Birth of a Preschool by God's Grace

My job title has expanded. I am now developing a preschool program, teaching it, and doing teacher training for others who will be involved in it.

The preschool house has always daunted me ever since I got here. Until this week, I still didn't even know all the preschoolers' names. I was aware that there was a great need for someone to invest in them, but I was completely absorbed in my work with the school-age children and didn't see how I could also do preschool. I saw many people try to take on the work of teaching them, and everyone ran into major obstacles. It just seemed so hard to do anything with them.

Well, God is great, because He opened the way for me to add this role into my schedule. I will not be working as much with the school-aged children for the time being, but they also have a Haitian teacher, who is incredibly competent and helpful with them, and I myself will still have 1 1/2 hours with the older kids each day.

I look back and realize, "Wow, preschool came to life this past week!" It was last weekend that I was assigned this new role, and by Thursday we were teaching and implementing our new structure with them. I also look back and realize that last week was the same week that we were the most "pressed above measure" with extra chores, because the generator went out and we didn't have power, so we were carrying water and just generally overwhelmed with the workload of just cooking, cleaning, and laundry.

I look back and say, "HOW did that happen?" I don't even know.

Yet His grace is ALWAYS greater than our need. So He chose to maximize His glory by causing this huge, daunting project to come to life in the very hardest, busiest week that didn't seem to have a crack of time for ministry in it.

God is glorious. I serve a majestic, sovereign, mighty King! What a privilege to walk in His ways!

A rat in my room

Snap!

I heard the trap spring shut. And then--

Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!

What in the world? He didn't die! I thought to myself. He must be a big one. 

It was 2:30 in the morning, and I was in the shower. I had gone to bed hours earlier, but I was still lying there, too hot and sweaty to fall asleep. I didn't want to bother to get up, strike a match, light my lantern, and go solve the problem by dousing myself with cold water.

Then I heard it.

Munch, munch, munch.

The sounds of chewing brought my senses to full alert. That rat is back again, I thought. I'm going to set the trap. I had just bought a rat trap in Port-au-Prince, because I had been having problems with my little nightly visitor, but I hadn't had a chance to set it yet.

I got up and lit the lantern. Of course the rat silently fled, so I didn't get a sight of him. I looked around, and sure enough, there was a neat little bite taken out of one of my fruits.

I grabbed the trap, opened my food tote and pulled out the peanut butter. Too lazy to get a spoon or something, I used my finger and wiped some of it over the little bait spot. Then, without thinking, I put my finger in my mouth and licked the rest of the peanut butter off. Horror struck me as it dawned on me what I had just done. Good thing this was a brand-new trap, I thought. I had better never, ever, ever do that again.

I set the trap carefully and put it near the spot where the rat usually visited. Then, since I was already awake, I figured I might as well get in the shower.

That's why I was in the shower at 2:30 in the morning when the rat trap sprang.

I was drying myself off and I heard him thrashing around the room, giving vociferous cries and squeaks.

What in the world? I thought. He's going to get away with my trap!

I also wondered how Emily was doing. She is my roommate and has just arrived in Haiti. She must be freaking out, I thought. Alone in the dark with a wild, frenzied rat. I wish I was at least there in the room with her.

A knock came on the door. I heard Emily's voice. "The rat got caught," she said. "Yes, I heard," I replied. Well, at least she wasn't afraid to get out of bed and walk across the floor, I thought. Her voice sounded pretty calm, too. A new respect sprang up for my new missionary family member.

As soon as I could, I exited the shower and came back to my room to investigate. Everything was quiet. Was he gone or dead?

Photo Credit: Emily Brown

There he was, upside down, and quite dead.

Finally.

Photo Credit: Emily Brown

I put on a pair of rubber gloves and picked up the trap. Emily grabbed her camera and followed me out the front door. I posed for a couple of pictures and then gingerly opened the trap. The rat fell with a thud onto the ground. I picked him up by the tail and launched him over the wall as far as I could into the banana field.

There.

He was gone.

We did it.

And then we went back to bed and slept peacefully for the rest of the night.

Haitian Church

Finally! After being in Haiti all this time, I got to attend a Haitian church.

I piled into the van with the rest of the school-age kids from the creche. We drove into Montrouis and turned down the little side road where they sell the bread. Just past a pump where people were filling up dozens of buckets, we stopped the van and walked down a footpath to the church.

The church meets in a half-finished building. The concrete walls form a structure that promises to be beautiful, with arched windows and a high roof--only the windows aren't put in yet and there is no roof. The metal braces that form the rooflines are covered with a large tarp tha,t used to be a US billboard. The words "Emergency Services" and a huge phone number are visible. However, wind and/or exposure to the elements have ripped this tarp from some of its moorings, so it no longer goes over the whole roof but droops down in several places, allowing the sun to shine in. I kept looking up at the blue sky visible above me and marveling at the many different kinds of green leaves I could see--palm fronds, mango leaves, and many others I couldn't identify.

There were a number of wooden benches set up along the shadiest wall in the church, and as we piled in with our huge group of kids, people were very accommodating to make room for us. The church was full. People were dressed in their best, and each person carried his or her own Bible and songbook.

There was no electricity. The church had no instruments, but people sang in parts, and sang heartily and beautifully. The preacher had to compete with someone just outside the walls who was knocking stones together to break them into smaller pieces, and with a hog that was squealing loudly. I was pleased at being able to understand most of the main points of the sermon.

During the announcement time, a man got up and said a few things. A lady behind us stood up and stated her name and where she was from. Then the man made eye contact with me and gave an encouraging smile.

"I think they're asking all the first-time visitors to stand," I said to Shane (one of my fellow missionaries), who was sitting beside me.

We looked at each other, confused because we really didn't understand, and didn't want to do it wrong. What if it was something totally different? Then we would be standing up and making ourselves conspicuous. The man at the front repeated what he had said and gave another encouraging smile our way. I asked a woman sitting next to us, and she said we should stand, so up we stood.

Was that enough? Did they just want us to stand, or were we supposed to give a longer speech? Everyone seemed to be waiting expectantly.

"Bonjou," I said, a little weakly. What was I supposed to say?

"Bonjou," the entire congregation responded.

They still seemed to be waiting expectantly.

"Am I supposed to tell our names?" I asked the friendly lady next to us.

"Yes," she said, "And a little bit about you."

So in Creole, I told our names and said that we worked at the creche, and then sat down.

The church service in general was very organized and reverent and traditional. The people seemed very serious, except for one little boy in the front row who kept busting dance moves and then looking back at me to see if I was duly appreciating them. I smiled at him, and he would always give a huge smile back.

Afterward, several people greeted me, and it was good to connect with other members of the community.

Then we went home. They kept piling children, children, and more children in the van, way more than on the way to church, because they had brought them in two loads, but now they wanted to take them home in one load. I said to Memen that Shane and I could walk home if she didn't think there was room for us. "I think we have room," she said. She kept directing traffic, cramming more and more people into this 12-passenger van, and finally succeeded in getting two seats open for Shane and I to sit. Then our laps were filled with children and she continued filling the rows ahead of us. When we finally took off, I counted. The van had 35 people in it. And then they turned on the heat. One of the girls was right next to the register, and sweat was rolling down her face. They didn't know how to work the switches to turn on the AC in the back, but after a general protest, they finally just turned it off altogether, which was a welcome relief.

All in all, it was a fun day! I hope I can go back! But maybe I'll make arrangements to walk home...

You're Not Allowed To Be Needy

Needy People (1) 

We went to the store in Saint Marc the other day, and while we were there, word went around that a vehicle with white people had just come up to the store. When we came out with our purchases, there were a ton of women with babies, all with their hands out, all demanding that we give them something.

It felt horrible to be so accosted, just because we were white and just because we were coming out of "the store." How could they understand how delicate our own financial situation was, how carefully we had to manage our own resources, and how fully each of us had to trust God for the food that we ate? To them we just looked like rich people, because we were driving a car and buying things with debit cards.

