Johnson City, TN Mission Committee

MC considers potential projects. Ginny Mattox sees the pamphlet and recognizes SUTS Exec. Dir. Chris McRae, who she grew up with in El Dorado, AR. MC gets in touch

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he cuts a piece of paper measuring 8 ½-by-11 inches into sixteen separate pieces in order to share his contact information with me on one of those tiny fragments. This reminds

Enthusiasm grows. Lynn Holliman, Ginny Mattox, Kyle Palmer, and Sally Smith Garmon attend Solar School

FPCT celebrates the covenant signing

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Chris McRae meets with MC. Everyone is sold!

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It's official. Session votes to sign a covenant with SUTS

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Sally Smith along to H where the groundwo Innocents and visit p

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me of how we are all also pieces of God’s kingdom, and how we can and should partner and share in stewardship of his resources. Principal Baptiste knows not merely how to make do with less, but how to make more with less.

I am reminded of the gift given to us

by God in his son, Jesus Christ, and what stewardship that gift implies.

If you are fortunate enough to serve God in a country like Haiti someday, you will meet people through whom you will see God’s gift in a new light, On our last day, we travel toward just as freely given as those orphans Port au Prince, stopping at the orwho shared everything they had phanage in Darwith us and exbonne, where pected nothing We can never repay God’s gift, Chris wants to in return. We but we are all called to share it. check on their can never repay solar-water sysGod’s gift, but tem. As barefoot orphans wander we are all called to share it, with in and out of the tiny room which abandon, with all those we meet houses the facility, Dan and Chris along the way. discover electrical hazards and set to work repairing them. Ruthie and I are soon surrounded by tired, dusty, and hungry children. Two of the tiniest kids collapse in exhaustion in our arms to nap. As we are leaving Darbonne, two of the newer arrivals are obviously malnourished. They have spindly legs and protuberant bellies, a condition which we refer to in medicine as kwashiorkor (protein malnutrition). I wish I could express what we feel. Our hearts hurt; we know our work is incomplete.

We realize how undeserving each of us is, as we know we have been bought for a price, which Jesus paid for you, me, the Haitians, and all people. In Haiti, I am reminded over and over again of what that means.

Session approves mission partnership with LWW, and MC selects St. Etienne as our covenant partner

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h Garmon tags Haiti with FPCJC, ey lay the ork for the St. s meal program potential partners

Sessions of both FPCT & CPC endorse the two churches as partners in the St. Etienne project

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Steeple Times is a free publication of First Presbyterian Church, 230 W. Rusk Street, Tyler, Texas 75701. Acting editor is Stuart Baskin. FPC reserves the right to edit and/or exclude submissions.

Please submit content to Karen McClellan by the 15th of the month prior to publication via mail, email (kmcclellan@ fpctyler.com), or fax (903) 597-6326.

VBS teaches 23 kids and 12 adults about SUTS

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This issue of the Steeple Times is a special edition featuring FPC Tyler’s ongoing mission project at St. Etienne Church and School in Haiti in association with Solar Under the Sun, a mission organization of Synod of the Sun PC(USA). This issue is available in PDF format in full color at www.fpctyler.com/newsletter, along with the Steeple Times archive.

Children refill their clean water jug at the service window of the solar-water facility at Ascension Church and School in Bainet, Haiti.

Sally Smith Garmon and Dan Daniel attend Solar School 2 and geek out!

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steeple times | mission edition

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SUTS trailer gets a facelift under the artistic direction of Mary Ann Post

St. Etienne site visit

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SUTS awards FPCT a $5000 grant

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FPCT and CPC provide ongoing maintenance and support to St. Etienne water council

Ginny Mattox, Dan Daniel, Sally Smith Garmon, and Stuart Baskin travel to Haiti with CPC to lead installation

What’s Next for Our Mission with Solar Under the Sun? In mid-October, SUTS-trained volunteers from both FPC Tyler and CPC Fort Smith will travel to St. Etienne, taking with them all the components necessary to install the solar-powered water filtration system.

Over four days, they will oversee its installation, educate the local St. Etienne water council in operation and maintenance, and most importantly, continue to build relationships.

This particular solar-water system is sized to provide about 215 gallons of clean water each day—enough clean water to provide for the whole St. Etienne community. In a country where plumbing is in short supply, and sewage seeps down to the water table, this makes a big impact.

