The past two days we have been visiting Global Orphan villages working on Child Profiles. Our task is to match the information we have on the children with what is in their file and what is current. This requires working with the social worker for each village and having a translator to read the files for me and help me answer the questions I need to complete the profile. Each child has their own profile which answers where they are from, who their family is, their reason for admission, their birth date, date of arrival, etc. It didn’t take long for me to go into task-mode and I was soon cranking out the profiles alongside my coworker/translator Odines. This task was more time consuming than we anticipated as each file looked different. Some files provided straightforward answers to the exact questions we had. Other profiles were more like short stories written on the child and would require us to take time and read everything so we had a full understanding of the provided information. Some stories were similar to each other in the reason why the child had come into the care of the church. Other stories were not as similar and caused us to pause before moving on. As easy as it was to get caught up in the task, we were reminded that these are the stories of children, living and breathing children who were running and playing right behind us. Some stories were quite unfortunate and reminded you that this world is broken in its inability to provide even for a child. Some stories were more difficult to swallow as we read the heartbreaking facts of a child’s life before they came into church care.

As we were going through these stories I began to struggle with the fact that, though I often interacted with these children, I hardly knew them at all. It was only because of my work that I had gained what little information I knew about them. The difficult aspect was that some of these kids seem to come from shadows; no one knew a lot about them and they didn’t seem able to answer a lot of questions for themselves. My heart ached with the realization that these children are so unknown. Teams come down and love on the children well, but only have a short span of time to spend with them. I come over with the teams and get caught up playing and don’t think to stop and get to really know a child. I felt as though all their faces had been hidden. I didn’t like the fact that there was so little known about the children and that information was not always easy to access with them. I didn’t like the idea that one of these kids could be easily forgotten.

As I’m working through all of this in a mess of mental chaos I began to hear that familiar Voice that, upon its entrance into my thoughts, brought immediate calm. God reminded me that He knows each of us and He knows us intimately. 2 Timothy 2:19 reminds us that “The Lord knows those who are his”. Again the Lord said, “He knows those who take refuge in Him” (Nahum 1:7). And again, Job says, “He knows the way that I take” (Job 23:10). And the Psalms are filled with expression after expression of God’s goodness in knowing us and pursuing us. Our God is not a god to sit idly back and watch His children walk in lonely isolation, unknown to Him. Our God is not an indifferent god who is passive about His relationships. What a pathetic god we would serve if those were descriptions of Him. No, we serve an All-Mighty God. The King of Kings, who could choose to remain in His heavenly Kingdom, chooses instead to enter our lives and pursue us wholly. He is proactive. Seeing our immense need for Him He willingly substituted His Son in our place – all for the purpose of pursuing and redeeming us! This is the God we serve! Think on this friend, if you truly are a child of God, you have an eternal Father, Brother and Friend. The Word confirms us as heirs WITH Christ (Romans 8:17). We are new creations, made to shed the ways of our old, and embrace the newness we’ve been given in the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our identity no longer has to be what has previously defined us (father, mother, employee, addict, athlete, stubborn, widow, widower, orphan, performer, whatever title has sunk its claws into our skin). We are free, the bondage has been broken, we are children of God and He says He will not leave us as orphans (2 Corinthians 3:17; John 14:18). Friend, if we could truly know God, that He knows us, and understand how that alters our identity, I assure you we would live as changed people.

My encouragement to you today is to rest in the knowledge that you are fully known and you are fully loved. As Timothy Keller puts it, this is “what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us” (“The Meaning of Marriage”). As you go about your day immerse yourself in this knowledge, in this radical love. Our God intimately knows those children. He knows and cares about the big details and the small details of their lives. Not a hair on their head is unaccounted for. This is true for you, too. You are known, you are loved, you are not forgotten, you are important, and you are wholly pursued. All because of our Heavenly Father, the Holy of Holies. I pray you grow in knowing Him more and in understanding your identity as a child of God and a brother with Christ.

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as children, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8:12-17). Amen.

Friends and family,

Round two has arrived. Due to busy schedules and technological difficulties it has taken some time to post this. We both have a section again. Courtney will go first again. Enjoy.