It also felt horrible to not give them anything when we knew they truly were hungry. If we had started giving anything out, we would have been mobbed, and our car would have been marked for next time as a car that gives things away, and so next time we would have been mobbed as soon as we drove up.

We drove away, and for the next few days, I was filled with a sense of the unpleasantness of it all. One side of me was preparing retorts that I wished I had had the presence of mind to say at the time, like, "Yeah, you have one baby to feed. Try providing for 180," or "Do you have any idea how many days in a row I have had to eat peanut butter and jelly?" The other side of me was grieved at the condition of the people, and I was frustrated by the knowledge that I really did not know how to deal with it in my own soul.

Overarching it all, though, was an annoyance that I had to deal with it at all. "Why can't they just go away and leave us alone?" I wondered. "Why do they have to come up and bother us?"

Needy People (2)

The kids have picked our front porch as their favorite place to play. They play there until it is time to go to bed, and the air is filled with shouts and laughter and the normal sounds of play. Balls and toy cars roll back and forth, and games of tag produce shrieks of excitement. Most of all, though, the kids just want to be near us. They want to be noticed. "Look! Look!" "Do you see?" "Watch this!" They crave attention. They want love. They want us.

Usually I am right in the thick of everything, with a crowd of kids around me, but one night, at the end of a particularly intense day, I just wanted to go away and be by myself. I hid in the house. Still, the noisy chatter echoing just through the doorway started to grate on my senses. I didn't really know what I wanted, but part of me seemed to be yearning and longing for something, and part of me wanted to cry, and part of me was restless and unable to enjoy reading or any other activity I could think of. I was accosted by thoughts like, "I never want to have children as long as I live," and "I can't wait to go home." Again, that annoyance came back to me. "Why can't they just go away and leave us alone?" I thought. "Can't they pick a different place to play?"

(I hate to admit to the world that I have experienced these awful thoughts, but there they are, in all their ugliness.)

You're Not Allowed to Be Needy!

I think the puzzling aspect in common between these two stories is that (1) I am usually abundantly generous and (2) I usually love children. Yet in these two cases, I experienced great annoyance that someone would presume on my generosity or my love of children and expect me to give it.

Is it human nature, or is it just me?--to discover that I am happy to give (of myself or my money), but only as long as you don't come across as too needy or too demanding.

"I'll give to you," I seem to say, "but only if you're not needy. You're not allowed to be needy. Once you start to be needy, I will begin to withdraw from you."

I will buy you lunch if you're my friend, and I won't even expect you to buy me lunch in return, but if there's any hint that you are going to sap my resources and suck me dry, I probably won't buy you lunch even once.

I will play with children and be a "big sister" with all my heart, but when I'm expected to be mom, um, that's an investment of time and energy that I shrink away from.

I will give you attention and show you love, but when you start to act like your world revolves around me, that's not okay, and I will run the other direction.

But God doesn't say to be a cheerful giver only to the ones who are "not needy."

In fact, he cautions against giving to the rich. He specially highlights the widow and orphan (society's neediest) for our attention. He doesn't offer caveats like "minister only to the deserving poor" or "love the ones who don't have Reactive Attachment Disorder."

So What Am I Supposed to Do?

Good question. I'm still asking Him for wisdom on that one.

But some answers have come.

Timothy Keller, in his book, Ministries of Mercy, traces the source and origin of poverty to the fall, and highlights the fact that all of us are needy. We ourselves are recipients of mercy. His insights into what the Bible says about the poor smote me to the heart and caused me to repent of my supercilious attitude towards the women in outside the store in Saint Marc. No more did I wish to have a ready retort for them. How can I show them mercy instead? If I have nothing to give, I can at least mirror Peter and John's approach ("Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee...") How can I impart the love of Jesus, even in this kind of encounter? (And how do I avoid the equally egregious pitfall of saying, "Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled," without giving them what is needful for the body?)

Unlimited Resources 

In withdrawing from those who are needy, I tend to excuse it as a survival mechanism or a self-defense technique, using language to myself like "parasite" or "sapped" or "burned out." I tell myself I "need space," I look at the benefits of "recharging," and I consider it isn't wrong to leave a person to God and not always consider myself God's answer to that person's need.

True, true.

But this kind of thinking reveals a perspective of limited resources. I only have so much money, time, energy, and reserve before I need to replenish.

What if I looked at everything from the perspective of unlimited resources?

God has unlimited resources. All of us are needy before Him. We are always crying, coming to Him, needing His aid. He never turns us away with an annoyed look and says, "No, you're too needy right now. You're not allowed to be needy." He has merciful, bountiful care for all of the needy people in the world at the same time. He never runs out of love, patience, attention, or wisdom to attend to our needs. He always has enough resources to provide the supplies we need, even when we are like little leeches on Him, sucking, sucking, sucking, and never giving back. He freely gives grace, finances, strength, and peace.

Do I, or do I not, have the mind of Christ?

Scripture says that I do.

Then my mind ought to be equally disposed give to the needy around me.

How does God give? Does He worry that He will run out? Does He question whether the person is worthy? (The answer would always be no, wouldn't it?) Does He look at how many times that same person has been needy in the past and has applied to him for aid? Does He experience a rising feeling of panic that He will never be able to get away from this needy person if He once starts to give?

No.

So how can I practically enter into accessing God's unlimited resources for the needy people around me?

For starters, I can recognize that I walk in obedience. For everything God has called me to do, I can expect Him to supply out of the bottomless aquifer. The women begging outside the store are perhaps outside my call to obedience, unless God specifically prompts me to give in a certain instance (which He has done before, and which I have heeded). In any case, I can expect God to provide for them with or without using me as a tool to give them something. I need not feel annoyed that they beg, but rather love them and feel compassion that circumstances have compelled them to resort to begging.

Secondly, I can confidently and fearlessly spend myself wherever God calls me to do so. I can offer myself a living sacrifice and go all the way down into death if need be, if God should so desire. I need not attempt to keep a "reserve store" of energy or love or funds, because I have discovered that as I draw from His supply, He constantly replenishes that supply as much and as often as needed. My supplies ran out long ago. Everything I have is from Him. The children who surround me every day are the calling that God has currently given me. If I look to Him for the love and kindness that I spend on them, I need not ever feel annoyed at their neediness or sense that I have run out of anything to give them.

Conclusion

The next time I am tempted to protest, "You're not allowed to be needy!" I can stop and reconsider, and change my story to, "I'm not allowed to be the judge of your neediness--I will obediently and cheerfully follow God into whatever He calls me to do for you."

The key is God's call. I could start looking around and seeing neediness all around me, and it would be overwhelming, even should the entire world try to invest in relieving the needs. The only variable on my end is obedience. I must look up, not around, and merely obey, not try to invent ways for myself to be heroic and save the world. God has already done everything needful to achieve that. I simply enter into His initiatives, and when that involves giving to the needy (which it frequently will), I can freely and bountifully do so because of His power working in me.

Granola Bars

It's terrible how covetous one gets for food when in Haiti. Among ourselves, we call it worshiping the belly god, and we fight it off as much as we can. So I try not to give in too much to it, and to be content with the food that God gives me, even if it means lots of beans and rice or peanut butter and jelly.

But the other day, I had an immense craving for granola bars. "Lord, could you just...somehow bring me some granola bars?" I prayed. And my unstated thought was, "I wish I could have more granola bars than I could ever eat! I wish I could have a whole mountain of granola bars!" But I quickly identified that thought as catering to the "belly god," and forthwith pushed it down.

Well.... of course, God hears our thoughts, even the ones we immediately endeavor to "unthink," and this time, in a move reminiscent of showering one of his other servants with bananas, He just decided to show off what He could do.

A group came down this past week, bearing a duffle bag loaded with granola bars. The guy who bought them said he cleaned off the shelves at Target.