With the introduction of clean water, sanitation-related disease rates plummet, children’s growth rates rise, and the population can focus renewed energy on education and

clean water facts One gallon of clean water meets one person’s daily needs for drinking, cooking, and bathing babies.

(All other needs—cleaning, watering crops and animals, personal hygiene—can be met with raw, unfiltered water.) However, 1 in 9 people around the world don’t have access to clean drinking water at all. In developing countries,

economic development.

This is what we’re working toward.

But in the next month, we have a lot to do in preparation—and you can help! as much as 80% of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions, and 443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related diseases.

For every $1 invested in water and sanitation, there is an economic return of between $3 and $34.

Sources include World Health Organization, UNICEF, UN Development Programme, and AQUASTAT.

Conceptual Site Layout

Raw water pipe and PV electrical conduit over the roof

North

Raw Water Tank

Solar Panels

Raw water pipe and PV electrical conduit run along this wall sw

Pure Water Tank On Top of WB

Electrical wires run in the chapel and then in conduit to the building

Scale is not precise

Gate 7

A rough rendering of the site plan for St. Etienne, provided by Dan Daniel, Solar 2–trained mission team member, who is overseeing the technical planning for the project.

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The Mission Committee offers special thanks to the following individuals and organizations for helping with this story:

How You Can Help adopt-a-part As a church, we have pledged to raise the funds to purchase all components and materials needed to harvest the sun’s energy for the community at St. Etienne*—and whether it’s a solar panel, copper wiring, or a screwdriver, you can help us foot the bill. Please visit the lobby of the Fellowship Hall, where the Adopt-A-Part poster illustrates the solar power technology and all its constituent parts in need of adoption. *Our mission partners at CPC Fort Smith are sponsoring the water filtration–related parts of the system.

donate scarves Help the Mission Committee collect gently used scarves for use in the upcoming mission trip to Haiti in October. The scarves will be used and reused for several purposes: 1. to protect the solar-power

components during transportation;

2. to attach to buckets to draw

up and carry water from wells;

3. to be worn as a headdress to

balance and transport baskets laden with water, food, and supplies (see the image on page 1 as an example).

Please bring scarves to the box in the foyer of the administration office by Sunday, September 28.

pray Keep this mission and the community at St. Etienne in your prayers as the team installs the system next month and continues to build relationships and provide support in the months to come.

get involved Our mission work doesn’t stop after installation of the solar-water system. We have pledged to provide the St. Etienne community with continued maintenance and education for three years, and we hope to research the possibility of entering into a covenant with another church in Haiti, expanding the impact of this clean water mission. On each of these trips, our mission team must employ a translator and driver, rent a car for transportation, and purchase plane tickets, meals, gas, and other incidentals.

Your continued support of this initiative is vital to the success of our mission work, which we believe is foundational to FPC Tyler’s identity as a congregation.

If you feel led to financially support this mission, please make a donation to FPC Tyler, designated for “Solar Under the Sun” in the memo line.

If you would like to contribute your time and talent, the Mission Committee always has a need for enthusiastic volunteers, whatever your strengths may be (don’t worry—no pop quizzes on electrical wiring!).

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Richard Prouty, Chris and Ruthie McRae, Jim Garmon, Dan Daniel, Karen McClellan, the Mission Committee of FPC Tyler, Bill Bridgforth, Steve Edens, Jackie Kossin, Dave Howell, Mark Tew, Steve Fairbanks, Doug and Flora Mae Roszel, Rev. Leah Hrachovec, Rev. Stuart Baskin, Rev. Tom Ullrich, Rev. David O’Neal, Solar Under the Sun, Living Waters for the World, so many generous donors, and the people of Haiti for their generosity and hospitality.

Special thanks also goes to the congregations of FPC Tyler, Texas; Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, Arkansas; First of Trawick Presbyterian Church, Nacogdoches, Texas; and FPC Johnson City, Tennessee.

Questions?

If you have questions about FPC’s covenant with SUTS, this mission project in Haiti, or donating and volunteering, please contact Sally Smith Garmon, Mission Committee chair (slsmith01@hotmail.com).

more about mission To learn more about Solar Under the Sun and Living Waters for the World, visit the ministries online: www.solarunderthesun.org www.livingwatersfortheworld.org

Connect with FPC online! www.fpctyler.com www.facebook.com/fpctyler @fpctyler

First Presbyterian Church 230 W. Rusk St. Tyler, TX 75701

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