“God, give me your eyes for just a second, so I can see everything that I keep missing. Give me your love for humanity. Give me your arms for the broken hearted, for the ones that I can’t even imagine being able to reach. Give your heart for the ones forgotten. Give me your eyes so I can see.” Years before this trip I would listen to Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath, and when it got to the chorus I would pray for this. I wanted to see things from God’s perspective, so I could help people. But I was never really open to receive this prayer, until now.
When I first arrived at the airport in Haiti there was a lot of chaos. I had no idea what I was doing, so I was just blindly following my group. When we got to baggage claim people had gotten our bags ready for us to grab, but they expected a payment for the service they had done. Then we start following some guy out of the airport and towards his van. As we are going to the van people are trying to carry our bags for us, and my leader told us not to let them, because they would expect to be paid. This is when I made my first judgement of Haitians: very persistent and a little bit rude and unorganized.
After we get into the van we headed to a safe house, because our ministry was too far away to pick us up that night. As we’re driving, it’s dark so everything already kind of has that ominous feeling. I can barely see the houses they live in. And I made my second judgement of Haitians: they are very poor, so they will be very violent, commit a lot of crimes, and have a lot of bitterness towards humanity and God. When we get to the safe house, there was a security wall around the house, which just added to my judgement of Haiti and her people. I was just focused on the poverty and how people might act out of that, so I was scared.
Then as we drove to our ministry site the next day God answered my prayers and gave me his eyes to see all that he sees. As we passed people on the street I wouldn’t focus on their resting face and think how mean they were. But I would see people who have had a hard day and were just trying to get through it. When I saw persistence, I would then see someone just trying to get enough money and feed their family. Instead of seeing groups of people yelling, and instantly being scared, I would see a group of teenagers just being rowdy and having a great time. Where I would assume to see bitterness, I saw kindness and praise being lifted to God for everything. Instead of seeing Haiti as a strange place that was scary I saw a place that was beautiful and apart of God’s magnificent design of this earth.
Haiti and her people started to feel more and more like back home, because I was able to look beyond the surface level with God’s eyes. Our struggles and day to day lives may look different, but our hearts are the same. Our God is the same. I’m not here to change Haiti to America; I’m not here to fish for someone. I’m here to teach them to fish; I’m here to show them the love of God. But most importantly I’m here to learn from them, because I need Haiti more than Haiti needs me.