Today, I live in Haiti. I say these words not to repeat old news to you, but to remind myself that “we’re not in Kansas anymore”. This morning we dropped a team off at the airport. They are now in the air and making their way back to the States. It isn’t until the bus ride back to Jumecourt Inn that I’m finally able to have a true moment alone and retreat into my thoughts. I’m currently reading “Ruined for the Average: Finding God’s Riches in Haiti”. To read a book about the plight of orphans or the brokenness of a country from the comfort of your own home could perhaps allow an emotional response, maybe even create a desire to become engaged and “do something”. But to read a book about the realities my eyes encounter daily is a completely different experience.

And something has changed.

We drive through downtown Port-au-Prince and I forget to notice the trash encompassing life in Haiti. We pass mountainsides and I miss the over-populated, crumbling houses. I see passing faces and am blind to a deformity or missing limb. This is Haiti. From the world’s eye this is ash. This place is described with words such as dirty, poor, God-forsaken, messy, and dangerous. But really, isn’t this description synonymous with our condition before Christ chose to enter into our reality, our depravity? Without Christ we are messy, poor and dirty. We can’t possibly lift ourselves from our own wantonness. In the same way the Haitian people walk around in the trash-cluttered streets, we walk around in our trash-cluttered lives covering our garbage with comforts, materials, and distractions, pretending to be ok, to be good enough, to not need anyone, especially a Savior. Oh, but if only you could hear these people when they sing and audibly pray the words “Merci Seigneur” (thank you Savior). I need to correct that previous sentence…they don’t just sing or pray, they cry out! They shout their thanks and their need. In the midst of physical filth they lift their hands and are eternally cleansed, anticipating the day they’ll live in their home eternal in the heavens (2 Corinthians 5:1). I place my face in my hands and tears meet them. I am envious of the love these people have for their Savior, their King. Their inability to change their circumstances make them all the more hopeful of the day they meet this King who traded their place on the cross and loves and knows each of them dearly and intimately.

We are missing it.

Do you know that the same Christ that these people cry out to is the same Christ that we can experience? Do you know that, despite some church or cultural traditions, you can raise your hands toward Him, you can shout praise to Him, you cry out in anguish to Him, you can sing “halleluiah” to Him, you can share your excitement with Him, you can vent your frustrations to Him, you can give it ALL to Him? Why, oh why, do we hold back? Why have we adopted this “too cool for school” mentality? Instead of filling our lush sanctuaries with awe and praise, we come before the Holy of Holies with our hands in our pockets, eyes glazed with a lack of zeal, and believe He accepts this “gift” of worship. Friends, who are we to claim the name of Christ on Sunday yet claim the names of Me, Myself, and I the other six days?

We need a change.

And no, not an Obama-care kind of change. In fact, change is too timid a word. What we need is a collision. We need to collide with the Creator of the Universe and walk away radically altered – for His holiness and His purposes. We need to be stripped of our entitlements and recognize that, before God, we hold nothing in our hands. Now, I am not claiming that we are nothing and of no value. On the contrary, we know from Genesis that God created us in His image and values us enough to trade His Son for us. What I am claiming is that we can bring nothing to God that He hasn’t already created or given to us in the first place. So why not come before Him, empty hands uplifted, and offer Him our lives? As Jim Elliot said, “he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” (1949). But what does a collision with the Savior look like? If you will, allow me to share my collision experience…

About 5 months ago, I was given the opportunity to come to Haiti for the first time. Assuming what most Americans assume when they come, I thought I would be helping and blessing people, working in the name of Jesus, etc. And yes I was doing all those things, but not in the way I imagined. But the paradox occurred when these things (blessings) I was “doing” for others was reciprocated to me 10 fold. Our second day we drove 3 hours up into the mountains to a village called Hinche. This village is not visited as often as the other Global Orphan villages due to its location. When our group pulled in the children surrounded our bus, shouting and jumping with excitement that we had come to play with them and love them. Still unsure of my role, but excited to be there, I stepped off the bus and began to wander around the chaotic jubilation. I stopped when I saw a small girl, braids covering her head, looking up at me timidly. I could see she was slightly overwhelmed by the large group we had brought. I bent down to her level and smiled at her. She returned that with an even bigger smile and a laugh, and then reached up for me to hold her. We were bound together for the rest of the day, playing, laughing, and eventually, her falling asleep in my arms.

