Marcena Schwab – Our Many Hands for Haiti Office Manager – beautifully describes the bigger picture of team work in MH4H and world missions.  

I love working on a team. A team is so much more than the sum of the individual parts. It creates energy that helps sustains itself. A good team rewards itself just by being. We have six painters on our team, divided into two sections. We’re tackling different parts of the dorm, with three of us working on spraying and three brushing and rolling. We’re getting a lot done, inside and out. Seeing the finished walls is a good reward for our efforts. But to me, the better reward is in knowing that we are working so hard for a greater good.

A different perspective Moving right along Spraying the high walls All work and no play makes Rob and Irish boy.

My husband, Guy, is experiencing this country and culture for the first time. He just commented to me that as we are working so hard all day painting, we may wonder why we’re doing all this. Are we having an impact? Then he realized that when you go out and give something as simple as a goat to a family, knowing that it will change their lives, you realize that you’re part of a bigger thing. A bigger team. A team where everyone has a role; from the donors in the US to the cooks at the dorm in Haiti, from the volunteers working at our thrift stores to our agronomist teaching Haitian farmers better farming practices, from the women sewing diapers in the US to the painters painting the dorm. We’re a team. We are more than the sum of the individual parts. We create energy that helps sustain us.

2 Corinthians 4:15 “All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is extending to more and more people may overflow in thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”

I love that the people on this team have given a week of their lives to work this hard for the MH4H team. I have seen so many teams come to Haiti to serve, and it still amazes me how many people are willing to pay money, give time, wrestle with the social injustice that we see, and go through the range of emotions that goes along with serving in a third world country. I love our team members. They are the heart and soul of Many Hands for Haiti.