A week after we all had feasted on these granola bars, I decided it would be fun to count them and divide them into ziploc bags by the different flavors. So here is the tally as of this morning (and remember, this total was initially much greater by an unidentified amount!):

 5 - Fiber, Almond & Dark Chocolate
 7 - Fiber, Oats, & Chocolate
 7 - Clif Crunch Chocolate Chip
 9 - Clif Crunch White Chocolate Macadamia Nut
12 - Strawberry
12 - Mixed Berry
13 - Apple Cinnamon
13 - Banana Fudge Filled
14 - Chocolate Fudge Filled
14 - Dipped Chocolate Chip
15 - Blueberry
21 - Fiber, Oats, & Peanut Butter
21 - Fruit & Nut
24 - Boxes of Raisins
24 - Packs of Extra Butter Microwave Popcorn

Total: 211

You have to admit--that's a mountain of granola bars.

Thank you, God!

The Grandeur of God, the Nearness of Eternity, and the Value of the Soul

“I grieve that my love is no stronger, and that I am no more like Him. I wonder at His glory, and sink before Him with shame. How is it that the soul being of such value, and God so great, eternity so near and yet we are so little moved?”--William Bramwell

Do the grandeur of God, the nearness of eternity, and the lostness of man change the way I live my live?

I guess so, in a measure, if you compared my life with a typical 30's churchgoing career woman--after all, I've left my claim on a career and moneymaking to go and live in (gulp) Haiti, of all places--but I don't want to be compared with her! I want to be compared with who Jesus wants to make me, who I would be, should be, could be, if the grandeur of God, the nearness of eternity, and the lostness of man fully impacted me. Let me not shy away from the full brunt of those three forces. Let me look them full in the face and be blasted by their heat, until my hard heart be melted and I am no longer "so little moved." My heart is not great enough to bear the weight of these factors. It shrinks back in alarm. It shies away. It shields itself. It hides its eyes. It cries, "I cannot bear to gaze on even one of these aspects. I have not the love to offer in response in the measure that these great truths demand."

How will I seek to keep these realities ever before my mind when the bare writing of the above paragraph caused me to seek a few hours of escape on facebook? Honestly--how will I do it? By putting up a poster on the wall? By setting an alarm on my phone? God grant me the grace to not only keep these realities before my mind, but to change the way I live my life! Only through Jesus--and, in fact, amply and abundantly through Him--can I properly fix my perspective onto what truly matters.

Contemplating these realities, even a little bit, makes it obvious that I must change. Change how? What is it precisely that God is asking of me that the flesh fears so greatly? What do I think will be the requirement that comes with looking at the grandeur of God, the nearness of eternity, and the lostness of man? I somehow instinctively know there will be a demand, and the flesh is so afraid of facing that demand that it insulates itself and contrives methods to keep from ever looking in the first place. What is this fear? I do not approve of fear in my life--yet so far, in this area, I have rather permitted fear to reign than venture the merest glance into these realities.

This is what I'm afraid of: I'm afraid that if I look too long and hard at the lostness of man, I will have to witness. I'm afraid that if I gaze properly upon the grandeur of God, I will have to do crazy-looking things, like fall on my face and cry, "Holy, Holy, Holy!" I'm afraid that if I dwell on the nearness of eternity, I will have to cut away many enjoyable things that have no eternal value. All of these have one thing in common: They spell death to the flesh. So rather than approach the searing-hot grandeur of God, accepting my death bravely, I prefer to pretend like I don't know it exists. Rather than open my eyes to the lostness of man, die to the flesh's protests, and witness, I prefer to blind myself to their plight. Rather than walking right up to the nearness of eternity, accepting what it means, and ruthlessly stripping all unnecessary things away in light of it, I prefer to go on playing with my meaningless little toys.

This is an unacceptable state of affairs. The flesh's self-preserving trick of playing clueless, ignorant, and blind has been found out.

Now that I see that, I will walk in the truth. The truth says that the flesh was dealt with on the cross, destroyed, buried. So the flesh has no business sparing itself (or sparing "me," as it so dearly likes to phrase it) from the death, embarrassment, or cutting away that God invites me to experience. I am already dead. More of the same should hold no terrors for me. Oh, I need to witness? No problem. I am already dead to embarrassment, self-consciousness, and self-reliance. Oh, I need to fall on my face and do something weird, like cry aloud "Holy, Holy, Holy?" Okay. The old man who dislikes that kind of thing was nailed to the cross and can no longer have a say in the matter. Oh, I need to eliminate worldly pleasures, like reading books and oversleeping and eating too much sugar? Well, that can't possibly hurt at all, because the old man who used to like those things is no longer part of the picture.

What freedom! What glory! What joy! What possibility! When there is no longer anyone to protest, there is no longer that hindrance to walking in the fullest obedience. Experiences of past failures (for instance, my refusal to witness on the metro in Madrid) no longer hold their dread prediction that future calls to obedience will turn out the same way.

And so I step towards this blinding searchlight rather than hiding in the shadows, and I invite the Master to do His work.

Haitian Improvisation

When I was in Spain, I thought it was incredibly innovative to discover that you could wash windows without paper towels. I hand never done it any other way, but the Spanish women used newspapers. "Ah!" I thought. "What a brilliant money-saver." But here in Haiti, I think the level of improvisation is deeper and more creative. When you do without something, you just find something else to make do for the task at hand.

For instance...

Fingernail clippers

Dishrag

Rolling pin

Table 

Mop bucket

 

Baby wipes

Ironing board

No picture available: Tin can full of water sitting on the ground next to a bar of soap =

Handwashing station

Cereal Bowl

Math manipulatives

CD scratch repair kit (works!)

Strep Throat Cure (chew one whole every so often) (works!)

And then there are the things that have a proper use, and they're donated from America, and the Haitian has no idea of what they are or what they're for, so they come up with another use for them.

Clothes drying rack

And then there is another category: Things that Haitians have and use all the time that the American wouldn't know or understand without being told, like our charcoal grill range. 

Returning a Water Bottle

I had forgotten about this story until I was catching up in my journal and it came back to mind. Incidentally, this happened the same day as my Moto Ride Through Port-au-Prince. 

I was thirsty and hot. I paid the moto driver and then asked one of the nearby street vendors for a water bottle. It cost me 25 gourdes, and I asked if they had another one. They didn’t, but they went to get one from another vendor.

While they were gone, I opened the one I had. I tore off the plastic shrink wrap and opened the cap. The cap opened without ripping away from the little ring that is supposed to stay below the plastic lip at the bottom part of the lip of the bottle, and I thought, “Oh great. This is one of those bottles that they warned me about.” Joanne’s interpreter, Dony, had warned me that sometimes they took these bottles and refilled with them with different water which wasn’t safe to drink. When the vendor came back with another water bottle, I noticed that it was filled to a different level than the one I had. Without removing the shrink wrap, I twisted the cap slightly. I could see that it, too, was going to be able to unscrew without punching off the little safety ring. “Yep,” I thought. “These are bogus…not from the factory that the label says.” I had already paid for the second bottle, too, and I asked for my money back for both of them. I explained quite nicely and calmly that this bottle looked like it had been opened before, and I couldn’t drink that water, because it would make me sick. It made me sad to do it, because I was extremely thirsty, and I really, really wanted water, but I couldn’t drink water that was going to make me sick.

The guy gave me my money back for the second bottle, but not for the first. The reason for this, which I didn’t understand at the time, was that I had removed the plastic shrink wrap from the first bottle, and everyone had seen me do it. I could barely understand the Creole spoken around me, but I could gather bits and pieces of phrases here and there. I asked again, calmly and a bit beseechingly, for him to give me my money back. A crowd of people gathered around, and they all started speaking loudly with each other in Creole. One man came, as it were, to my defense, and I thought for a minute that I was going to get my money back. 25 gourdes is about 60 cents, so it wasn’t a huge deal, but I thought it was perfectly reasonable to expect to return something that showed obvious signs of being opened before and refilled. The man seemed to be demanding that the vendor return my money back to me. However, several people stepped in and said something I didn’t understand, which I afterward surmised must have been them reporting that they saw me take the plastic shrink wrap off, which, in their minds, meant that it certainly had not been opened before I touched it. The man shrugged his shoulders and disappeared into the crowd.

