Alaska's Sarah Palin Joins Evangelical Leader Franklin Graham December 11th for Haiti Mission Trip

Sarah Palin, former Alaskan Governor and reality television host (of TLC's "Sarah Palin's Alaska") is en route on a December 11^th mercy mission to troubled Haiti this weekend with evangelical leader Franklin Graham and Samaritan's Purse.

At the same time, comics and harsher critics are questioning Sarah Palin's motives for the trip.

What is Samaritan's Purse doing in Haiti?

Head of Samaritan's Purse, a global Christian humanitarian and disaster relief organization, Franklin Graham (58) is returning to Haiti to lead a major mission outreach. Samaritan's Purse will pass out Operation Christmas Child shoe box gifts to Haitian children and continue medical ministry to cholera patients in the disaster-torn nation.

"I don't know of any people in recent years who have suffered more, and in such a short period of time than the people of this small country-with an earthquake, a hurricane, and now a cholera epidemic," Franklin Graham said (in a recent statement on the Samaritan's Purse website).

Since January 2010, when a massive earthquake struck near Port au Prince, killing hundreds of thousands of Haitians and leaving 1.5 million homeless, Samaritan's Purse workers have been on-site in Haiti. The global missions organization has been serving the Haitian people with drinking water, food, medical supplies and services, temporary shelters and other forms of humanitarian relief.

Samaritan's Purse has also sent teams of medical professionals to Haiti to treat the sick and injured and to train Haitian doctors and nurses.

"Samaritan's Purse will be here for months, possibly years to come," Franklin Graham explained. "Anything we do for them, we do it in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want the people of Haiti to know that God has not forgotten them. He loves them, He cares for them. I would call on Americans to pray for the people of Haiti," he said. "God is certainly able to do abundantly more than we can ask or think, and I'm asking Him to remember the people of Haiti."

Samaritan's Purse invited Sarah Palin to Haiti.

Having worked with Franklin Graham in 2009, distributing food staples to Native Alaskan families, Sarah Palin (46) was welcomed aboard for the December 2010 Haitian mission trip.

"I am pleased that Gov. Palin will accompany us on a brief trip to Haiti this weekend, and I appreciate her willingness to visit Haiti during such troubled times," recounted Samaritan's Purse's Franklin Graham, who is the son of popular evangelist Billy Graham (92). "I believe Gov. Palin will be a great encouragement to the people of Haiti and to the organizations, both government and private, working so hard to provide desperately needed relief."

Greta Van Susteren, a Fox News reporter who has covered Samaritan's Purse humanitarian efforts in Korea and elsewhere, also tagged along for the trip to Haiti this weekend.

Sarah Palin's critics bristle at a potential rise in the possible Presidential hopeful's popularity.

Of course, even before Sarah Palin boarded the Samaritan's Purse plane to travel to Haiti with Franklin Graham, her critics began questioning her motives for ministry.

For example, Andy Barr, of "Politico," wrote this: "The Haiti trip ... provides an opportunity to expand [Sarah Palin's] image and policy portfolio beyond her limited image as a darling of the tea party movement. Second, she'll be able to better establish her claim to evangelical voters."

David Gibson, of "Politics Daily," echoed this theme, saying the Haitian mission "could burnish her standing on foreign policy and with evangelicals if she pursues a 2012 presidential run."

Regardless of Sarah Palin's personal or professional motives or the potential political benefits that may arise from her humanitarian trip to Haiti with one of the most well-known and influential evangelical leaders in the United States today, the Haitian need is undeniable.

Perhaps those tossing barbs would like to request seats on the Haitian-bound plane before it takes off for a Saturday, December 11^th, arrival in the Caribbean island nation in such turmoil and dire need.