Stop.

In the 20 seconds it took for that first interaction to take place, this little girl showed me what my posture toward Christ should look like. With arms reaching high, hands fully open, awaiting my bigger arms to wrap around her, God used this little messenger to tell me, “this is what I want from you, child”. That’s it. God wants me. God wants you. God desires you. And God desires that you would long for Him in the same way that little girl yearned for my love and affection. On the other side of that, God also revealed that He delights in Me, in my time, in my affection, in my adoration, in my attention, in the same way that little girl does. Our heavenly Father JOYS in us when we JOY in Him. The Creator of All doesn’t need us for Him to be glorified, but He DELIGHTS to have us delight in Him and He DESIRES His children to desire Him.

Having the love of Christ taught to you in 20 seconds by a tiny Haitian orphan who can’t speak English – that, my friends, is a cataclysmic collision.

We need a collision. We need to collide with the unfathomable Creator, Father, and Savior, and walk away radically altered, shouting “Merci Seignuer! Thank you Savior!” My prayer for you as you are reading this is that you would experience collision. I pray God provides that opportunity for you; whether that occurs in Haiti, in another country, in your church or your community group, at your kitchen table, over your cup of coffee, standing in the grocery line, in a conversation with a friend, watching your child play and need you, or however He chooses to do it. May God collide so fiercely with you that you can’t stand anymore the idea of being average, of being complacent, of claiming Christianity for the sake of wearing the badge. I pray you meet God and that His reality explodes to life for you, that you fall in love with Him and fall in love with pursuing Him, as He will pursue you. Friend, and fellow Child of God, I implore you to stop settling. You are called to a greater life. Everything you’ve longed for cannot satisfy your thirst, but Christ can. And all you have to do to start shedding the lies of the Enemy you’ve believed for so long is this…cry out to Jesus and say “Thank you Savior”. Amen.

Brians blog

The other week we had a church from Wichita, Kansas, come stay at Jumecourt as a reservation (when they use Jumecourt just as a hotel, they pay per night/meal). This group was in Haiti to work with a village they sponsor called Balan, it is just 30-40 minutes down the road from us close to the Dominican border. On one of our days off this group invited us to join them.

The issue. There were about two hundred people that came to the village and a lot of them were malnourished. Every couple of minutes a child would come up to you and rub their belly and ask “manje” which means “food” in Creole. The dilemma is that I do indeed have food but all my experience has taught me that feeding children in large groups causes problems, BIG problems. I think back to a story a team member told me from her first trip to Haiti (a year ago). She was over at Source de la Grace (one of Global Orphan’s villages), which was connected to Jumecourt before a wall was built to divided the two compounds. There is a small window in a shipping container turned store (a part of the clinic that is on the other side of the wall) that had chips for sale. This well-intentioned woman wanted to bless the children by giving them all a small bag of Doritos and, if it only cost $10 to feed all 80 of them, why would you not? Well, needless to say, she got a lot more than she bargained for and in her own words “It was the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life”. The people in the store could not hand her the bags of chips through the tiny hole fast enough and thus the term feeding frenzy was exhibited. The kids started fighting over the chips and the well-intentioned blessing became a curse. The security guards had to come and pull the kids off each other. Lesson learned. This is a perfect example of when helping hurts, which is also the title of a book that is full of story’s with equally tragic consequences of well-intentioned givers. That is, in a lot of ways, the reality of Haiti and how it has gotten to where it is now. Haiti sustained 3 hurricanes and then a 7.0 earthquake. Hundreds of thousands died, those who weren’t crushed in the rubble began to starve. There was and still is great need. The watching world rushed in to help and came bringing gifts of free rice, free clothes and chicken for pennies on the dollar. Initially this was a great help to feed the starving that lost their homes and livelihoods. But a long-term consequence emerged as the donations continued after the immediate need. I’m not a business major but it doesn’t take a genius to know that you can’t compete with free. And all the people who supported their families by growing rice, by making or selling clothes, or by raising and selling chicken suddenly found themselves completely out of business. Whoops. This is all a very simplified version of a complex problem in Haiti, but I use it to give an example, or more of an admonishment of the dangers that our good intentions can have.