Another man shouldered his way forward, picked up the water bottle, and set it down with a decisive thump on the top of the cooler. “Take this bottle, and go away,” he said.

In that instant, something in the back of my mind told me that I ought to take his advice, go away, and just drop it. However, I didn’t obey my instincts.

“No, I want my money back,” I said, still calm, unruffled, and unafraid. “I can’t drink that water. It will make me sick.”

“Then take it and throw it away,” he said in exasperation. “You’ve lost it.”

That didn’t make any sense to me. Why had I lost it? Only afterward did I realize that in their minds, the presence or absence of the plastic shrink wrap (which I had taken off myself) formed the definition of “opened before,” while to me, it was the plastic cap itself, and the water level, and the whole aspect of this bottle being a “re-bottled” water. We were talking about two different things, and I didn’t know it, and they didn’t bother to understand my point of view. “No, I want my money back,” I repeated. I stood there, almost like a Haitian approaches an American, with my hand out, standing there without speaking.

More conversation ensued, more heated discussion in Creole by all the bystanders. Another person commanded me to take the bottle and go away. The voice in my head told me I’d better listen. I sighed. “Okay,” I agreed. I picked up the bottle and walked away.

Later, motivated by my extreme thirst, I drank the water. It didn’t ever make me sick.

But after that, whenever I walked by those vendors, someone would make a comment about a water bottle and 25 gourdes, and the whole crowd would burst out laughing. The first time it happened, I apologized humbly in my broken Creole for my role in that whole drama, but that caused another burst of laughter. It was somewhat intimidating to walk by there after that, because I felt that I had unwittingly made enemies, simply because I didn’t understand.

Aside: It’s interesting how one comes to understand things here. Having gone through this experience, I understand that it’s not quite as simple a matter as it is in America to make a return of a simple item. There is no such rule as “the customer is always right.” There is no allowance made for the defectiveness of an item being grounds for a return. Now I understand—but if some seasoned missionary had tried to tell me as much (which no one ever did, because there are so many of these things, no one could possibly keep track of them all to tell the newcomers), I would have believed it, but I wouldn’t have understood.

Melted by His Goodness

"Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" Romans 2:4

The Goodness of God!

God gave me a gift that I have been asking Him for, that I have been appearing repeatedly before His throne to pray about. He answered my prayer, and the answer is full of His abundant goodness. 

Curiously, the answer came the day after one of my worst days, a day when I behaved particularly badly, gave way overmuch to the indulgences of the flesh, wasted time scandalously, and went to bed feeling guilty for having failed to walk in the light. 

The next day: God's response? Boom! Your prayer is answered. The thing you have so long desired is granted. 

Ah, the goodness of God! 

Smitten by the consciousness of my failings, I look to him with a heart that leaps full of love and gratitude, staggered with amazement at His mercy. Part of me cries out, "Don't you see my shortcomings? Don't you want to frown in disapproval and close off your heart to me for my sin? You know better than anybody that I DO NOT DESERVE THIS!" Another part of me cannot help but rejoice in His bounty. More than anything, the hard, guilty heart that instinctively seeks to withdraw and hide from His presence in sullen defiance is coaxed back out into the light, melted by His gentleness. 

God doesn't lead us to repentance by holding staunchly to the strictness of the law and waiting for us to get our act together before He will make a move in our favor. He leads us to repentance by His goodness. His goodness! His lovingkindness! His love that loved us first, before we ever loved Him! His tender mercy! His gentle, compassionate touch! He overwhelms the guilty heart with goodness, goodness, and more goodness, until that heart cries out, "Ah, Lord God! You are good, and I am evil, and your goodness is so beautiful that I give up! I yield!" 

So then, how dare I treat a child or a brother or a lost soul with anything other than the goodness of God that God has shown me? 

God leads me to repentance with His goodness. Do I seek to lead others to repentance with my hardness? 

God melts my heart by loving me so tangibly that I overflow with the astonishment of it all. Have I ever done that with a sibling or a student or a sinner?

Hardness breeds more hardness, but goodness breeds repentance. Who would have thought? 

To Love the Brethren

Happy Valentine's Day!

Relationship status aside, it's a good day to talk about love.

What have you done lately to show your love to the body of Christ?

How much love have you felt lately for your brothers and sisters in Christ?

I got to experience this sort of love in action recently. It was February 2, a Saturday, and some guests were going to be coming in to Club Indigo. I was commissioned to get their rooms ready, so I went to check on the various rooms in question. One just needed the beds made and a general once-over by the cleaning ladies, but the other was in serious need of help. I opened the door and was instantly taken aback by the foul smell. Four full trash cans, some with poopy diapers in them, were in different parts of the room. The floor was smeared with all sorts of unknown filthiness. Toys were piled in the corner and in the closets, and just the touch of them left your hands feeling grimy. Pieces of dismantled cribs were scattered about, and everything had an air of disorder and carelessness about it. The previous occupants of the room were some of our Haitian nannies--wonderful women, but with different standards of cleanliness--and lots of children.

I set to work to clean the room, a song in my heart and a determination in my head to improve it as much as possible. I collected my cleaning supplies and set to work. I gathered up all the toys and removed them, stacked all the crib parts neatly in one place, swept the floor, washed the windows, and took out the trash. But then it came to scrubbing the floor. I had a brand-new mop head, and it was was very nice, but I didn't have the handle for it, so I had to get down on my hands and knees, wring out the mop with my hands, and scrub vigorously. The floor was full of little areas of black stuff stuck on, and I was sweating and breathless by the time I had done half the room. One of the missionaries discovered me at my task and gave me a pair of gloves, for which I was extremely grateful.

As I worked, tirelessly and unceasingly, trying to beat the clock and finish cleaning before the guests' arrival, I asked myself, "Why am I doing this?" I thought of the person who was going to stay in this room, and I knew the answer: It was for love. Not the worldly kind of love, that admires a man and seeks to attract his attention. Not an awkward kind of love, that gazes from afar and wishes hopelessly for a relationship. Not a passionate kind of love, that comes with beating heart and fluttering eyelashes and rosy lips. No--it was the love of the brethren, godly love and esteem for a fellow believer, love that was willing to take action and do something practical and a wee bit difficult for another's sake.

The book of 1 John has a lot to say about loving our brothers and sisters in Christ.

• "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him." 2:9
• "For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." 3:11
• "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." 3:14
• "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." 3:16
• "And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment." 3:23
• "Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God." 4:7
• "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." 4:11
• "No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us." 4:12
• "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" 4:20
• "And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also. 4:21
• "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him." 5:1
• "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments." 5:2

Let us not become so sullied by the world's definition of love that we cannot genuinely love our brothers and sisters in Christ. There is a pure, strong, unquenchable love that has nothing to do with romance or personal attraction. The world does not know of the existence of this love and cannot understand its selflessness. But as God loves us and lives in our hearts, He begins to fill our hearts with His love, which spills over toward our brothers and sisters. It is a sweet thing to know God's love in this way.

~ ~ ~ ~

By the way, see my previous Valentine's Day post for my thoughts on my current relationship status. I am in love, too.

And this post from a blog I read is worth your time whether you're married or not. Excerpt:

"I used to think it was hypocritical to act in love when I didn't feel like it. The truth is? It is actually hypocritical for me to act what I feel instead of who I am and have been made in Jesus Christ!"

Jesus, the Bread of Life vs. Peanut Butter and Jelly

It was February 3, and I was making my lunch. "Oh, Lord, not peanut butter and jelly again!" I sighed inwardly. I inspected my bread closely, picked off a little bit of green mold from the crust, threw it in the trash can, and spread the rest of the slice with peanut butter and jelly, with a little frown on my lips and a mild feeling of revulsion in my stomach.

Suddenly my complaining attitude received a check.

"You have Jesus."

Instantly, I saw it. I have a treasure of inestimable value in Jesus. I have incomparable riches, right here, now! I am vastly, extravagantly blessed.

