spent in Haiti….can you guess what’s going on?
That’s right. We blew
a tire and are changing it on the side of the road…not surprising though since
we had 18 people in the van and the tires were pretty bald and worn out to
begin with. I changed quite a few tires
during my stint in Haiti and it made me feel right at home on the side of a
dusty road, in the sweltering heat, jacking up a vehicle and swapping out a
tire.
I know I’ve been gone for two weeks now, but I feel like I’m
still getting my feet wet. We’ve been
trying to figure out what our ministry is going to look like for the month and
haven’t come to any definite conclusions yet. Paul (our contact here) is occupied with coordinating the delivery and
installation of radio equipment on top of one of the mountains nearby. There has been a lot of time and energy put
into this challenge and once it is completed the radio station should be set
for years to come…but getting it completed has proved to be quite the
challenge. So, we haven’t had as much
attention as we may have been thinking we would get.
chance to visit a local orphanage and do a little clean-up and play with the
kids. The place needs a lot of work and
we seemed to really connect with the kids there, so we are hopeful we can go
back early next week sometime.
chance to go “downtown,” whatever that means here, and talk and pray with some
of the prostitutes there. We wrote out
Bible verses on cards that we attached to flowers we purchased from the
market. The World Race girls took charge
of this one since it isn’t appropriate for men to be the ones initiating conversations. For safety reasons, we walked with our girls
and offered moral support and prayed for them. As we left to go downtown we could see the anxiety and uncertainty in
most of the girls and weren’t sure how the night would play out. Once we got there we spent over an hour just
walking the streets praying for everything that was going to be going on that
night. It can be hard to concentrate
with all the noise and things that are going on around you, but as we walked I
just kept getting a sense that the women we were going to be reaching out to
were created by God just as we were created. They aren’t that different from everyone else, and I know God didn’t
create them to be living the kind of lifestyle they are in. I’m not sure what I was expecting that
night…to see people set free, to see tears, to be utterly broken. Expectations can be dangerous things when we
put them on God. I’m trying to learn not
to do that. What I did see that night
was people being loved. I saw God
through the actions, through the willingness, and through the compassion of our
girls. I saw God through the brokenness,
through the tears, through the longing for love from the women we met on the
street. As the night went on I saw the
girls in our group get more confidence and become bolder in approaching
people. The fear seemed to dissipate and
what took its place was an assurance that God was going to speak through them
even if they couldn’t speak the same language as the people in Guatemala. It was a cool feeling seeing my sisters in
Christ take hold of this night and not look back.