Ok now back to my first story, dozens of malnourished kids are coming up to me asking for food. What is my responsibility as a human, or more importantly a Christian? Mathew 25 issues a biblical mandate to feed the hungry and give water to the thirsty. It scares me that Jesus says, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat” (Math 25: 41-42). And James would also condemn the inactive, “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (James 2:15-17). But how can these two realities coexist? What are we to do? Are we damned if we don’t and damned if we do? Should I look into the eyes of the starving and say “Sorry kid, I read in a book that I shouldn’t give you food because it will teach you that you don’t have to provide for yourself? Or “Sorry kid I had a bad experience once, not doing that again”. I truly ask myself and wonder what would Jesus do in that situation? He can feed thousands with a loaf of bread and a fish. But for some reason I can’t multiply my Nature Valley bar to feed 5. So what do I do? I can feed one or two my meager snacks and they will be hungry again in a couple of hours. Or I can watch their confused faces as they watch me eat the snacks that I said I didn’t have.

I tell this story only to help capture the helplessness I felt on that day. I don’t think that my salvation was in question in those moments. But it really challenged me having this very pressing need and not knowing what to do about it.  

God has been challenging me a lot during my time in Haiti. I want to share two stories.

We are driving in the mountains on the way to visit a village in Hinche, which is about 3 hours away from Jumecourt. As we drive I begin to watch the people and I notice people spending a lot of time doing things that we can do instantly in America. For instance, getting water. This is a 30 second chore in America. I bet if you’re in your house right now you could get up and have access to clean drinking water within 30 seconds from one of the maybe 10-30 sources of clean drinking water available to you within your house. Then I think of the people who live on the mountain tops an hour away from Jumecourt. Odines, one of our translators, told me that they have no sources of running water on the mountain so someone has to hike 2.5 hours down the mountain then 2.5 hours back up everyday just to get water. When we arrive at Hinche I see one of the mommas doing laundry and she works and doesn’t even finish her load in the 3 hours we are there. Then we get back on the bus and I see people walking their livestock to the market, which is probably a few hours away. I think about how much free time we have in America. How much we are able to accomplish in a day. I mean we could throw a load of clothes in the laundry, fill up a water bottle and then take our cows to market in half the time it took someone in Haiti to do one of those tasks. And then with the rest of our day we could listen to a sermon, volunteer for a charity, tell that homeless guy about Jesus and still have time to watch like 5 episodes of Lost. But does it matter? It was hitting me that so many people in the world spend the majority of their lives doing the things that need to be done so they can survive just to do them again tomorrow. Find food, find water, find shelter. And is my life any more valuable than theirs? Is God so pleased by MY striving, by MY accomplishments, by MY résumé? Am I any more valuable to the Kingdom than the man that spends half his day just procuring clean drinking water? Am I any closer to God, made any more in His image? I swallow hard… Forgive me Lord for thinking otherwise.

The next day we lead our team to the nearby village that is run by pastor Calix. I have been conducting a little experiment with the group that we are leading this week seeing the difference in how well behaved the kids are based on whether or not we bring toys. My hypothesis is that generally the kids will be better behaved if we get off the bus, bringing nothing and just spend the entire time building relationships and playing, hugging, tickling, chasing and carrying them. Conversely, that if we get off the bus and begin to just hand out toys, not only will certain chaos ensue, but our team will not be able to build good relationships with the kids because they will be more interested in the toys than in the team. And thus far my hypothesis was being proven correct. (This is not to say that that toys are in anyway forbidden, but just more of a strong de-emphasis on giving vs. being with the kids). Anyway back to Calix. I am sitting outside of the village with my back leaned up again the massive sliding metal door, by butt sitting on hard pavement with Wendy (pronounced “Wenday”) sitting on my lap coloring. As one of the other children flip through the color book pages she discovers a hidden page of stickers. At that same moment one the team members standing above her also witnesses her discovery and quickly reaches down and takes the book from her hand and pulls the stickers out of the book (before coming to the village we ask that no one give out anything to the kids because it will pretty much always lead to fights). The girl becomes quite upset and starts to speak in Creole and conveys to all the other kids in the area that there are stickers. Instead of sitting quietly on laps coloring, all 5 of the kids sitting outside only care about getting stickers. The one girl who initially discovered the stickers spends the next 40 minutes just standing by the front of the bus asking every team member that passed by for the stickers (in Creole) to no avail. The girl eventually figured out that I was telling every passing team member to not let the kids on the bus or to let them have anything off of the bus and she directed her frustration at me in the form of a good old fashioned Creole tongue lashing that was punctuated by a surprisingly painful hair pull. Even Wendy (who I had hung out with the last 3 times I have been to Calix) was upset and wouldn’t play with me anymore. So I just sat there by myself thinking “Well that’s the last time we bring coloring books to Calix”. I was upset and even a little embarrassed. I’m supposed to be leading this group and now I have a small child rebellion on my hands. And then I also remembered that the trip leader’s church sponsored this village and I thought “man it’s embarrassing how these kids are acting right now, they have come so far and worked so hard to just hang out with them and just because they didn’t get one thing they wanted they throw a fit and don’t want to hang out at all”. As I sat there brooding in my frustration I felt the Lord whisper to me “Really? You have never acted this way? How many times have you asked for something that I didn’t give you and you acted this same way?”

