Ten Baptists Arrested in Haiti

This will be interesting to keep an eye on.

 

An interesting story for sure. I don't know what the truth is but, on the surface, it seems as if these people had good intentions. But even in bad situations you can't just take children out of a country. It looks like they should have been more careful. Only time will tell what really happened here. Hopefully I'm right and they had good intentions. But, in today's world, you never know.

 

Martin, that's what I thought when I first heard it. They wanted to do right, but they acted without thought. More information (which I'm sure we'll get) will be helpful.

 

I read this story on OneNewsNow, and my first thought was....beware the media....after that, what were these people thinking, going into a foreign country and breaking rules? I grew up in a border town, and we were taught that if we we broke the rules in Mexico, we might end up in jail for a long time, because one has to follow the rules of the country they are in.

Noble motives?? Think about PETA and their "noble" cause of protecting animals by burning down buildings and attacking people. Noble doesn't make it right.

 

NPR was pretty fair in their coverage of this the other day. Seems its a paperwork issue. They had documentation but needed to get things straight. They weren't arrested so much as they were detained at the border. The leader of the group was supposed to go return to get proper documentation.

Its a nightmare in Haiti for alot of reasons. One of the biggest issues that is being closely monitored, thankfully, is the ability of human traffickers to run into the country and steal away any number of the hundreds of thousands of new orphans. The humanitarian crisis of this businesss will certainly reverberate for decades. Thankfully, Christian ministries are helping these children.

 

yes, let's keep in mind what a train wreck the "government" of Haiti is.

It could be as simple as one official giving the go-ahead to this group...and another one arresting them for said action.

I hope it's that...rather than a Christian group acting unseemly...

 

Now the Hatian government is pressing charges which will include possible child trafficing. What group are these baptist with? They were warned by a journalist that to take the children out of the country was dangerous. They ignored her. I find this story disturbing. On one hand are they participating in an illegal adoption case? Or they just trying to save children?

Here is some more news on the topic http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8491981.stm

 

The arrested Americans include members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, and the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. The churches are part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is America's largest Protestant denomination and has extensive humanitarian programs worldwide, but they decided to mount their own "rescue mission" following the earthquake.

http://www.ktvb.com/home/Haiti-Arrested-Baptists-may-be-sent-to-US-83264592.html

Hoo boy...this doesn't sound good. At the very least, they showed very poor judgment. I hope that's all. I hate seeing stuff that reflects badly on the SBC...even though the SBC had nothing to do with this.

 

Looks bad everywhere for Christians charities.

 

Sadly I think this is typical of well meaning Christians who think that because they are doing 'God's work' can ignore that laws of sovereign nations. You can't just go into a country and kidnap children.

I don't question their hearts or their desire to help. A segment of the American church has developed this mindset that we can ignore human government. That is not Biblical.

I hope they are released and simply sent back to the States without any other penalty. I suspect that if they had worked with the Haitian government they would have been able to give the help they desired. I doubt they even looked into the huge trade in human trafficking of little children for purposes less noble than their goal.

Looks like some of the children were not even orphans according to this article.

I have seen churches do something similar here when they go to a play area and bring children to a VBS of Bible club without checking with the parents.

 

According to CNN which surprisingly has covered this story fairly in my opinion, the leader of this group has a lot of "baggage" including home forclosure Christmas Eve and numerous suits for non payment of bills.

 

I agree with you. It could be they were just very naïve. It is hard to imagine a group where no one realized that taking kids from one country to another without permisson of the host government would not be a problem.

Christians need to be aware of the ways of the world as well as knowledgable about the cultures where they send missionary groups. It reminds me of what a Russian pastor told me in Moscow. A Baptist group had visited his church several months prior to my meeting him. We talked about missionary groups and he siad, "My church has just about recovered from the American group that visited several months ago." The problems were caused by a lack of understanding on the Americans of Russian culture.

 

Our pastor had a bit to say re: this last Wed. nite.

Seems our new Minister of Discipleship knows the pastor involved in this fiasco, and the real problem apparently is nothing like the media is so anxious to portray!

Seems that this group had arranged to move a group of children, and they had filled out all the paperwork for such.

Problem arose when (as I understood it) crossing into Dominican Republic, that either one (1) piece of paperwork was filled out incorrectly/incomplete, OR was never filled out. All other paperwork was completed and in order.

They were refused entrance and the Haitian gov't then detained them from any further action.

Now this is not straight from the "horse's mouth", but second-hand, but it sure sounds reasonable as opposed to the group trying to kidnap the kids.

So you are welcome to believe which ever version you choose!

 

As I said...I don't think they are kidnappers, or traffickers.

But they were extremely unwise to not follow the law, and to be sloppy with paperwork when moving children--permanently--to new homes with new families. These folks should have been much more circumspect in their actions.

 

The problem seems to be a lack of common sense.

American Charged in Haiti Had Some Troubles in Idaho
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/world/americas/05idaho.html?hpw

 

One other pertinent point to consider, at least IMHO, is not only the the integrity of the media, BUT their accuracy as well..

For instance, when I was a part of the labor force part of my job was the oversight of traffic signal installations (stop & go for you rednecks :smilewinkgrin.

One was in the process one day when a reporter for local fish-wrapper drove up. She came over to talk to me and asked several questions as well as letting me explain what it was & how it worked.

Next day I read the article, and while there was nothing of stellar importance (thank goodness) involved, I wasn't real sure that this was the story from the interview the day before.

Like I said, nothing important, but the discrepancies were unreal.

From that day on, I have taken ANYTHING I've read in the paper with a huge grain of salt.

How much more should we do this with a media that is actively searching for any reason to lambaste Christianity, and has no compunctions about distorting the truth to suit their agenda and achieve their goal?????

 

And according to the lawyer for this group in a Wash Post article today, the leader knew she did not have the correct or complete documentation, but the others were unaware of this and assumed all was legal.

 

saw this tonight, don't know if everything is true or not

http://www.idahostatesman.com/eyepiece/story/1070686.html

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE61960R20100211