During our first week we worked to help rebuild the Pastor’s church. Walls had already been erected, yet that was all. Not even a foundation had been laid, so that was our part to play. We carried and placed heavy, large boulders all along a narrow walkway that was to be the rooms for an orphanage attached to the church. The holes were filled in with smaller rocks which was covered with sand and then concrete was spread over to complete the floor. It was very hard labor, but extremely rewarding as we saw little by little how the space was filled not only with the rocks, but with our sweat. One day we were told that we needed to go to the school that was on the same property to pray for a friend of the Pastor’s who was in trouble. They lined us up in front of about 100 pairs of eyes along the front of the room. All of the students between the ages of 10-15 were standing watching us parade in. We did pray for the man, but what happened next is what took me by surprise and left me in awe of the Lord that crosses cultural and language boundaries. The students started praying for us! Us, who stood in front of them covered in dirt and chalk and sweat. We who looked like only a remnant of what we look like back in the states- not that they really cared. And like the Dominicans, Haitians love to sing. After praying, they did just this and it took me about thirty seconds to realize what song they were singing over us. The melody is as familiar to me as seeing Pike’s Peak in the distance or the sound of spurs clinking or the smell of bacon early in the morning…it took me immediately to the Ranch. They were singing How Great Thou Art. This song is sung every Wednesday night at Lost Valley during the summer. It is a song that you learn the words to within the first week you become an employee there, and although everyone groans a bit when we are called up to the front of the guest to sing it…inevitably by the end of the song, you as well as the guests are feeling the full weight of the words. I felt that weight standing there in front of those kids. I closed my eyes and let the tears roll down my cheeks. The tears came because it made me miss the Ranch so much it hurt. They came because I was just so physically exhausted that I could have lay down on the dirty floor and slept for hours. But really they came because I realized that my God really does love me. He does things so personal to me that it shocks me sometimes. How does he know a feeling I need in a moment or an encouraging word that I need from a friend in the moment that I think I am going to lose it, or a song that confirms not only my past but my future at the same time?
As the song ended, I kept my eyes closed and let the melody linger in my mind. For a few minutes everything had disappeared and I stood there with my God. I have been trying to cultivate a thankful heart lately and while in Haiti I have to admit that it was very difficult. I hit the wall full speed in realizing just how tough this year will be, having been plucked out of my life to travel to the poorest and most needy parts of the world. We live just like they do. We eat what they eat. We get bitten by the same bugs and get sick just like they do. And why? What about that do I have to be thankful for? I was filthy, mosquito bitten and doing a week’s worth of labor with my hands that a tractor could have taken care of in a day in the States.
Why…because in that moment…in the two minutes that it took those kids to sing that song I realized that there is no difference between us at all. We were singing the same words, I in English and they in Creole. We were singing to the same God who is as real and personal to each one of them as He is to me. We deserve the same chance at salvation and freedom in Christ, and we are all the same kind of sinners. We World Racers confuse the masses by living by the same means as those we’re ministering to. We get down and dirty with the “least of these” so that we realize that we too are the “least”.