We are finally here!! Both me and Courtney wrote a section for this blog. Courtney’s is more interesting so i will put her’s first. Mine just talks a little more about what we are doing here.

Courtney’s blog…

Winner and Losers

Today is the 2 week mark for us living in Haiti. It has been 14 days of adjustment with many days of adjusting ahead of us. There have been good days, there have been hard days, and there have been days that have held a mixture of both. Today was physically difficult for me due to some “stomach adjustments”, but nothing too rough. I’m not sure at this point that I’m able to fully articulate what this process and experience has been so far so I’ll write what I can and pray it conveys logic and understanding, but most of all, Christ’s transformative work through our human frailty.

I’ve titled this short blog “winners and losers” because of a Twitter hashtag I’ve recently learned about. Let me preface this by saying, despite being 24 years young, I do not use Twitter, nor would I know how to use it if I had Twitter. With that said, I’m going to write as though all who read this are as Twitter illiterate as I am so to avoid any confusion, and hopefully without offending anyone’s intelligence. Twitter users often use hashtags to further express whatever it is they are Tweeting about. A hashtag is marked by the (#) symbol. For example, if I wanted to Tweet about a sunset I may say “what a beautiful sunset” #beauty. Once you hashtag something that hashtag becomes a link that can be clicked on and others can see how you and other people may have used this hashtag. Get the idea? I’m sure you do, my apologies for being so elementary in my explanation. Anyway, a few days ago a previous GO Fellow, who still lives in Haiti, came to Jumecourt because she was going to give a team we were hosting a tour of the organization she now works for. A group of us were sitting around talking and she was allowing people to ask her questions about life in Haiti, Haitian culture, etc. Amidst the conversation she told us about the Twitter hashtag called #haitiwins. It’s become a joke in the Twitter world and a way for people to share funny (or not-so-funny) stories of how Haiti “beat” them that day. This previous GO Fellow joked that everyday Haiti wins in some way. This is a catchy phrase and the trip team members loved the idea of using it, especially to express funny or hard situations. For example, this particular team was riding in their open taxi truck, which is called a tap-tap, when someone from off the street walked up to their truck and stole a young girl’s iPhone directly out of her hands – tough situation that you can’t really do anything about. Haiti wins. I started thinking about this phrase and Brian and I even found ourselves jokingly using it (the internet is out, we can’t correspond with incoming teams, Haiti wins, etc., etc.). Now allow me to backtrack for a moment.

