Your prayers have worked. I felt a difference the day after I posted my blog about having spiritual warfare and fighting the apathy that I was feeling. Since then, I have found joy in this place and I have loved spending all my time with the kiddos downstairs. I have woken up, and worked out, read my bible, and been joyful for ministry. Prayers are so powerful and I am so grateful for all of them!
Let me first start by giving you the definition of grace: grace /grets/ noun 1. smoothness and elegance of movement, 2. courteous good will.
I am giving you this definition because over the last ten months of living in community, we have basically been forced to learn what grace is and to extend it to those around us. This is not only for the person we are giving the grace to, but for the sanity of the person extending the grace. If we didn’t do this, we would go crazy from sleeping, eating, sharing a bathroom, cleaning, ministry, and all the other things that teams do together, because you are living life with these people 24/7. Not all of your teammates have the same values, living habits, mannerisms, or really anything that is exactly the same as you, so there will be things that annoy you, or frustrate you, and that is where grace comes in to play.
Even when we are struggling with spiritual warfare, or just not cleaning our dishes after ourselves, we have learned to give the grace needed. God gives us grace every time we sin, the least we can do is give grace to our brother or sister that might not have left their hair in the drain for the 100th time, right? Thank goodness my team has learned this and showed me this grace at the beginning of the month when I was struggling. It is also funny, because the ministry we are doing this month is at a place called Grace So Amazing.
Grace So Amazing is a children’s home for kids whose parents are not in the place to be able to take care of them, or maybe they don’t have parents but have a living relative that just cannot take them right now. These kids range from a couple of months old to teenage years. All of them have such vivid personalities, strong minds, and determination.
Our team has been split up into 2 groups, 4 of us go to the school that is a part of this organization and help teach the kids as well as set up the school work each day, and then 3 of us stay at the house helping the mommas with whatever they need. I personally don’t know a whole lot about the school because I have been apart of the home team. Everyday I go downstairs and play with the kids. I have been with the younger kids (toddlers) for the most part. I like to call myself a professional referee because while I am down there 89% of the things happening is telling a kid to give back the toy he/she just took from another one, or “don’t hit”. Other times it’s holding whatever kid is crying because they just had their feelings hurt by said kid that took their toy or because they fell off of the toy truck they were standing on, when they were told to get off because they were going to fall just 30 seconds before.
Either way, we have been at this place for 3 weeks and my heart has been overtaken by every one of these sweet babies. God is redeeming what the enemy did to me at the first of this month. No matter how much they cry, or hit, or snatch, or pull my hair, I love them. They all have special qualities and they all deserve the very best that life has to offer. I give a huge shoutout the the mommas that work here everyday, showing these kids love, and discipline, as well as providing them with a hug and a safe place to cry. The mommas here deserve and award or something!
I have 8 days left in Haiti, and only 6 of those days are ministry days. I plan on making the very best of my last week here. I want to leave these kids with love and knowledge that they are special. I am not going to waste my last moments because the enemy has no place here. May 24 is going to be a day full of tears as we get on our bus to head to the Dominican and we have to say goodbye to all these beautiful faces. Grace So Amazing was an answered prayer, one that I had been praying since before I came on the race, and wow does the Lord provide.
