To begin this blog I want to first say, with enthusiasm, how incredible it is when God drastically alters one’s perspective toward others. I can confidently say that my team and I would have had a completely different outlook on the morning of May 24th.
We woke up before the sun because we needed to be out of our compound by 4am. The van was packed full of our packs and ourselves. I was asked to sit up front with the driver and translator since space was limited and I had the directions to get to our destination. Our location was in the Southern part of Haiti and we needed to get to the Northern side to meet up with the squad to then travel to the Dominican Republic.
As we began our journey I was having wonderful flashbacks to Ecuador because the Haitian mountains were lite up from the house lights just like in Quito. It was a beautiful sight to see and a wonderful time to reflect.
We were cruising down the road because there was hardly an traffic. Around 4:30am we saw a tap-tap (taxi truck) park diagonally in the middle of the street and all of the passengers hopped out. Once we got closer we saw the line of stacked tires with fire inside of them, they stretched across both sides of the road. We still don’t know if they were trying to start a protest or build a road block.
All of a sudden two men approached our van. I only saw the one who was yelling commands at the driver and pointing his gun at us. I didn’t see his face because my eyes could not and would not lift from the gun.
The driver turned off the van and we just sat there. Since the man with the gun was speaking in Creole, I didn’t understand a word he said. Afterwards the driver told us he was instructed to turn off the van and to not move. That is exactly what we did. We sat there.
It seemed like hours, but it also felt like seconds.
In a whisper, I asked the translator if we could call our ministry host. He gently said no and told us to not pull out our phones, to make sure we closed all the windows, and to connect with God.
After sometime the two men left our sight, which is when I quietly asked if we could drive back to our ministry location. The gun shots answered that question.
We and the van did not get shot at, the shots were from behind us. And there was distinctly two different guns, which still doesn’t make sense to me since I only saw one.
That was when the police truck came but on the other side of the road block. It came to a halt at the tires and just stayed there for awhile. As the police sat there, we sat there patiently waiting for something, anything.
I don’t know if minutes or just seconds went by but the police truck turned around and went back. We remained sitting there.
Once again, I don’t know if minutes or seconds went by but after sometime, the driver started the van, drove over the road median and the fire to safely get us back on track.
It took me sometime to release my hands from my white knuckle grip and to stop shaking.
We made it safely to the squad meet-up point and the entire squad made it safely to the Dominican Republic. Praise be to God!
As I, and also the squad, have spent time reflecting on what happened we know that this was Satan’s attempt to put fear in us and to stop us from bringing kingdom. We have identified this and will continue to cast out Satan’s lies with God’s truth as we do life, ministry, in the Dominican Republic.
As I said in the beginning of the blog, God can drastically alter one’s perspective toward others, it is true about how I am thinking and praying for the man behind the gun. It would be culturally normal from me to be upset, frightened, and angry at him. But it’s not how I think about him. Instead, I find myself understand that he needs Jesus. I truly believe someone who has a relationship with Christ would not act the way he did. So I find myself praying for him and the others who respond in a worldly way to hard and trailing times.
With that being said, just like I promised my parents, I will be cautious and I won’t go looking for danger, but this is not going to stop me from finishing the Race or being mission-minded. We need to reminder that “scary” people need Jesus and we are commanded to “go to the nations and make disciples”.
Therefore, please pray for our safety as we share the gospel this month, but also pray for the man behind the gun.
Prayer is powerful. I experienced that in a new way on May 24th. Our prayers for safety were answered when no one was hurt and we all made it to the Dominican Republic safely.