We had our first team that we led come in this weekend. They were a youth group from Florida so they were a lot of fun and brought great energy. It’s amazing the energy that teams bring and how it completely changes the mood of our compound. The teams generally arrive on Thursday and depart sometime on Monday, so it’s 5 days of going hard. Friday went really well. I loved getting to explain so many things and answer all the team’s questions. I particularly loved getting to play at Laogone with a group of 4 girls who never left my side. We were all exhausted but we returned to the hotel with full hearts. Saturday we got to visit the village that this particular church sponsors and that went well, too. Sunday we took the team back to attend church with the village they sponsor. Pastor Kesnel, who is a wonderful man with a heart for kids and an incredible story, pastors the church. His church shares a compound with the orphanage he oversees so the children who live there are free to roam wherever they please during the service. I was excited for this service because we actually had a translator and could be engaged with the service, which isn’t always the case. As I’m listening to Pastor Kesnel I notice kids appearing around me. One sat with a team member behind me. Then another one came in and sat with another team member behind me. Then one came and sat between Brian and me. Before I knew it, a little boy came and crawled into my lap. I’m usually excited to have the kids approach me, but this day they were being particularly disruptive and kept fighting over trying to steal our pens (this is after a kid had already stolen our pack of gum I had sat on top of my Bible). The little boy in my lap was even more so disruptive for me because he was still being potty trained, which means that he doesn’t wear any pants or underwear so as not to soil what few clothes he has. This pantsless wiggleworm picked already annoyed me out of the crowd and turned monkey as he endeavored to climb on me anyway he could. After numerous attempts to have him sit on the wooden bench beside me I finally gave up after realizing that his determination to be held and loved by me was greater than my determination to cease my discomfort. Even more annoyed and now no longer able to focus on anything besides not having him urinate on me, I began to pray. Want to know what I prayed? Did I pray for this sweet boy’s salvation or that he would fall in love with Christ? Nope. Did I pray that he would find family in the other children he lived with and within the church in his village? Nope. Surely I prayed for God to bless him and allow him to grow beyond the age of 5 (more than 10% of Haitian children die before age 5). Nope. Instead, I prayed for myself. I was hot, annoyed, hungry, uncomfortable, and ready for the 3-hour service to be over. I recognized how uncomfortable I was and had to ask for forgiveness. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be in air conditioning and eating a delicious home-cooked meal after the service. Sunday, I was tired and just not “feeling it”.

After the service when we returned to the hotel I went and hid in my room. I was done. Cooked. And this was just week 2. In my quiet and alone moments I got real honest with God and told Him what was really bothering me. I missed comfort. I missed being able to eat 3 meals a day. I missed cereal (yes, cereal). I missed my family. I missed reliable electricity. I missed hot showers (ok, I REALLY miss hot showers). I missed being clean. I missed not smelling burning trash all day. And the list keeps going. Lying on my bed with my eyes burning hot from tears I was trying to fight back, I thought it…Haiti wins. “Today”, I thought, “Haiti wins.” Brian recognized that something was bothering me and came to see if I was ok (thank goodness God asked me to do this as a wife to Brian and not as a single American girl!). As I was processing all my thoughts with Brian I could hear God whisper, “Haiti doesn’t win. I win. And I’ll win everyday if you choose to let Me.”  After Brian and I prayed together we rejoined the team and the rest of the day was really enjoyable, but I didn’t forget what God had said.

The next morning we dropped the team off early at the airport and made our way back to Jumecourt. Since it was so early, the few people left on the bus slept on the way back, which gave me time to be alone with God as we drove through Port-au-Prince and Croix des Bouquets. I looked out our bus window and watched Haiti pass me by. From crippled-looking cinder block buildings to tin sheds to tents, I took in all the homes we passed and considered the people who lived in them. I considered the trip goers we had just dropped off and all the future trip goers we will encounter. Then I considered some scripture God had given me over the weekend. I’m in the process of reading through 2 Corinthians and I can’t believe how good God is to give me such an encouraging book on what genuine ministry should look like.

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart…For             what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as             your bondservants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of             darkness,” has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory             of God in the face of Jesus Christ…So we do not lost heart. Though our outer self             is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

(2 Corinthians 4:1, 5-6, 16)

“Having this ministry by the mercy of God…” Paul recognized that he was able to live out ministry only by the grace of God. He recognized the gift, though at times tiring, that is ministry. I’ve read and re-read those first few chapters of 2 Corinthians several times now. Letting God’s Word pour over me and spending time talking with God has provided more comfort than any of those other comforts I was missing so much. Granted, I still miss my family and am daily frustrated with not being able to frequently talk with them because of our internet. But what God is teaching me in these first few weeks is that, if we allow it, Haiti (aka circumstances and situations) will beat us, which producers losers. When we allow things outside of our control to disrupt our day and sideline us, we lose. Whether we’re wearing the jersey or not, we lose by riding the bench. God asks us to be in the game. He asks us to surrender all – not some, not half, not most, not even 99%  – all . All of our selves, all of our circumstances, all of our problems, all of our victories, all of our worries…everything. “And He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Cor. 5:15).

