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Haiti 2.26.15
Well I’ve been off the grid for the last several days. We’ve been out of cell service and definitely out of internet service. I didn’t write Monday evening because for some reason power is very sketchy during the evening and there is nothing more frustrating that writing a post and watch it disappear with a power glitch. For those of you following this little mission adventure I hope you continue to pray for us. Tuesday and Wednesday we travelled to Dos Bois Rouge which was far FAR more of a struggle than I had originally anticipated. I should have thought that one out better. I do not have time to explain all that happened in writing, nor do I want to tell tales others would rather not have told or tell better themselves. Let me leave it at saying that we survived and had a spiritually renewing experience all that the same time. I will also give GOD all the praise, for help arrived unexpectedly just when we needed even though we never anticipated that we would. GOD was watching, and probably having a bit of chuckle that our human frailty. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The pictures are a compilation of our adventure but let me give you some idea of what transpired.
On Monday we decided to do some painting of the upper level and finished the entire hall and one of the bedrooms. That completes the second floor except for Bato and Gina’s room. Getting the supplies of paint and roller was an ordeal that took almost 7 hour to accomplish. We painted for 4 hour and used all five gallons. Sleeping has been challenging with the rain and the mosquitoes but I am more than a little humbled by the grace with which Kandi, Heather and Gary are embracing and dealing with the challenges of weather and critters. The food is almost always rice and beans and I’ve learned, although I should have asked earlier, but Gary doesn’t really like rice! Really? I went to the store the other day and bought a bottle of hot sauce to give the rice and beans a bit of a Kick! It has helped tremendously.
Tuesday we were up by 4:56 am, precisely according to Barb, and on the Tap-Tap at 5:20 am which Pastor Drix provided. We made several stops for ice (I’m not sure why) and in LasCahobas to buy a dress for the ladies. We arrived at DBR at around 9:00 and started up what is perhaps the most dangerous part of this trip. The DBR is beyond description and I will let the pictures tell the story. We had some very close calls! We arrived at Pastor Drix’s church and school around 12:30 and passed out! During our time there we saw the school Drix is building, handed out candy and bibles, Kandi provided first aid to several children who came with unknown open sores and infections. We were not prepared to deal with anything complicated but the parents were desperate so Kandi did what she could with what we had. Everyone pitched in and I thank God for Barb, Drix, Tatu and the spiritual mentors who have helped us through this ordeal.
Wednesday we traveled through the back woods of DBR handing out bibles, praying and proclaiming the name of Jesus to bring hope, the promise of God’s blessing to those who would receive it, pray for the dying and inviting everyone into a community of love and faith. We ate a big lunch of, you guessed it, rice and beans and vegetables. Drix saw me used the hot sauce here in Port-au-Prince and had a bottle ready for me on the Mountain! What a guy!
The journey down the mountain was faster but still kicked our butts by the end of the trip. We were ready to leave when (1) the battery on the truck wouldn’t work and (2) Drix got the truck stuck in a ditch when we tried to push it out of the yard it was parked in. I tried to call AAA but to no avail (just kidding)! By sheer human determination we lifted the truck out of the ditch and started it by rolling it down the hill. We were going home at last! Arrived at home around 8:30 pm and simply passed out on our bed. We had great visions of getting a bath, clean and comfy, but no one had the strength. Refreshed with water, we said good night and dealt with the roosters crowing, the mosquitoes biting, the dogs barking and crazy people singing, the motorcycles revving, and the grace of God giving us rest and health and fellowship in the midst of it all.
I’ve left out more than I’ve told, but its really much better to hear it all in person anyway. We are all healthy, relatively unscathed and ready for a day at the ocean today (I think)! Please continue to pray for us, they have helped us all in ways we can express nor can we anticipate.
As always, we thank our supporters who believe that we are making an impact spiritually, emotionally and through our shared commitment to Jesus Christ. Thank you all.
Prayers, most fervent and ceaseless, have been and continue being with you 24/7. As you “deal with the roosters crowing, the mosquitoes biting, the dogs barking and crazy people singing, the motorcycles revving, and the [all-sufficient] grace of God [being present with you] in the midst of it all,” God has a way of waking prayer warriors and asking them to “stand in the gap” for each and all of you.
Don’t worry, that which is described in Ezekiel 22:30, is NOT and WILL NOT occur with and for you: “God said, I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before Me in the gap…but I found no one.”
Oh, no! “He has looked for someone who would stand before Him in the gap” for My servants in Haiti named Steve, Gary, Mom Barb, Kandi, and Heather…and He has…most assuredly, He has found them!
Smiles on your faces and smiles in your hearts…God and prayers are ever-present with you!
…in our prayers…
Numbers 6:24-26
Praying for physical healing and a smooth trip home. The photos are revealing. Thank you!
Anyone who knows me knows that I cry at the drop of the proverbial hat as my heart speaks in its own singularly unique language of tears.
I can’t help but smile as my tears are flooding forth and down my cheeks at the psalmist noting in Psalm 58 that God captures all of our tears in a bottle. “One bottle, LORD! Really?! Just one bottle for me and all my tears?! It sure must be a ‘big baby’!”
Until today, until now and because of the numerous times I have cried at the thought of as well as at the reading of “the words of your mouth and the meditations of your heart” and the looking at the pictures of where you were and all that you did to make an “eternal impact” for God, have I taken the time to learn why — if we ever learn the true why because “God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts” — why God puts our tears in a bottle.