A smile spread over my face and a genuine happiness came into my heart. My eyes lit up and the feeling of revulsion and complaining disappeared. I started praising Jesus aloud as I contemplated who He is to me and how grateful I am for Him. He transformed my attitude as I fixed my gaze on Him.

"Jesus! You are my bread, my water, my living delight. I praise you for being in my life. I thank you for the food you have provided for me. It doesn't matter what I eat or if I eat. I have you, and I will have you forever, and I will feast on the riches of your presence and enjoy the glories of the treasure that you are. You are more wonderful than a gourmet buffet. You are richer than chocolate. You are more to me than all the flavorful and tasty foods in the world. I offer myself anew to you, and I delight anew in the enjoyment of have you in your completeness available to me all the time."

Jesus as the bread of life became so real to me in that moment.

For the rest of the day, whenever I thought about food, spontaneous praise arose from my lips and I renewed my verbal declarations of delight in Jesus as better than any food.

And how tender and loving He is! He provides! That very day, I got the unexpected gift of a barbecued chicken dinner. Someone else gave me some deviled eggs and potato salad, which I put on a plate in the refrigerator for the next day's lunch. Since then, I have had more variety of food choices in my diet--cabbage stir fry, a can of tomato basil soup, fruits like grapefruit, banana, and mango, an exquisite dinner at the buffet at a neighboring resort last Sunday, and the gift of a dinner ticket for the buffet here. How tenderly He cares for His children, and how adequately He provides!

He provides Himself first, and He is more than enough. But because He knows our weakness and knows that we are but flesh, He also provides for the satisfaction and nourishment of our bodies. He provides more than we deserve and better than we expect. What a matchless thing it is to be in His service!

Our Strength for Prayer is in the Lord

by William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour

Again, consider the Christian as addressing himself to any duty of God's worship, still his strength is in the Lord.

[1. Prayer.]

Would he pray? Where will he find materials for his prayer? Alas, he 'knows not what he should pray for as we ought,’ Rom. 8:26. Let him alone, and he will soon pray himself into some temptations or other, and cry for that which [it] were cruelty in God to give; and therefore God puts words in our mouths: 'Take with you words and say,’ Hosea 14:2. Well, now he hath words put into his mouth. Alas, they will freeze in his very lips, if he hath not some heart-heating affections to thaw the tap. And where shall this fire be had? Not a spark to found on his own hearth, except it be some strange fire of natural desires, which will not serve. Whence then must the fire come to thaw the iciness of the heart, but from heaven? The Spirit, he must stretch himself upon the soul, as the prophet on the child, and then the soul will come to some kindly warmth and heavenly heat in its affections. The Spirit must groan, and then the soul will groan. He helps us to these sighs and groans which turn the sails of prayer. He dissolves the heart and then it [i.e. prayer] bursts out of the heart by groans of the lips by heavenly rhetoric, out of the eyes as from a flood-gate with tears. Yet further, now the creature is enabled to wrestle with God in prayer, what will he get by all this? Suppose he be weak in grace, is he able to pray himself strong, or corruption weak? No, this is not to be found in prayer, as an act of the creature; this drops from heaven also: 'In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul,’ Ps. 138:3. David received it in duty, but had it not from his duty, but from his God. He did not pray himself strong, but God strengthened him in his prayer.

My Head-On Collision With a Moto

It was supposed to be such a simple trip, just a little drive around the corner, a five-minute trip to visit someone's house, no more. I took the keys to the white car, affectionately dubbed "Old Trusty," and headed down the road.

About 1 minute from my destination, I turned off the main road onto a side road. I was going quite slowly--maybe 5 mph, though Old Trusty's dashboard is pretty useless at telling me any information. The spedometer needle hangs motionless at 0. The tachometer needle is stuck all the way over in the red. The odometer stopped clocking somewhere around 190,000.

Suddenly, a moto appeared, zooming around the corner, riding right in the middle of the road, and heading straight for me. I quickly slammed on the brakes and came to a complete stop. A satisfactory thrill came over me of having avoided an accident, which feeling vanished an instant later when he hit me. His reflexes were not as fast, and his speed was too great for him to stop.

Thud! His tire whacked squarely into the middle of my bumper, and the moto and driver collapsed on the road in front of me. The driver slowly arose, limping slightly and holding his crotch, which he tried to disguise by rubbing his leg.

I sat in shocked silence.

I was just in an accident, I thought to myself. What in the world am I supposed to do now?

I was white, I was a woman, I was alone in the vehicle, and I didn't so much as have a phone on me. (Mine died overnight, and I have been having a lot of trouble with my charger, which I plug in but it won't charge.)

What was Haitian protocol? Would I just leave? Would I call the police? How would they determine who was at fault? What did people usually do? The only accident I had seen was one where some driver hit a moto on the highway and kept right on going. I couldn't just do that.

A crowd quickly gathered, and everyone began angrily chattering in Creole, accusing the "blan" (white person) of wrecking this guy's moto and hurting him. The fact that I was white was a bad deal for me. Jackpot! Everyone was thinking. Milk this one for all it's worth.

A car appeared in the road behind me, so someone moved the moto from in front of me, and I pulled over to the side of the road to let that driver pass. Now I was tempted to just drive away. Would that be leaving the scene of an accident? Would I attract an angry crowd of people running after me and throwing stones? What in the world was I supposed to do? One thing I was determined not to do was exit the vehicle. So I just sat there in the car, with the engine running and my windows rolled up, watching the people and waiting to see what would happen.

A bystander came up to the passenger side and motioned me to roll the window down. I did. He said something in Creole and I caught the word "hospital."

"Is he going to the hospital?" I asked.

"Ok, great!" the bystander said. He waved the moto driver to come over, and was about to open the back door of my car for him to get in.

"OH, waaaait a minute," I thought. "They expect ME to take him to the hospital?" I said in broken Creole to the bystander that I needed to use the phone, and I had a friend just down the road. "I'll be right back," I said. I drove off. Was I doing this wrong? What could I do?

Fortunately, the house where I was headed was right down the road, and thankfully, some of the Haitian staff from the creche were there. I explained the situation to one of the guys, and he went to take care of it.

Later, when he came back, I thanked him and asked, "Were they really angry with me?"

"Yes," he said. "The guy said his leg was broken."

(The guy's leg was obviously not broken. He was barely limping.)

"What did you do? How did you handle it?" I asked.

"I gave him 1000 gourdes and sent someone I know to take him to the hospital," he said.

About 2 hours later, I was getting ready to go, so I got in the car and put it in reverse to back out. However, I noticed that the gates were closed. I asked the security guard if he could open the gate. He came up to my window and said a long thing in Creole, the basic gist of which I understood to be, "That guy is sitting outside our gate now, threatening what will happen when this white car comes out."

Oh my word! I thought. Here in Haiti you can't ever go back through the same intersection where you had an accident, because everyone there hates you. I imagined driving back by that fatal spot and having a hundred stones flung at the vehicle that was so obnoxious to them. "White woman hitting one of our Haitian brothers--how dare she?" (Excuse me; he hit me, not the other way around, but there's no way they will ever admit that.)

So the same Haitian guy from our creche came back to take care of him once again. This time the moto driver was demanding from us the cost of fixing the moto. But our Haitian staffer told him to go claim it on his insurance. The guy argued with him for a long time in Creole, none of which I understood. Then our staffer escorted me out of there until I was safely out of reach.

So that was my adventure of the day!

The Sprinkling of Blood

Notes from my personal Bible study

"It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these." Hebrews 9:23
Notice a very interesting fact: Christ didn't just apply His blood to the people, but to the heavenly things themselves. He appeared as our High Priest in the Heavenly Holy of Holies, bearing His own blood, with which he sprinkled the heavenly things themselves, the way Aaron did in the sanctifying of the tabernacle.

When you think of a man going into a tent made of skins and sprinkling animal blood over everything, you may think, "Okay…that's kind of random…and gross…" It seems meaningless. We grasp its holiness only by taking God's word for it that it is holy. "Well, God said it, and He's the boss, so I guess that makes it so," we reason, still not understanding.

