The Social Conscience of a Missionary

"I thought he was an interesting individual," Stephanie says of her first meeting with Dan. "I thought he was very well-spoken, and it was really positive to see a young African-American brother on the west side working with these kids. You don't see many black men in middle-school after-school programs. He seemed very kind and engaged, and dedicated to his work and to his kids."

And her appreciation of Dan didn't end there. "He's an American dude," she adds. "He was born here, but he had a different experience living in Haiti, Paris and several different states. Typically, most men from Denver — minus some who leave to go to college somewhere — live in Denver their whole life, speak one language, and they know Denver and that's it. Dan's just a unique dude."

Like Dan, Stephanie is an athlete: a soccer player and a dancer. She also smiles a lot. It didn't take long for Dan to convince her to attend an ICOF fashion-show benefit. After going to a few more ICOF events, she convinced her parents to host a fundraising barbecue at their Denver home in April. When Dan spoke in front of the two dozen people gathered there, Stephanie's father could tell that Dan had feelings for his daughter.

"Then I just fell madly in love with him," Stephanie remembers. "I began to see that in many ways, our aspirations and our spirits were aligned. There are many things that people look for in a mate, and often they may not know exactly what they are. But in him, I was able to identify those things — and some of them I knew and some of them I didn't know."

In May, they went on a couple of dates. On June 4, they got married.

"We're hoping to change the world," Stephanie says. "Side by side, together, I see us making an impact. We want to use our lives for something. We want to use our lives to help others."

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Dan and Stephanie share a room at the compound, the newer of the two that Bishop Joel and his wife now run. Traci is assigned a room in the orphanage, where about sixty girls live. Terrance gets a bed in a dormitory-style room in the guesthouse.

This compound, where sixty people work, also has a church that was started in 1990 but has never been completed. Bishop Joel holds a service under the roof each week. It is here that he'll also host a Christmas party for 7,000 kids, which ICOF will help coordinate.

But on its first morning in Haiti, the ICOF team loads up the minivan and heads for Waney, where Dan's father built his first church with his own hands in the mid-'70s, and where the compound later grew to include a school and a girls' orphanage (which became a boys' orphanage when the new compound was built in 1990). The basketball hoop that missionaries installed at the Waney compound when Dan was a kid still stands, but the backboard is gone.

Inside the church, a couple of kids sing a welcome to the ICOF visitors, who start distributing notebooks, pens, pencils, crayons, glue sticks and scissors to the audience, which numbers almost 500. Terrance takes the stage and speaks about what he sees as the mission of ICOF. Merlie follows and is moved to tears. Then it's Stephanie's turn.

"We were able to give you a little bit," she says, "but what's important is what you do with it. I want you to write. I want you to color. I want you to use your mind."

By the time the supplies make it to the back of the room, the crayons and notebooks are gone. Kids without two things to stick together get glue. Kids without paper get pens, and vice versa. One boy asks for a pair of scissors so he can cut his hair.

When every last item is gone, the ICOF team gets back in the van, which bounces down the bumpy pavement as Michael Jackson's voice breaks through the static on the radio. The streets are clogged with men pushing wheelbarrows full of rocks and women carrying baskets filled with oranges or goat skins on their heads. Above them, selling sodas on billboards in every direction, is the face of former Fugee Wyclef Jean, a native of Haiti who has the same status there that Elvis has in America. Signs welcoming Wyclef, who is hosting a free concert this week, hang all over the city. Everyone but Terrance wants to go to the show; Terrance thinks it's too dangerous.

The van makes a quick stop at a police station so that the women can use the restroom, then turns off the broken pavement onto a road with no pavement at all. After a couple of close calls, it gets mired in a hole filled with mud. Everyone gets out to help push the vehicle free.