This Feel-Good Friday is also Good Friday, the day Christians commemorate Jesus’ scourging, crucifixion, and death on the Cross to pay for our sins. As one of my pastors used to say, you cannot understand the Resurrection outside of coming to the Cross. The power of Jesus’ sacrifice must be experienced in order to receive and embrace the fullness of his redemption.
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The Gospel of John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Through the lens of Christ’s sacrifice for us, it seemed appropriate to shine a light on a rescue operation in Haiti for children with disabilities.
Former football and baseball player Tim Tebow partnered with Sentinel Foundation and Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills to airlift 59 disabled kids out of Haiti to take them to safety. The Sentinel Foundation is a non-profit team of veteran commandos who spearheaded the evacuation of Americans from Afghanistan in 2021. Tebow’s foundation is known for its charitable work in the most troubled of nations.
Rep. Mills has personally evacuated 23 Americans from Haiti and contributed to more than 90 evacuations. Mills is the real deal, and has been instrumental in the evacuations of Americans in Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack, and in Afghanistan after the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal.
As all the news has shown, Haiti is literally going to hell in a shopping cart. In 1996, I was part of a mission trip to the nation, and they were in terrible shape then; so, the fact that they are even worse now is unfathomable. Tragically, very few people are coming to save them for a number of reasons. Americans have been told to evacuate, and those who ran non-profit organizations that helped children are all but gone, leaving 30,000 children in Haiti.
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According to reports, a Sentinel operator known as TJ said, “Most of them have no leadership there right now because everyone’s had to leave.”
“We were able to successfully evacuate 59 of those 30,000 kids. Of those 30,000, not all those kids have somewhere to go, and not all those kids have special needs, or are high risk,” he said. “We picked the most high-risk children that we could, that had the most likely chance of success and went with it, because I’d rather rescue some than none.”
It is heartbreaking. But due to the leadership and partnership of Tebow, Sentinel, and Rep. Mills, 59 children who cannot fend for themselves have been given safe passage out of the country and a safe haven in Jamaica.
It was an honor to collaborates with Tim Tebow and Sentinel Foundation to rescue 59 children with disabilities from Haiti. https://t.co/7GALUrLC9W
— Cory Mills (@CoryMillsFL) March 25, 2024
“Today we are so deeply grateful,” an official of the Tim Tebow Foundation, who gave only the name Steve, said of the operation. “We want to express our deep gratitude to the Jamaican Ministries of Health and Jamaican National Security and Foreign Affairs for accepting 59 children from Haiti who are severely disabled and are now relocated from danger into a safe, secure new community.”
The group also credited the state of Florida, where Tebow starred for University of Florida in the early 2000s, and Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla.
The two foundations joined forces to provide operational support and funding, with guidance from Mills, who has staged two other rescue operations from Haiti as the country’s crime crisis remains severe.
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Earlier in March, Tebow testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the real MVPs: Most Vulnerable People. Tebow truly exemplifies the heart, hands, and feet of Jesus, and what it means to consider others above oneself.
