Haiti

I’ve never been. I’ve never traveled across the ocean, looked its people in the eye, seen the poverty for myself, carried those images back in my heart.

But my friend Meredith has.

There is a group of high school students at Trinity that has been preparing to travel there to help however they could and I know their young hearts are aching for those they’ve never met.

My home church in Durham, NC has a long-standing partnership with pastors in Haiti and I can imagine that there are some folks at Blacknall Presbyterian that would hop on a flight tonight to be in Port-au-Prince beside their brothers and sisters in Christ.

So what do the rest of us do? We pray. We give. We pray some more. And maybe we give some more so that the folks that are there to help have what they need.

• Text "Haiti" to "90999" to donate $10 to the Red Cross -- The US State Department very quickly put together this number to channel relief contributions directly to first responders who will be on the ground there. {The $10 will show up as a charge on your next cell phone bill.}

• Text “Disaster” to 90999 to give $10 to Compassion International’s Disaster Relief Program -- They will be working directly with the local churches who knew where these families live and will be providing immediate relief to them. {This will show up on your next cell phone bill as well.}

• If you give, go over to Kelly’s Korner and leave a comment on this post. She and her husband are donating $1 for every comment that is left.

• Head over to the Tasty Kitchen blog and enter a giveaway that is, in turn, giving to Haiti earthquake recovery efforts. The Pioneer Woman and her family are donating 10 cents for every entry. That may not seem like much but given that she usually receives over 12,000 entries per contest, it could really add up.

Twenty bucks, two texts, two blog comments. You in?