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Haiti 2.22.15 Update
My apologies for getting this out so late, but I tried to send THREE times yesterday and each time just prior to sending the power went out so I gave up until today. Here what I had intended to send yesterday.
Well the adventure continues. Yesterday, 2.21.15, we visited Joseph and Martine's home which is VERY nice according to Haitian standards and shared with him and his family a wonderful meal they prepared for us. We had such a nice time visiting them as a young family so eager and excited for their future and to meet their new son who's name is difficult to pronounce let alone spell, Daisreale (or something like that). We also met Olivier and his wife Woodlie which was a terrific surprise. That evening when we returned we gathered the benches together in the courtyard for storytelling, singing and some limbo dancing. Everyone participated and we felt our bond of family and faith coming together in an amazing way.
Evening can be very trying, the mosquitos, the heat and the noise makes for a long exhausting experience. Heather is taking the brunt of the abuse from the mosquitoes but everyone, except Gary perhaps, is feeling the pain and the effect, but everyone is being a real trooper. Last night, Kandi woke up to the sound of gun shots, which is relatively common here, and thought she heard the sound of someone at the front gate. It was 3:30 am, I know because when she woke me with obvious terror in her voice, I checked and listened for something unusual besides roosters, dogs, and the random motorcycle. She said the dog had been barking loudly but as we paused, we heard no more noises. I think, however, that Kandi was sufficiently frightened that she didn't go back to sleep for awhile.
Sunday Morning arrived and we when went to church at Rehoboth Church which is where Pastor Luc and Pastor Joseph preach, but only stopped long enough to say hello and offer a blessing to the church before proceeding to Pastor Napo's church where we sang and Steve preached on Psalm 8. Much to our surprise this tiny church had sandwiches and soda ready for us after church. This tiny snack would be much more than these people would receive themselves that day. We then travelled to Mt. Cabri to pray for a man and woman who appear in the final weeks of life. The man cannot get around and must be carried from the house to the yard each day. A little girl, no more than 10, cooks and cleans for them. we stopped two more times which no one but Bato perhaps expected and took another 2 hours to get home.
We returned home around 3 pm, dusty, tired but inspired. I've been impressed how each of the members of the team have spoken so honestly, tenderly and openly before hundreds of Haitians who are so grateful they have travelled so far to visit them. The team is quickly learning, sometimes painfully so, the difference between Haitian time schedule and American time. We have also had some enlightening discussion about what frustrates us the most and how we think God intended for His children to live in the brief time we're given. We continue to focus on Psalm 8 as our spiritual mantra and the decision we must all make: Will we choose to be successful or making an eternal impact. Success is one thing. Impact is another.
I hope these pictures, assuming they turn out OK, will give you a glimpse into the mission and Ministry to which we've been called. As always, thank you for your continued prayers, encouragement and generosity that we may represent you, The Body of Christ.
Schedule: today we will do some painting and fixing up, Tuesday - Wednesday travel to DBR, Thursday - beach, Friday - HOME. Thank you for your prayers and staying connected with us.
Ordinary.
How preparatory to the reading of this Haiti entry, that, since this past Thanksgiving, I have read and/or am reading books dealing with the word “ordinary” in conjunction with the Christmas Story and Christ’s adult ministry prior to His crucifixion.
How preparatory to the reading of this Haiti entry, that, within the last several years during many of your sermons and your teachings of and during our Disciple Classes, you have emphasized the need for us to view the “big picture” of the ordinary in order for us to recognize God’s coming to and His Presence in our daily lives, not through the rich and powerful but through the mundane and ordinariness of our day-to-day existences.
During this past Advent, we, in your Journey Sunday School Class, read J. Ellsworth Kalas’s “Christmas from the Back Side.” Interesting chapter titles like “The Scandal of Christmas,” “Christmas Comes to a Back Fence,” and “Celebrating Christmas in a Hotel” ushered us into the reading of his premise that “There’s much more to the Christmas story. Infinitely more.” As explained at the beginning of Chapter 3, ” Christmas comes at an intersection between that which is sublimely holy and that which is utterly common. It is the ultimate story of God’s love for our human race, but it is acted out in a field where shepherds watched their flocks, and in a manger cave near a first-century inn. It is the eternal moment when ‘the Word became flesh and lived among us,’ but it came to pass through a teenage girl from an insignificant village.
“I’m trying to say that Christmas shows us that no part of life is unimportant to God, and that none of it is beyond God’s interest. And if that be so, not one of us is beyond God’s care and concern. The Christmas story dramatically reveals that God is not a far-distant, inapproachable object of worship, but one who chose to come into our world and live in our midst — and to do so in the most ordinary of circumstances.”
