Here is a little update on life here: I live in a pink house with 18 other girls in the fishing district of Haiti. We eat avocado for breakfast and have little fans on our beds. We get welcomed by kiddos overtime we exit the gates and are busy until we get welcomed back on the road by said children. We are about a 5 minute walk from the beach where the little nuggets run around naked and free and wild. We visit the elderly in the community along with visiting the Matthew 25 House, which houses 3 elderly woman who are just the cutest. We walk a lot, stirring up dust that sticks to our sweaty skin all day long until we return to the fish house and take our military showers. We do kids Bible clubs and VBS and just love on these children every second we can. We sleep really well at night (minus the exception of girls whose malaria meds constantly keep them up), with little energy to do much past 10:30.
Rest days are much needed here, if you can’t tell this much. We had a very unexpectedly slow day on Sunday, where we got time to rest but it wasn’t very restful as I was looking forward to the next thing that we would tackle that day, even if it was 4 ours away. On Wednesday, we had a relaxing, boujee day. Let me paint you a picture: we started off by going to the museum, learning about Haitian history (oddly very close to American history). Our tour guide had very long arms and a theatrical persona and really seemed to like his job. It was enjoyable except the fact that it was very hot and I was wearing skinny jeans. But besides that, pretty good. We then came back to the fish house and played “Egg Sandwich Roulette”, where we would just take our chances on our choice, figuring out if it was drenched in hot sauce as we ate. After that, we went to a private beach where we got to swim out in the the clear blue vast that is surrounded by mountains. It actually looks fake it’s so beautiful. We swam to the deep that made my ears hurt real badly from swimming too far down and Dasia got impaled by many sea urchins. We got some coconuts and basked in the sun, attempting to somewhat get rid of the ministry appropriate shorts tan lines.
It all sounds lovely and dandy, and it was! But the Lord actually showed me a lot of how I need to become more dependent on him. (Weird place and time for such a lesson, but I’ll take what I can get.) I am really starting to be stripped of numerous comforts this month; things I had last month at my very fingertips whenever I needed have been ripped off like a bandaid, which in turn is giving me no choice but to fully rely on God. Staying busy and always being around people who I know like me is the biggest one. Being all squad month last month was great because I had so many friends around me at all times and I never felt loneliness even start to creep in. Every turn I took, there was someone there and there were so many people that I knew at least one person had to be going through the same thing as me. Here in Haiti, that is not so the case. I started to feel super lonely at one point, not really knowing if anyone here even knew the true me, and if they did wondered if they truly liked her. I am not constantly surrounded by people that I choose to be, that I know like me and won’t get ever annoyed by my presence. This has been so hard where sometimes all I want is physical affirmation of people liking who I am, and not getting that has made me want to choose to talk to friends back home to gain affirmation from them but I can’t because we have wifi for 10 minutes a week to post blogs.
Wifi. An insignificant but evident comfort in my life. If I am ever having a bad day or feeling bad feelings, I would naturally turn to my phone to drown out the realities of this world through social media or vent to my friends and sulk in these feelings. I can’t do that here and honestly, thank goodness I can’t.
Food is also a comfort I am being stripped of. I am fasting snacks, except for on off-days, here. Some of these girls are snack crazy and it can be hard to watch them eat a tin of Pringles, but I know that the Lord really wants me to find comfort in him instead of worldly things no matter how badly I want a Pringle or spoonful of peanut butter.
Being stripped of these comforts is hard, let me tell you, but it has been rewarding. It’s only been a week and already rewarding so it can’t really go down from here. Being stripped of busyness is yielding me finding out a lot about myself and what I value in relationships with people. It is making me realize who I am in Christ, not in this world and it’s super sweet of God to be showing me these things. Wifi being rare is just making God become more of my cornerstone and having me pursue a more intentional walk with Him. Food is hard, but is also making me not turn from the other things to something else that isn’t the Lord. God is super cool in wanting me to fully depend on him, which is so hard for me to learn as I don’t necessarily enjoy having to be dependent on other people that much. Comfort is a weird thing and living a comfortable life is not what Jesus calls us to. At all. He actually calls us into a life of risk and discomfort, where we can always find comfort in Him. It’s difficult but I know that God is bigger than other humans and wifi and food. And I know he is gracious for when I mess up (like when I ate that spoonful of peanut butter this morning).
That C.S. Lewis quote keeps echoing through my head and into all my thoughts:
“I know know, Lord, why you utter no answer. You yourself are the answer.”
Talk about some wisdom from Clive Staples himself. These things being changed in my life are not for me to throw a pity party and to bask in misery, they can be used for a much greater purpose— growing closer to the Lord, which is all he really wants from me. Intimacy with God is wild!!!!!
