Members of a local church are hoping to give back to students and educators they met in Haiti recently.
A group of 10 Free Christian Church members traveled to Haiti to volunteer at the orphanage and school the last week in January. They said they came back inspired not only to become more involved with the organization and return to Haiti, but to live with less, as most Haitians do.
Free Christian Church members have planned several yard sales around the area on Saturday. Proceeds will go to Hope for the Children of Haiti, an organization that runs an orphanage and school in Port-au-Prince.
"It's hard to describe Haiti unless you go and see it. It's so close to the U.S., an hour from Miami, but it's like a different world," said Dan Dzikowicz, teaching pastor at Free Christian, who lead the Haiti trip.
The yard sales, planned at four homes of parishioners, are a little different than a typical garage sale, said Dzikowicz. Members are parting with the usual no-longer-used items sitting around the house, but also looking to sacrifice some things they use and need to sell, knowing that Haitians live without most of the things we take for granted.
"Part of it is selling stuff that (you tell yourself) 'I need,' and in the end discovering that you didn't really need it after all," he said. "Seeing desperate poverty makes everyone grateful about what we have here. It's almost incomparable, how much we have in comparison. It makes you reboot your perspective on things."
Many members at Free Christian Church live in North Andover. The congregation has grown and begun to outgrow its original Andover building — "a great problem to have," Dzikowicz said — and Free Christian plans to open another campus, a "satellite" church in North Andover next year.
Haiti is "desperately poor with no end in sight. It's cyclical," said Dzikowicz, who is on the board of directors of HFC. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and schooling is not available to many children, he said.
During their visit, church members gave the orphanage and school a new paint job, visited with school staff and played with the children. The kids also got check-ups, thanks to group member Audrey Martino, who is a nurse, and also much-needed donated medical supplies. Another member, IT professional Dennis Lindsay, helped work on the school's computer network and delivered 10 laptop computers, donated by his employer, Millennium Pharmaceuticals.
Hope For the Children of Haiti owns and operates a Christian school and orphanage in Bolosse, an impoverished section of Port-Au-Prince. The orphanage cares for 56 children. The Marion Austin Christian School, named for its founder, has close to 200 students, including orphans and other neighborhood children.
HFC is headquartered in Woburn and was started by Marion Austin in 1989. Most of the children who live in HFC's orphanage are without one or both parents because of death or abandonment. Other children arrive as the victims of severe neglect due to a variety of family and economic problems — slavery, prostitution and homelessness are rampant in Haiti, Dzikowicz said.
Dzikowicz, who worked as executive director of HFC for one year, had been to Haiti three times before. It had been "on my heart" to take another trip to the island nation, said Dzikowicz, and things fell in place for a group from Free Christian to take a trip this winter — the first time most in the group had ever been to Haiti.
"Seeing the joy of the kids, despite the poverty," inspired the group to try and make it an annual trip, said Dzikowicz.
What: Free Christian Church yard sales, to benefit Hope for the Children of Haiti
When: Saturday, April 12, from 9 a.m. to noon
Where: Sales will be held at four locations:
r 141 Autran Ave. (off of Massachusetts Ave.), North Andover
r 17 Fuller Rd., North Andover
r 73 Bartlet St., Andover
r 81 Poplar St., Tewksbury
For more information: Contact the church at 978-373-2221 or visit www.freechristian.org. To see the group's travel diary and photos from their trip to Haiti, visit www.freechristian.org/haiti. For more information on Hope for the Children of Haiti, visit www.hfchaiti.org