But this passage contains a key to moving our understanding beyond that. Ask yourself the question: "The heavenly things themselves needed to be purified? How could they possibly need to be more pure than they already are? They are in heaven. Everything in heaven is holy. There is no blemish or shadow on anything in heaven. How could they possibly attain a greater degree of holiness than they already have?"

And then you see it--a picture of the Son of God, the beloved of Heaven, the light of the Father's eyes, He who is Himself the infinite holiness of God Himself, unsurpassable in perfections and loveliness and sinlessness. 

He walks slowly and purposefully into the heavenly temple, bleeding. 

He is bearing a bowl of blood---His own blood, which He poured out willingly as the sacrificial Lamb of God. 

He dips His fingers in the bowl and sprinkles, sprinkles, sprinkles. Every drop lands with searing testimony: "I was spilled out of the veins of the Holy one of God!"

You don't get anything holier than this. Yes, the heavenly temple, holy as it already was, could be "purified" and attain a greater degree of holiness than it already had through this ceremony. The life of the flesh is in the blood. Jesus gave His life---the purest life that has ever existed or ever can exist for all eternity. He collected the symbolic evidence of this life, the blood, and sprinkled it on "the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry" (9:21) and "the book, and all the people" (9:19). This was in the heavenly realms, on the real, original items, not on the earthly shadows made after their pattern.

Aaron's priestly sprinkling of blood on the tabernacle gained its significance from Christ's divine action, not the other way around. God didn't tell the Israelites to institute the sacrificial system and then see it wasn't working and then say to himself, "Oh great, now I have to go down there and shed my own blood, since I've already said it has to be by blood, and I can't lie." The sprinkling of animal blood wasn't an innately holy thing that God copied later in His own more drastic measure. No! The sprinkling of the earthly tabernacle was the copy, and the Holy blood of the Son of God was the original. Aaron sprinkled blood over "the patterns of the things in the heavens." Animal blood sprinkled over a tent made of animal skins could be holy, and not random or meaningless, because it foreshadowed an event of staggering holiness that the Son of God Himself was going to perform. 

Imagine the collective gasp of all the angelic host when Jesus appeared to do this work. Imagine the pang to the Father's heart at the bleeding wounds of the Son. On earth we see him die on a cross and get buried in a tomb, but the author of Hebrews pulls aside the curtain for a peek into what was going on in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Heaven. He is the sacrificial lamb slain on the altar, His is the blood spilled, and He is the high priest who intercedes our case on the basis of this sacrifice and this blood. 

What a multi-faceted and complex and beautiful part of the gospel! 

So when He sprinkles His blood on YOU, what do you think happens? 

Jesus's blood is so much more holy than the very temple of heaven that the sprinkling of it "purified" that temple. This holy, pure, spotless Savior sprinkles His blood on a sinner, and every drop lands with searing testimony: "I was spilled out of the veins of the Holy One of God!" God sees the blood. The blood represents Jesus's very life, His righteous, holy, pure life. God sees Jesus when He looks at the sinner. The sinner is covered by the spotless righteousness of Christ. The blood has purified you. 

1,000 Words vs. A Picture

Why I came to be grateful my camera fell in the sand

Writing

I grew up writing. I wrote letters, journal entries, and reports. I have notebooks full of my old pencil- and crayon-decorated writings. I read back over them and laugh at my imagination and the things I said. My pen pals and I exchanged packs and packs of letters. Writing was more natural to me than speaking. In a face-to-face conversation, I would often find myself frozen, unable to think, but with pen to paper, the ideas flowed. I remember asking myself on more than one occasion, "Well, how would I write it?" in order to release myself from the uncomfortable position of not knowing how to say what was in my mind.

I grew up reading. Reading was as second nature to me as breathing. I learned to read at the age of 3 and cannot remember not knowing how to read. I devoured books at the expense of social interactions. I read every book in our house and was quickly exhausting the ones at the library.

I grew up storytelling. I would sit in the sandbox and create a giant mountain, decorate it with a few sticks and pine needles, and begin telling a thrilling saga of the tiny people who lived there, enjoying they way all the other children would pause pushing their dump trucks, edge closer, and listen with rapt attention.

Writing is a friend, a familiar ally, a standby. If I want words, they come. If I want to portray a scene, I can. If I want a rich description, I can write one. If I want to make a situation sound humorous, stodgy, technical, Victorian, or childlike, it's not that hard. Words and I get along.

Photography

I take really mediocre photographs. I love photography, and I've had a camera at my side almost every day since 2002, but let's face it: my photography is not world-class. I'm more of a kodak-moment type of girl, and my pictures are just everyday snapshots. After eleven years and thousands of photographs, I don't show a great deal of promise for being the next up-and-coming talented photographer.

And that's ok. I'm not aiming to be one. I'm not trying that hard. I don't really even care if I have a nice camera. The little point-n-shoot is good enough for me. I don't deserve any special accolades. And I don't need any special self-esteem boosters, either. I take the pictures that I take. I'm okay with that.

Writing + Photography

Something happened to my writing when I added a camera to my life, something so subtle that I didn't recognize it until suddenly the camera was gone.

Memories that I would want to capture, which I would have previously written down, could now be captured simply and easily with one click of a button. Snap! went the camera, and then I was off the hook to actually go through the trouble of a journal entry.

If I had written it down, it would have come with thoughts, emotions, descriptions, and interpretations. I could have highlighted attitudes and personalities, reasons why things happened, and all kinds of things invisible to the camera's lens. Writing transmits ideas, not just the way things looked. Great photographs can transmit ideas, too. But my photographs were not in that category. All I really ever captured was the way something looked.

There was something really funny going on here,
and I know we were crying with laughter,
but I no longer have a clue what it was. 

Over and over, in multiple, multiple situations, I have a photograph, but the funny memory attached to the photograph is something I have to supply, something not recorded anywhere other than in my brain, something that only I can enjoy when I look at the photo. If I had written the memory, on the other hand, then everyone would be able to enjoy it. It would still be sparkling with freshness and laughter, transporting the reader back to the moment when it happened. But unfortunately, my own memories of the specialness behind the photo often fade, leaving me only with the way things looked. The photo looks commonplace and there doesn't appear to be any reason why it was taken or what story it tells, or indeed, why one should not hit 'delete.'

This habit of taking photos created a laziness in my writing. "Oh, I don't need to describe that now. I have the photo," I would say to myself. Then, when I would write something, I would skimp on taking pains for all the parts that I had photos for, and my writing would inevitably disintegrate into a boring recitation of factual information; what we did and where we went and who we were with.

I think back to some of the letters I used to write, before I ever had a camera, and I was able to capture situations and frame them uniquely and create a tiny little masterpiece of writing around the event I was describing.

And since I haven't had a camera, that ability has begun to come back to me. It's better than the best picture I've ever taken. Now that that old laziness is no longer an option ("Oh, the photo will tell the story"), the wit and sparkle of my writing has begun to revive.

You would think that writing plus photography would be better than writing alone. And it is. Who wants to be faced with a wall of plain old text? There's no doubt that visuals capture the eye and draw the reader in. I'm not saying anything to debunk that. I'm all for appealing layout, world-class photography, and proper typography.

But I'm just now discovering that for me personally, my best writing comes when I am unable to do any photography. Considering that my photos aren't that great anyway, no one will be the poorer for their absence. Leave the photography to someone else, someone who is actually qualified, whose images actually speak, and let me write.

Now let me go find someone else's picture to illustrate this post.

___________________
*Edit*
All of that said, I do realize that the lack of current photos on this blog will cause a general outcry, and may even cause me to lose some readers. It will only appeal to those who read, i.e, who have time and interest to read, not to those who merely scan. Believe me, I've been going through camera starvation, and if I get another camera (or unclog the sand from mine), I will post pictures again. Part of the reason I have neglected this blog since the beginning of the year is that I don't have any more photos to add to my posts. But hopefully, in the meantime, to those who do read, the quality of what you read will be more worth your time.

