Eric Miller on His Week in Haiti

I had lunch today with my friend Eric Miller, a youth pastor here in Frederick, MD. I wanted to learn more about his recent trip to Haiti, and thought you might like to hear about it:

ERIC: I had the awesome opportunity to spend a week in Haiti from July 29 to August 5th (with CPR-3) and I can honestly say that it was one of the best weeks I’ve had in a long time. I’m also convinced that for the past 6-8 months, God had been preparing me BIG time for this opportunity. I’d like to tell you a little bit about the story of how I got to Haiti and let the video and the pictures tell the story of the week. I know that’s not usually how these things go, but if you’d like to hear more specifics about the week ... then you’ll have to take me out for coffee :) because I’m convinced that the coolest part of the story is what God did leading up to this week! 

(I know this is long, but trust me ... you won’t regret reading it!)

In December of 2009, I had some hard decisions to make. The short version of the story is that I was about to take a significant pay cut at the church due to the economy and I was questioning whether God wanted me in Frederick as the Youth Pastor still. I spent several weeks praying about it and seeking the Lord’s Will the best that I could and by the beginning of the new year I was sure that this is where God wanted me to be ... right here in Frederick. The funny part is that I knew this would be the place where I would have to depend on Him the most and depend on myself the least. Little did I know what he had in store. 

In January of 2010, with the pay cut now in effect I knew that I would need to start looking for a part-time job. And I found one working at a local middle school with an after school program. Truth be told, I really wasn’t all that excited about having to do this job just to supplement some of my lost income and was bummed that I was losing hours that I felt I needed to fulfill my role as Youth Pastor at the church. At the beginning my attitude probably wasn’t where it needed to be and I was pretty much just focused on myself. But I knew that this job had some potential because not only would it help me make the money I had lost in my pay cut, but I knew that it could open some doors and give me an opportunity to get to know some more students in the community. So I tried to make the most of it and gave it my best. What I quickly found out was that God was truly at work here. I ended up making $5 a month more than I had before my pay cut (see God does have a sense of humor - now I was “making money.”) But more importantly it was in the relationships that I built where I saw Him working the most. The director of our program was also in full-time ministry as her husband is also a Youth Pastor and I got to work along side Adam Forsberg as well, who was a part of my Youth Staff at the church and would later become my summer intern. Also on our staff at the school was another area Youth Pastor and a guy who lead a college aged Bible Study! If it hadn’t been for this part-time job, I might not have ever met these wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ and partners in the ministry. 

In February, God started breaking my heart for some of the students at the school. Adam & I decided that we were going to start praying for them specifically by name and that we would were going to look for opportunities to encourage them if we could in any way. One of the students came on our Winter Retreat with our youth group and one other has since come to our Youth Group and many of the students from the program have started going to the Youth Group of the other Youth Pastor! It was amazing to see God use us as we built relationships with these students. But more than that, it was a wonderful partnership with those who I worked with. SO much so that my director’s husband got in contact with me and presented me with another opportunity. His name is Justin and he told me that he had recently co-authored a book with a good friend of his, Jeremy, and that he was in a band and they would be going on a book tour soon to promote their book. Well they asked if I’d be interested in having them come to our Youth Group to close out their tour. After learning that the band was WILLET and realizing that I had met them a year or so before at a Youth For Christ event that I spoke at (and they lead worship for) I was very excited to have them come. It was awesome getting to know Justin & Jeremy better as we prepared for that night and I learned that they are as passionate as it gets for the Lord and that God was doing amazing things in their lives. 

The night that they came to our Youth Group, they presented our students with an opportunity to sponsor orphans in Haiti. We quickly learned that Jeremy’s wife, who is a full-time missionary in Haiti, works directly with many of these orphans and that she was in Haiti when the earthquake hit. I felt strongly that night that God was calling me to do more than just sponsor a child, but at the time I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Our students ended up sponsoring 25-30 orphans for a year and we invited WILLET to come back to our church again a few weeks later to lead worship on a Sunday morning. That Sunday, they gave the same invitation for our church to sponsor some children and another 45-50 were sponsored. It thrilled me to see this partnership with WILLET and our church and to see how God was moving in these two times that they were leading us in worship. So I talked to my former roommate (Matt Johnson) who had heard about WILLET’s matching grant for their book and we decided that we needed to do something else to help them raise some money for Haiti relief efforts. And thus ourDodgeball for Haiti Tournament was born. We were able to raise over $12,000 for disaster relief funds through WILLET and Food for the Hungry and this matching grant. This also gave us another opportunity to present the gospel to students in the community that we wouldn’t normally be able to reach. 

Finally, this past spring, my college roommate sends me an email and says that he recently signed up for this one week trip to Haiti and that there’s only a few spots left and I should sign up to go. I truly wanted to go, but my mind quickly went to all the reasons why I wouldn’t be able to ... I had already been gone a lot from work over the summer, where would I come up with the money on such short notice, my passport had expired the summer before and on and on! Well I decided I’d at least ask our Senior Pastor to see what he’d say and he was really excited for me to have the opportunity and said I should go. So in less than 2 months time, I was then able to renew my passport, raise all the money that I needed, got my airfare booked 3 days before I left town and had a summer intern to cover for me at the church! 

And while I was in Haiti, God truly renewed my heart for his Word, for His people and for the work that He’s doing in Haiti on a whole new level. It truly was a wonderful week and I cannot wait to help lead a team from Grace Community Church with Matt Johnson back to Haiti sometime in the next year or so (assuming God allows it!) 

WOW! And seriously ALL of that happened because I made a hard decision to put my faith and trust in God when humanly speaking it made no sense at all. Praise God for my pay cut and for having to get a part-time job!

Read more about Eric at HIS BLOG.