Journal entry from April 2, 2006

This was the beginning. This was the first time Haiti ever penetrated my consciousness. 

I have only shared this journal entry with 2 or 3 people. I hesitate to make it public, because I myself don't know what to make of it. I just kept it to myself all these years, waiting for God to reveal to me what He wanted to do with it. 

Now, it appears that this is the time.

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April 2, 2006

It's very intriguing. 

This evening the song, "Here I am, Lord" popped into my head. "I the Lord of sea and sky, I have heard my people cry..." I don't know all the words, because I've only sung it once or twice, and I haven't heard it for about 2 years.

Then, as I tried to fall asleep tonight, I was praying. I was praying for my future ministry, that whatever it was, I would depend on God for everything. Suddenly I had one of those "Ohhh!" moments, where it clicked, that Abiding in Christ (which had always been something I wanted to do but couldn't really understand) sounded a lot like depending on God. "I am the vine, ye are the branches..." "Ohhh! The branches depend on the vine, drawing their every need from it." Depending on God was something more concrete, something that I had done, something that I could relate to.

So then, somehow, I don't know how it happened or if I was thinking of something that led up to it, but I saw a vision of being in the Dominican Republic, and I saw some Haitians. They cried out, flung their hands in the air, and then fell down, fainting. Then in the vision, I was in Haiti, and I looked around and saw everyone around me doing the same thing. It was a cry of despair, of hopelessness, an unworded plea something like, "Lord, can't you see we can't take it anymore?"

Then the vision was over and I continued praying, "Lord, send me to people who are hurting, who are needy, who are suffering". The thought came, "It'll be like pouring energy into a black hole." I responded, "Well, Lord, don't you have enough resources to pour into the black hole and fill it up? I'm only going to be a spout for you to pour through."

And then came the shocker. "How about doing that in Haiti?" God said. "What?" I thought. "I've always felt called to a Spanish-speaking country. And I don't speak Creole. Nobody else in the world does, either. It would just be a waste of time to learn a little language like that." (Ha ha...as I wrote that, God just said, "So when you're through preaching the Gospel to every single person in Haiti, I'll let you move on to a bigger language." LOL... I guess it isn't that little. And who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?)

"Why don't you just look up 'Haiti Mission' online?" God suggested. I renewed my protest. "Not Haiti, Lord. Are you saying you want me to go to Haiti? I can't believe it."

"Just look it up."

"Well, it couldn't hurt. But Haiti is dangerous. There's so much political turmoil and unrest. There's so much AIDS. There's so little electricity & running water. I'd rather not go to a place where I was going to get sick." (Note: Before this, I could not have seen myself telling God, "Not ____, Lord. Send me anywhere but there." I mean, you hear about Christians who won't surrender to God because they're afraid he's going to send them to Africa, and I always thought, "How ridiculous. Don't they trust that God knows best where to send them?" I guess I was proved wrong.)

So God said, "Well, could you do it for a year? It doesn't have to be for the rest of your life."

About this time, I realized what song was playing in my head. "...I have heard my people cry...Here I am, Lord..." It got loud and clear and I remembered the cry in the vision.

"Okay, this is getting weird, Lord," I thought. I started thinking about what I knew about Haiti.

• A couple of my friends have talked about their experience there.
• Once when we were in the Dominican Republic, Pastor José pointed out some Haitians to me. They are taller, thinner, and blacker than the Dominicans, and they all get the worst jobs, the things the Dominicans don't want to do, the jobs with the hardest work and the lowest pay. But they do it because it's much better wages than they could make in Haiti. 
• About a month ago, I was on the travel.state.gov website and was looking up all their sheets on visiting different countries. I read a dozen or two different ones, and one of them was for Haiti.It was a strongly worded statement to the effect of, "We do not recommend visiting Haiti at this time; it is very dangerous," which was much more extreme than any of the other countries. At the time, I was like, "Well, I'm glad I'm not going to Haiti." 

"Never say never," D. told me once. 

So I'm going to look into it.

This should be interesting.

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The Story Continues...Fast Forward to 2010
Start at the Beginning...How God Called Me to Haiti