The titles of William Willimon’s book “Why Jesus?” are just as intriguing as those in Kalas’s book when you realize that Willimon is referencing Jesus the Christ: “Vagabond,” “Storyteller,” “Party Person,” and “Home Wrecker” to name four of the twelve.
It was this book and Willimon’s prosaic and down-to-earth vocabulary and characterizations of the Prince of Peace and the Savior of the World that immediately came to mind as I read your blog detailing a few of your Saturday and Sunday adventures.
Ordinary.
Look at what you tell us you are doing: 1) washing your hair, 2) going to church, 3) dealing with mosquito bites, 4) telling stories, and 5) singing and dancing.
Ordinary…at its most normal.
According to Willimon in Chapter 3, Christ was a storyteller — consider His parables: “It is as if Jesus says that God is not met through generalities and abstractions; God is met amid the stuff of daily life, in the tug and pull of the ordinary. Yet God is usually encountered, if His parables have it right, in ways that are rarely self-evident, obvious, or with uncontested meaning.”
Have you found that to be true — each of you, all of you — while in Haiti?
Bet you have…I know you have…it can be no other way for you, for all of you.
Ordinary.
Look what else you did: 1) you went to a friend’s house and 2) you personified Acts 2:42-46 — your “broke bread” with friends, even friends whom you did not expect to join you, and you prayed, and you shared God’s Light and Truth with each other…in community, about which you have spoken so often and repeatedly…in community you shared God’s Light and Truth proving that “You can’t do this faith solo; [that there is no such thing as the] oxymoronic term ‘solitary Christian.'”
Jesus was a “party person” [willimon, chapter 4]
So are you — each of you, all of you.
“There were times when Jesus went alone into the desert to pray. More typical is for Jesus to be constantly interacting with people. He seemed intent on making the private go public. He loved the give-and-take of public debate. As a supremely social, communal person, whatever it was that Jesus felt called by His heavenly Father to do, He had no interest in doing it by Himself.
“God in Jesus Christ is encountered not through solitary walks in the woods or even by reading a book but rather at a mundane dinner table sharing food with a friend.”
Ordinary.
Life at its most ordinary and normal…and you are there, you are a participant…1,540 miles away from your “homes,” only the scenery has changed, life at its most ordinary and normal continues moving forward.
And you entered into life at those junctures — birth: Joseph’s son Daisreale and death: the man and woman “in the final weeks of life” — affirming to your brothers and sisters in Christ and because of His Light and love that indwells your heart that in the ordinariness of life, in the mundane, every-day-ness of life, God is present, God loves, God cares for each and all of them, of us, of mankind because God is the God of the ordinary.
And you — each and all of you — have brought that God and His Son into personal contact with these Haitians as God brought Jesus, when He was eight days old, into personal contact with Simeon in the temple.
As you contemplate the question: “Will you chose to be successful or make an eternal impact?”
Know that you — each of you — have already answered that question for him or herself and that you are living that answer in full-view of others and God right there at the House of Faith and in the surrounding areas.
Your eternal impact is unfathomable, except to God; but to “our eyes that can see and our ears that can hear,” you are proving to and reminding all that, most assuredly, “the LORD is the Shepherd of all so we shall not want” and that even though we wonder along with the psalmist “What is mankind that You are mindful of them, human beings that You care for them?” we know God’s Truth: He does because He sends people like you — each of you, all of you — in His name to “make disciples and make an eternal impact” for Him and His Kingdom.
God bless your hearts…
…in my prayers,…
Numbers 6:24-26
Today, you ascend the mountain.
The mountain which you have referenced in the past as being Transformation Mountain.
The mountain which, when you first traversed it, taught you, much to your consternation, how the Haitians tell and view time.
The mountain which, when you first traversed it, caused you to believe as truth that you were “going to die there and no one would ever find your body.”
Today, you ascend that mountain.
God is there waiting.
Why?
Only He knows.
But I have to believe it has something to do with your having “eyes to see and ears to hear” and your having chosen to “make an eternal impact.”
…that it has something to do with God revealing to you the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary.
So, as you ascend that mountain…Transformation Mountain…that four-mile trek to the top…to DBR, may the “words of the psalmist’s mouth and the meditations of his heart” in Psalm 121 not only strengthen and encourage you but cause you to look up, always up, and to move forward with confidence, trust, and anticipation:
I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
Go with God…
…in my prayers,…
Numbers 6:24-26
We praise God for your loving and giving hearts, and continue to pray for all of you. IT IS NOT WARM HERE!
‘Nuff Said!’
Betty and Debbie
I just saw this. Thanks for the note. I was warm in Haiti but too much so.
All of you look so happy despite the mosquitoes. Proof of God’s love for sure! Good things are happening here and we are excited to hear all the news when you return. Feeling the energy!
Nanc