Coming to Haiti has been an interesting experience for our whole team. It has forced us to remember that we committed to having no expectations. Haiti is a place where Team Sol is learning to trust all God has for us. We thought we would be in the middle of terrible devastation and believe me it exists, but where we are staying in Haiti is a refuge for kids. We are staying about an hour away from Port Au Prince in the town Mont Rouis. We are staying at a place called Canaan. Canaan is a refuge for kids who have been abandoned. It’s what we would call an Orphanage but it functions as so much more. Canaan has a school, medical clinic, and functions as it on microcosm.
Our expectations of Haiti were crushed when we arrived at Canaan. It’s amazing how God works like that. We expect one thing and then God shows up and does something way better than we thought possible. At first it stings a little. Our pride tells us God why aren’t we doing something important like helping in Port Au Prince with all the clean up from the Earthquake. God gently or sometimes not so gently reminds us He is in control and we are here to do whatever he wants us to do for His glory. A lot of times as Americans we want to see the difference we are making or do something that seems really great. We value feeling important and like our life really matters. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but these aren’t the values of the kingdom. The kingdom is not about feeling important based on what you do for God, but realizing all your value comes from Christ alone.
It’s easy for passionate followers of Christ who want to do all they can for God’s kingdom to get caught up in doing instead of being. It is easy for us who spend a year serving in various countries to think man we really need to do great things or we have not done our job. Our hearts may be coming from the right place. We don’t want to be complacent. We see how the church has not lived up to the call of the church. We see how we are called to bring the kingdom to earth, but in our pursuit of this we place more emphasize on what we can do to bring this about instead of being participants in what God is already doing. After all this is His story of redemption we are just blessed that God allows us to be part of it.
One way we do this is rating ministries or the important ways to serve. Of course we would never admit to this, but we all have done this from time to time. We think we know the best way to serve God. Again this may start from a good place. We don’t want to waste our days. We know we have a limited amount of time to minster and we want to be as effective as possible. The problem I am seeing is that in our search for effectiveness we sometimes forget the behind the scene things that really make a difference. We would much rather spend time doing things for God then just being present with God in prayer. We forget that it is not us, but the holy spirit that brings about real transformation.
That’s something God is teaching me this month. As I wrestle through what’s the point of short term missions? Are we doing more harm than good? God is teaching me the power of prayer. A lot of ministry this month will be praying for the people of Canaan as well as all of Haiti. We also have opportunities to serve in different ways here at Canaan and my team will be doing things like helping with summer school, tutoring kids, organizing files in the medical clinic.
