Yesterday we had a situation where one of our drivers got side-swiped by the chief of police. He promptly got out and asked for our driver’s license. Unfortunately, it had been lost a week or so ago. Thankfully, the major of the police force pulled up out of nowhere and started asking some questions. After he asked if we were Christians and the answer of “yes” he let us go on our way…
Today, one of the teams down here met a family as they were starting to rejoice. What were they rejoicing about? Well, they had their 8 yr old son kidnapped recently and the kidnappers told them that they would have to pay $10,000 US to get him back or he would die. (My translator friends told me that they actually would kill the kid if the money didn’t show up.) Anyway, I don’t know where this family came up with $2,000 US but it was enough to suffice the kidnappers and the deal for the switch was made while we were at lunch. They were rejoicing that their son was coming home. This afternoon I met the family along with a little boy beaming and looking good that was re-united with his family.
We’ve had a blessing of having relatively no one sick down here the past month or so. Every once in awhile a person gets dehydrated or doesn’t feel well for a day but there hasn’t been anything serious. Well, in the past 24 hours we have had people drop like flies. We seriously have had like 7 people throughout the day have issues with keeping things down or up 🙂 You can be praying for health for the teams, leaders and Haitians. Obviously physical health is needed but emotional and spiritual health is HUGE. If it’s healthy, it’ll grow.
It’s intriguing to me that these events tend to get the most attention in our days sometimes but the true stories are hidden behind smiles of children, sense of accomplishment by guys tarping their own “houses”, and participants having their hearts break and get filled with hope over what God is doing in this place. It’s about enabling and empowering people to get together in unity to intentionally do good to one another and to thank Him for being there through it all. It’s about living with purpose on purpose because He created us with purpose on purpose and He makes no mistakes. It’s about hearing stories that challenge and encourage our hearts from people with nothing to give but their words, presence and time. It’s about having eyes to see that we’re all pitiful, poor, blind and naked and yet He somehow has a particular fondness for each one of us. It’s about love.
