Missioning in Haiti: To Help Orphaned Children?

The recent case of Laura Silsby and her group of Baptist missionaries to help reputedly orphaned children in Haiti due to the massive earthquake they experienced in January of this year prompts one to ask the question: Do missionaries always go to extremes like this to help children?

Silsby is charged with abducting a group of children whose parents survived the earthquake in taking them across the Haitian border to the Dominican Republic. She had claimed they were orphans, left so when their parents died from the earthquake that killed over 200,000 Haitians when it struck on January 12, 2010. Measured at 7.0 on the Richter scale, the earthquake caused massive destruction to the small Caribbean island nation. Considered to be a third-world nation, Haiti is also known as the AIDS capital of the western hemisphere with troubles such as child trafficking. Disasters like this always tug at the heart and purse strings of those who have better lives, but it also leaves the door open to opportunists such as Silsby. While it is very rare for religious opportunists to exist in situations like these, they certainly can, and do so. With 33 children, most of who have been removed from their homes by the Baptist missionaries, what are Baptists in America to think? While no spokesman has come forth to condemn this action made in the name of their denomination, those not familiar with missionary work have something to ask themselves: Was the attempt to abduct these children to supposedly give them a better life in America really a front to try and gain more converts in order to help "clean up" Haiti?

Regardless of the problems Haiti has, and that includes government corruption, it would appear that the Haitians do need help in reordering their society, but not in the manner Silsby intended. To begin with, Haiti is predominantly Roman Catholic, but that does not mean they need to change their religion just to have a better system that would allow them to develop more prosperous lives. The only monkey wrench in this case is the lack of birth control practice, something which the Roman Catholic church strictly prohibits. The proper development of education and work skills would better benefit Haitians, and once education is stressed, they will have better access to birth control and health care. But this kind of change has to come from within, not without, and certainly not with a government that holds its citizens down. Food and supplies have been delivered to Haiti yet their government refused to distribute it to the needy citizens. Funds raised to help those in need should not go to the Haitian government but rather directly to those who need help.

As bad as the Silsby case is, this is not the first missionary who has attempted to smuggle children out of Haiti in an attempt to sell them for trafficking purposes: in 2008, another pastor was charged with the same crime. It is a dark day indeed when opportunists use the name of religion to "help" children in third world countries. If they really wanted to help these children, they would encourage education and work skills, not being paid 5 cents an hour for making plastic toys, to improve their lives.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703357104575045794048725562.html?mod=yhoofront

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/83788.html