In an article written by Ann Reagan, she references how she cared for her infant daughter during the night: “If at some point in the night she made the first whimpers of a cry, I would immediately awaken. I quickly responded to her because I loved her so very much. I did not want any harm to come to my tiny baby. My mother-heart was tuned in to the cries of my child.”
Reagan believes “that is how God watches over me and over all who have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ for saving grace. After we have been born anew into God’s family, God is our Heavenly Father; His heart is tuned in to our cries. Our tears are precious to Him. They stir the heart of God our Father, and He responds to our tears.”
Reagan also references Isaiah 38:5 and 2 Kings 20:5 to point out that “God saw Hezekiah’s tears, and [because He did], He responded to those tears and to his crying out in prayer.”
In the years that you have taught the Disciple Classes, you have repeatedly told us that when reading and studying God’s most holy Word, we must read between the lines in order to better and more completely understand the message which God and His Spirit, through their help, intend for us to glean at that moment in time. Much reading between the lines is necessary in order for any of us not with you during your trip to and from Dos Bois Rouge to better and more completely understand, especially since you comment that you “had some very close calls” and you fault yourself for “not having thought this one out better,” all that you experienced, the way(s) in which you were spiritually renewed, and all of your “lives that you laid down for a friend because ‘you could do no less.'”
When Christ commands the disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel to “Go and, therefore, make disciples of all nations…” and then affirms, “Lo, I am with you always,” He did not exclude Haiti from their itinerary nor did He do so for you, some of His twenty-first-century disciples. And His promise then, was, as it is now, “Lo, I am with you always” — consider your picture of the sunrise…right there with you…which He chose to proclaim to you in “His signs and wonders.”
Not an “easy” trek by any stretch of the imagination; but discipleship never is, is it?
You could have chosen not to go, couldn’t you…but you couldn’t?
God gave you the option; but you “could do no less,” could you?
You had to go; you had to be there; you, because you can, had to “see with your eyes and hear with your ears”; and you had to cry and you had to pray. For so see, I believe each of you, all of you did both: cry and pray. Just the same as I who was not there cried and cry and prayed and pray with each reading of “your story” and each viewing of your pictures.
It is those tears and those prayers of yours that because “your tears are precious to God and because they stir His heart causing Him to respond to them as well as your prayers” that, most assuredly, did and will continue causing you to make a spiritual and eternal impact on God’s behalf with and for those whose hearts and lives you have touched within the last seven days while you have been in Haiti.
And it is those tears and those prayers of yours because of what God and His Spirit have enabled “your eyes to see, your ears to hear,” and your heart to know, to hold, to pray, and to cry that will cause you to continue — for as long as you live — making a spiritual and eternal impact upon your brothers and sisters and God’s sons and daughters living in Haiti.
God knows which of His children live on The Mountain…you now know some…He wants your to tell “your mission field” about them so that, along with you, they can bring them before Him with tears and prayers.
Thank you for doing that for God.
Thank you for doing that for them.
Thank you for doing that for us.
But…above all, thank you for “Going” and not only reminding yourselves that “Lo, God is with you always” but showing others who never knew that until they met you that “Lo, God is with ‘you’ always also.”
Tomorrow is going to be a tough day for you.
For all of you, for each of you: for you sojourners, for the boys, for your friends, for a multitude of reasons.
Giving your hearts away — totally and completely, vulnerably and honestly — and having to leave that part of them behind always is tough.
But, would you rather not to “love and be loved in return”?
Tomorrow is going to be a tough day for you — for all of you.
Good-byes almost always are.
My dad — as tears were cascading down my cheeks only to be wiped away with and by my hugs upon hugs around his neck or on his elbow if either of us had a cold — tried to reassure me that our parting was necessary and that we would be the stronger for it by telling me, “We can’t say ‘Hello’ again if we don’t first say, ‘Good-bye.'”
Even Christ knew the agony of leaving His friends as proved by His telling His disciples before His ascension into heaven, “Lo, I am with you always” and when He told His Father that He was not taking His friends out of the world but that He would be praying for them while they remained in it.
Yes, saying goodbye is tough; but the cool thing is that even when you do that, you will be with each other alive and always in your hearts and in your prayers.
…and as is proved in the adage in reference to the stars under which you have slept most of the nights and for both those of you leaving Haiti as well as for those of you staying in Haiti, “Good friends are like stars: You don’t always see them, but you know they are there.”
“Lo, I am with you always…” in my heart and in my prayers. That’s the way it will be for those going and for those staying.
Yep, tomorrow will be a tough day for all of you, for each of you.
Tears are okay and understandable — “that’s the price we pay for love.”
Smiles and hugs are necessary.
Prayers for safe keeping are undeniably essential, as is, the constant repetition to each of yourselves for uplifting and encouragement the verse that, most assuredly, affirms to you that “You can do all things through Christ Who strengthens you.”
And while you are in the midst of your good-byes that soon and once again will be hello’s…
May you be further strengthened and encouraged by and with the knowledge
…that you are not alone
…that you are surrounded by God’s all-sufficient grace and by bunches upon bunches upon bunches of prayers
…and that from His heart and to your “still, small voice,” God is saying, “Well done, My good and faithful servants…well done.”
…in our prayers,…
Numbers 6: 24-26
…always, but especially tomorrow…
“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.” [psalm 121]
Go with God…
…in our prayers,…
Numbers 6:24-26