Things you will need in Haiti

These are a few items that the newcomer might not think of. Some of them will apply to everyone, but not others, depending on what kind of place you live in. They are available for purchase in Haiti, unless noted otherwise.

Buckets. You will probably need more than one of these. A bucket is not just a bucket. It is a hand washing station, a shower, a water-drawing tool, a trash can, a storage container, a mop bucket, a measurement tool, and so much more.

A hand pump for water. Clean water comes in large blue Culligan jugs. If you don't want to lift and pour these heavy jugs for every glass of water you drink, this plastic, relatively cheap pump is a helpful solution.

Rope/String. The first thing you'll need it for is lowering your bucket into the cistern to draw water. But there will be many other random unexpected uses for it, like holding your broken crib rails up, rigging a system to mount your mosquito net when you don't have a hook in the ceiling, or tying strings to the balloons (that you brought from the US) at your child's birthday party.

A propane/gas stove. Because it works whether you have power or not.

A hand-held fan. Nicer than fanning yourself with your Bible during church.

To be continued as I think of more items. Feel free to suggest other things in the comments!

Moto ride through Port Au Prince

I'm bouncing along on the back of the moto, passing scenes that are repeatedly different, exotic, and unforgettable. We ride on the dirt roads for a little while, where last night's rain created huge puddles that we creep through and still get splashed anyway. We pass pigs feeding on piles of garbage, lots of tiny little houses made of mud or corrugated tin, and a tiny little brown puppy trying rip the last few crumbs of food out of a bit of foil packaging. We mount to the top of a hill and see all of Port-au-Prince stretching out before us, and the distant mountains towering over all.

Eventually we make it on to the paved roads, where houses are built of cinder blocks without facade and people are bringing their things to market and men are making kissy-lips at me when I pass.

I have realized that my initial impression that there were no stores in Haiti was wrong--it's just that I didn't know where to look. Suddenly it dawned on me that the store is the street. Instead of aisles, sidewalks. Instead of parking your car and walking in, you just drive down the street until you see what you want, stop the car, roll down the window, ask for what you want, hand over the money, and drive on. We bought diapers out of a wheelbarrow in this way the other day. It's like a huge drive-through. Each person has about as much for sale as one can carry on his or her head, and each person has a different kind of product.

I called the moto because all I wanted to do was get some money at an ATM. At home, this would be a 15-minute affair. Pop out to the nearest bank, card in, money out, remove card, go home. Not so in Haiti. I'm discovering that everything takes longer here. Not just a little longer, but prohibitively longer.

The nearest bank is across town, and traffic is heavy. We weave in and out of the traffic, going through roundabouts at a perpendicular angle to the direction the cars are traveling. My knees pass inches away from  moving dump truck tires and car bumpers and the ubiquitous tap-taps. My driver honks his horn at pedestrians who weave in and out, trying to cross the street or hop onto a tap-tap. I see one man running along with a slow-moving car, wiping it down with a rag in exchange for a few goudes.

Half an hour later, we arrive at the bank and I dismount. I scan the outside of the bank. No ATM. I check the other wall. No ATM there, either. So... maybe it's inside? But there's a line of about 100 people stretching out the door. What in the world? I go up to the front of the line and poke my head in to ask the security guard if there's an ATM inside and if I can go inside to use it without waiting in line. He says there is none, and says, "56."

"56?" I repeat with a blank look on my face.

"56," he repeats. "Five, six."

"Five, six," I echo, still clueless.

"56 Delmas," he says. That sounds like an address. I go hop back on the moto and repeat that to the driver. He nods and we take off.

At 56 Delmas we stop at a different bank. I get off and scope this one out. Still no ATM. I ask the guard. "52," he says. I figure that is an address just like the 56. The moto driver seems to think so, and he takes off.

At the third bank, the guard outside says the ATM is inside. Finally! I go inside, and a guard there tells me that the ATM is for Haitians only and that I must go to the counter.

I go to the counter. "5,000 gourdes, please," I say to the woman.

"No," she says. "100 dollars."

I shrug. 5,000 gourdes would be 125 dollars, but I'll settle for $100, which would be about 4,000 gourdes. I figure that this is the bank's clever racket. If I put my card into the ATM and ask for 4,000 gourdes, it will spit out gourdes at the "official" exchange rate, but if the bank runs my credit card for $100, then they can give me gourdes at their own rate, taking their own cut out of the percentage they set for exchange.

She scans my credit card and driver's license and makes a printout, causing me to be very nervous with the possibility of identity theft. This is a bank, presumably a professional institution, but this is also Haiti. Why couldn't I just use the ATM? I think. That would be a lot easier; a lot safer; a lot quicker.

Then she makes me sign a paper and take it over to another counter.

I am the 5th person in line at this counter, but I count 35 people in line for the other counter, so I'm very grateful for the fact that I don't have to be in that line. Why does it have to be so difficult just to go to the bank?

I finally get up to the counter and hand my paper to the teller. He hands me back a $100 bill in US money. I look at it. "What?" I say. "No, I wanted gourdes."

"Well this paper says you wanted $100," he says.

"I asked the lady over there for gourdes, and she made me change it to dollars," I said. I really couldn't use a $100 bill. How would I ever break it? Fortunately, I had seen a woman two people ahead of me in line with a $100 bill in her hand, and I had seen them give her Haitian currency for it.

I handed the bill back to the teller. "Can you just change this for gourdes?" I asked.

He looked at it as if he was making a huge concession for me, being a hero and getting me out of my difficulty. He filled out another paper, made me sign it, and counted out the money. I got back 4120 gourdes, which, according to today's rate at xe.com, should have been 4215 gourdes. So they did get their cut after all, about 100 gourdes, or $2.50, which would be 2.5% of my $100.

I ask the teller, "Am I really not allowed to use the ATM?"

"No, you have to come to this counter," he says.

"Hmmm," I reply, silently vowing to find another ATM somewhere. If they have one in Saint Marc, they must have one here somewhere. This is Port-au-Prince, after all.

Finally, I leave the bank and hop back on the moto. We start back towards where we came from. Despite the fact that this is the middle of January, the sun is blazing hot (today's high was 86), and I can feel my face and my arms starting to burn. Dust flying in the air has already caked my hair with a grimy layer.

We drive by people digging ditches, a funeral procession that has traffic backed up for miles in the other direction, and some children who wave when they see a white woman on the back of a motorcycle. I wave back.

The moto driver stops at the gas station and puts 100 gourdes worth in the tank. That gives him half a gallon, making gas approximately $5.00 a gallon. Not nearly as bad as the UK!

By the time we get to our starting point, two and a half hours have passed. I am exhausted and thirsty from my trek, even though the moto has done all the work. I am toasted pink all over on every bit of exposed skin from the sun.

But there is a little smile playing on my lips and a little excitement leaping up in my heart at the fact that this is where I am and these are the kinds of things I get to do and see and experience.

First day back to work

Today I got to go to the creche. The instant I walked in the door, I was flooded with hugs, as all the children ran to gather around me and smothered me in a huge group hug. One or two of them hung back a bit, perhaps shy, or perhaps wondering if they would be accepted, and I pursued them and didn't let them get away with a big hug. Then it was just like old times. I felt like I had never left.

School went smoothly and we had a great time playing "Race to 100" with the base 10 set that was so generously donated to me right before I left. (Thanks, Becky!!) That was new to them and I think they enjoyed getting to work with a new kind of manipulative.

Right before lunchtime, we had a prayer meeting at the creche. They have begun meeting daily to pray corporately for about half an hour. All the school children and I joined in, and it was the hugest blessing to participate in that. Oh, how they prayed! They prayed for the children and for the creche in many fervent petitions that were beyond my comprehension level of Creole. All the children and adults were praying in unison, lifting up their hearts to God in faith and confidence, addressing Him as if He really were present, and praying as if they were truly communicating with God.

