Kent Annan - After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken

After Shock

Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken

Kent Annan

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400
Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
E-mail:

2011 by Kent Annan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

While the stories in this book are about real events and people, some names and identifying details have been altered to protect their privacy.

Permission for previously published material has been requested.

Design: Cindy Kiple
Images: Devastated church, Darbonne, Haiti/David A. Zimmerman

ISBN 978-0-8308-6836-0

With gratitude to: Enel, Edvard, the Cadet and Auguste families, and many friends in Haiti. All who helped Mike and the Cadet family. The board, staff and supporters of Haiti Partners. All at InterVarsity Press. Dave Zimmerman, Kathy Helmers, Lisa, Tabitha, Doug, Adam and Owen, for improving this book. Shelly, my beautiful, patient, insightful partner in it all. Our beloved children, Simone and Cormac.

: The number of people who died can only be estimated and so rounded off, but adding the one seems like a way to try to hold onto the personal scale of loss.

: It might have been briefly dangerous for us, but the situation in the city was awful for so many others. In postdisaster situations, some organizations come in and focus on protection of women and children, because theyre vulnerable (to abuse, to rape, to theft) in chaos and because men can take advantage of the situationand/or take out their own frustration and suffering on those who are weaker around them. Our organization partners on some projects with a courageous group of Haitian women, all victims of rape, who have banded together to work on victim care and on rape prevention. Some horrific things were happening in the tent camps in the months after the earthquake.

: The people in the lab deserve credit for the basic insights but arent responsible for what Ive done with them. The professors study is serious and clinical, but I appropriate it in a personal way.

Kent Annan is author of Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle and codirector of Haiti Partners. He began working in Haiti in 2003 after previously working with refugee ministries in western Europe, Albania and Kosovo. A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, he now travels regularly to Haiti from Florida, where he lives with his wife, Shelly, and their children, Simone and Cormac. One hundred percent of the authors proceeds from this book go to education in Haiti through Haiti Partners.

For more about Kent, his work with Haiti Partners and his books:

www.KentAnnan.com

www.HaitiPartners.com

facebook.com/kentannan

twitter.com/kentannan

About the Cover

My wife and I attended this church a dozen times when we first moved to Haiti in 2003. Only the front wall was left standing after the January 2010 earthquake. Its devastating for that church community, most of whom also lost their homes in this town. And as you move through rubble like this, its hard to not occasionally be struck by the question: in sufferingwhether on a catastrophic scale or something very personalwhich part of our faith stays standing?

This question is relevant in rural Haiti, in suburban America and anywhere in between.

A few seconds after my friend took this photo, several kids came riding through that church door on a donkey. Then later when we came by, some kids were playing back just behind this wall. The foundation was all that was leftand it was perfect for kicking around a patched-up, half-deflated soccer ball. We went and played (and laughed) with them. Life goes on even after your world crashes. Life goes on in the midst of suffering. If were still going to believe, then one of the questions is how to have honest faith along the way.

Kent Annan left behind his comfortable life in the United States to face the world beyond its gates. In Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle youll vividly enter into Annans adventure of moving to Haitibeginning when he and his wife moved into a tin-roofed, no-electricity, no-running-water home with a Haitian family. Ultimately youll be inspired to search after God in uncharted territory on a path that may lead to your local soup kitchenor to the other side of the world. Its an unflinchingly honest look at love and service, and the stumbles and joys along the way.

Filled with the hope that there is a God who can set free both the oppressed and the oppressors.

Shane Claiborne, bestselling author and activist

This wonderful book is as much about faith and commitment and service and love and love of service as it is about the author and about Haiti. Please read it. You will be uplifted and you will be inspired, but most of all you will enjoy it.

Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, Im Dying and National Book Award finalist

Kent Annan walks his readers through the rubble of the earthquake that hit Haiti unforgettably. I have known Kent for eight years since he and his wife first moved here to Haiti and lived with a family in the countryside to learn and experience Haitian life. After Shock tells the story of all of us who have lived through this terrible event.

Jean Claude Cerin, Tearfund Haiti

Kent Annan struggles with his faith existentially. This is no simple attempt to excuse God for non-interference in the suffering that pervades Port-au-Prince following a devastating earthquake. Instead, it is the poetic confession of a Christian who faces his doubts and questions about God, and yet goes beyond them to find a newer, stronger faith.