My prayer for this next season (and I earnestly ask that you would join me in this prayer) is that my life would be poured out for those coming to Haiti. While it is the beautiful orphan children who brought me here, I am learning that it is the trip goers who will be my ministry. I pray that when they see Brian and me they wouldn’t praise us for our “radical obedience and faith” (which has already happened), but that they would see our hearts and see that our hearts are after a God who radically transforms everyone who meets Him. I pray that we would continue to remember that Haiti doesn’t have to win, but that everyday we get to choose to allow God to enter into our circumstances and claim the victory for us. I pray that we would have an eternal perspective and that we would be about helping trip goers navigate the soul stripping and pride breaking that happens when you come here. I pray that each person who comes here would meet God and would encounter His transformative power. I pray that revival would begin in the local church and that trip goers would be a catalyst for this revival. Mostly, I pray that “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, [would be] transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). Amen.

Brians Section…

I realized that some of you might not really know what we do in Haiti. Courtney and I are the “Go fellow’s”. I know it’s a strange name. We live at Jumecourt Inn which is a hotel that serves as the base of operations for Global orphan project. Our primary responsibility is to lead private “vision” trips that come to Haiti (this is what we took our Shelterwood kids on). A vision trip is generally five days. The team will land sometime on Thursday and then they will leave sometime on Monday. On Friday and Saturday the team will travel by bus to visit the various villages (place where the orphans live) that Global Orphan partners with. Then on Sunday we take them to a Haitian church service in the morning and then a village in the afternoon. They don’t build anything, they just get a chance to experience Haiti in all of its beauty and all of its brokenness. The motto of Global Orphan is “Transforming lives through orphan care” and this really is the purpose of these trips. It was difficult to understand before I went on my first trip back in 2011. I remember someone explaining the trip to me and I think in my head I said “Wow that’s kind of stupid, and so we don’t DO anything? We just play with kids?”. And more or less the answers is yes. As you have already heard God used the two trips to Haiti to do incredible things in the lives of our students at Shelterwood. Anyway back to what we do. We help to lead these vision trips. We communicate with the teams before they come down, figuring out which villages they would like to visit and what other things they would like to do. Then once we get a schedule lined up we type it into a document that says where we are going on each day. Then we have a trips meeting with our Haiti field director Mike Rounbehler and Bertrand the hotel manager and Charmelle who also is responsible for making room assignments and knowing how much food to have ready etc. We work out all of the logistics for the trips, for example “Ok Friday we are going to Laogone, so we will take the 28 passenger bus, Jonny will be the driver, Odines will be the translator, and Kenson will be body guard. And we work out which Haitian staff goes where on what day and make sure we have enough room in the vehicles. We also work out a cash request form for any cash money we might need which for the vision trips in Port au Prince are pretty easy. All we use is 500 gourde(about $11.5) for airport parking and then keep emergency cash on us. Finally we call or email all of the villages and the church that we will be visiting to let them know we are coming on that day (unless the pastor does not speak English in which case we ask the translators to call). Quick side note there are three different regions that vision trips can visit. Vision trips that want to see Port Au Prince stay at Jumecourt Inn which is the hotel owned by Global orphan, and they visit any of the 5 villages in the port au prince region (Laogone, Hinch, Ebenezer, Calix, Source de la Grace). There is also a northern tour where the team will drive to Gonaives and stay in the hotel and visit villages that global sponsors in the northern region of Haiti. And then same idea in the southern region with teams basing out of Les Cayes. I have only done the port Au Prince tour.

That is all of the pre trip work that we do. Then there is work that we do while the team is here. That starts with picking the team up from the airport. Jumecourt Inn is in Croix Des Bouquetes only 15 miles east of the international airport and you take national highway 2 (Route de Malpas) pretty much the whole way. In America this would be a 10-15 min drive going highway speeds but it can take anwhere from 45 mins to 2 hours.