I prayed in English right along with them, particularly asking God for the creche on the basis of the phrase from the Lord's prayer, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." In Ephesians 1:11 it says that God works all things after the counsel of His own will. In heaven, there is no crying, pain, sickness, discord, or suffering. So I asked for a little piece of heaven on earth, that the will of God would be done on earth the way it is already done in heaven. I asked in faith, based on the fact that Jesus has literally commanded us to pray this way. Audacious prayer--but is it possible that "we have not because we ask not?"

After some time of fervent prayer, we broke into song, and how they sang! They sang at the tops of their voices, belting out the hymns of praise to God. Then we had more prayer. We sang again. We prayed again. We sang another hymn. And then one member of the group closed in prayer. Ah! What a blessing and privilege it is that our Haitian staff can lead a prayer meeting that is full of the Spirit of God and power.

Taming the chaos

Unfortunately, I do not have a camera. It fell face-down in the sand, and now when you turn it on, the lens cannot come out. Hopefully I can use a sharp needle or something and pick all the grains of sand out to get it working again, but in the meantime, you'll just have to put up with my word pictures for this one.

Imagine that you arrive in Haiti. You walk into your new room. The room is half the size of your other room. 5 girls and 4-6 kids used to live in that other room, but ever since you started living there alone, you kind of inexplicably spread out.

Now all that stuff is in half the space, and you have two additional 50-lb. suitcases to unload into the mix.

You start by getting a good night's sleep. At 7:00 the next morning, you remove everything from the closets. You have four suitcases in there. One is your clothes that you left in Haiti, and one is school supplies...but what are those other two???

Ohhhhh! One is all your books, and one is full of random odds and ends, like hangers, a dust ruffle for a baby bed, and a pack-n-play. You used to have a shelf in the other room, but now you don't, leaving quite a dilemma for what to do with the books.

Suitcases start to line all the edges of the room. Then you start unloading all the shelves.

What is all this stuff???

There are bottles of sunscreen, bug spray, lotion, extra shampoo, and an assortment of medications. You line up the bottles 3 deep along the wall in the hallway.

Then you get a rag and a basin with hot water and lavender castile soap and you start to wash the shelves off. The top two shelves are so dusty, you wonder if anyone has ever done this before. You wipe the tops and the bottoms of the shelves, as well as the side walls and the back. The water gets so dirty so fast you have to change it about every two shelves. You also wash the floor, walls, and ceiling of the closet.

As you do this, you notice loads of mosquitoes floating around in the air at the back of the shelves and closet. You get at least a dozen mosquito bites. You try not to think about malaria. You think thoughts of making this shelving area as inhospitable to bugs as possible, and you pour in a little extra lavender castile soap the next time you change the water.

The rag you are wiping everything down with goes from a perfectly-normal looking rag to having so many holes in it that it's basically just the palm of your hand wiping things down anymore. How did it waste away so significantly? you wonder. Did little bits of it just rub off along the way, or did the holes just open up between parts of the material, leaving about the same amount of rag as you had before?

Finally, with a sigh of satisfaction, you gaze over the nice, clean shelves and closet space, and you begin to tackle the unpacking. Soon, both beds are covered with a pile of stuff, and very little floor space remains for walking between the different points of the room.

Hours pass. 12:00. 2:00. The piles are so daunting. Sorting out the clothes and putting them away was the easy part, but now, what to do with all the rest of this stuff? The clothes barely made a dent. How in the world did I acquire this much stuff? I guess I inherited most of it when the girls left.

5:00. 6:00. The pile is almost gone now. Just a few more things on the bed, and I can finally be done.

Yes, it took me an entire day to unpack. How wrong is that? I need skills for making clutter like that disappear. I got through it, but every minute, it felt like I was racking my brain, trying to think, think, think, "What do I do now? What can I possibly do with this thing? Where can that go? How do I find or make a place for this? Where do I put this miscellaneous item?" The thing that took me the longest was getting stuck and simply being unable to think. I would look over the pile of chaos and be completely clueless of what I could do next. Why is that? Eventually one step would dawn on me, and I would do that thing. Put these shoes in this little cubby. Ok, got that. Put that bin under there. Use this shelf for the books. Little by little, I got it all accomplished.

So does anyone else experience this paralysis when it comes to organizing?

And for those of you who organize effortlessly, how do you do it? And more specifically, how does your brain work while you're doing it? How does it know how to direct your actions so that you can rapidly and efficiently sort everything out without confusion-based delays?

Any advice?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

*Edit: Just to clarify the confusion about the shelves (see Katherine's comment), here are two pictures from my old room that show what I was talking about.

This little wall dividing the room into two halves is the shelf that I no longer have 

These shelves are the ones I was washing, and where I eventually found a spot for my books

I'm back!

Back to blogging, and back to....

I hope to post some back-dated articles about my trip home, so you might want to check for them later (scroll down on the home page of my blog, past this article, and they should show up between "Year in Review," which was my last post of 2012, and this post).

Ah, yes! So I'm in Haiti again.

All day yesterday, the eve of my departure, it didn't seem real that I was going--or at least, it didn't seem like I was going somewhere drastic and far away. I felt so nonchalant and unconcerned about it. Even when I got up at 5:00 this morning to leave for the airport, it didn't quite hit me. Not until I was dragging suitcases through the Charlotte airport did I have a bit of nervous stomach-jitters. Ah! I'm going back to HAITI! I thought. What will this trip hold for me? But even that was as fleeting as thought.

It didn't fully hit me until I emerged from the front door of the airport in Port-Au-Prince and saw the smiling faces of the welcoming party who had come to greet me. And then it hit me: A wave of happiness, huge, ecstatic happiness to be here. When I smelled the distinctive smell of the air and saw the sights that just a few months ago seemed so foreign and strange, I knew I was glad to be here. I was glad, exultantly, jubilantly glad. I smiled all the way home on the tap-tap. I had a private little worship session by myself on that two-hour drive, and with a full heart, I just praised the Lord for letting me come back here. I felt like my face was glowing with an irrepressible smile, and it was all I could do to keep from bursting out in loud songs of praise.

I was sitting in the back of the tap-tap, talking to Jesus, and I had a bunch of very clear and vivid thoughts on many topics, but one of them in particular struck me in a way that demanded obedience and a change of heart.

You see, I have talked bad about Haiti. I've said good things, too, but often I have let myself exclaim in a shocked tone of voice over different negative aspects of Haiti, using words like "incompetence," "massive illness down there," "corruption," and "inefficiency."

What struck me was--that's not just Haiti. That's planet Earth.

Sin has polluted the human race, not just Haiti. Now, Haiti perhaps has some very obvious deficiencies in a number of key categories, but the other countries, the ones that look more "put together," also have glaring deficiencies that are surely just as egregious to God, only they happen to be in different categories, ones that we consider to be more "sanitary," and therefore, we more easily overlook them.

Then it struck me, hard: "What if Jesus talked about earth the way I have talked about Haiti?"

Can you imagine Jesus talking like this? Picture Him (if you can) getting together with a few the angels after he ascends up to heaven, and standing around with them in little knots, talking in low voices and saying, "You would not believe what a horrible place Earth is. You may have heard about it, but there's no way to understand it or imagine it until you've been there. Ugh! The corruption, the dishonesty, the back stabbing, the unbelievable incompetence at every level...it's just shocking. It's really shocking. People are ignorant. They don't know anything. And then the massive illness down there! It seemed like everybody was sick. The amount of time I had to spend just healing people was ridiculous."

I can't imagine Him talking like that. By extension, I ought not to talk like that. It's not Christlike.

So I want to apologize to as many as possible of the people who heard me talking in a negative way. I want Jesus to be the one in the future who informs the way I speak. I want to love as He loved.

How did Jesus act towards "this present evil world"? How did He approach this habitation of sin, treachery, murder, pain, and suffering?

He LOVED.

He loved the world, and he loved the people as individuals.

And so I make it my prayer: LORD, let me LOVE. Let me love as you love, with pure, strong, unquenchable, unconditional love. Let me love you, and love Haiti in general, and love Haitians an individuals.