Lessons From Haiti, Part 2

Have you ever found your self going through an experience and thinking that what you are learning is not spiritual enough? 

Maybe I am missing it, God. 

Maybe I didn't pay enough attention.

Or maybe someimtes it is the simple lessons that we need the most.

Haiti is an extremely poor country.  It is sad to see how people live and the terrible things they have to face on a regular basis.  Despite being beautiful, it is also a very dirty country with garbage everywhere.  There is nothing easy about the lives of the people there.  It is also a dark country spiritually.  People are lost and many are mixed up in evil practices and bound by fear.

However, none of this is what struck me while I was there.  It isn't that i didn't see it, feel sad about it, or care about it...I did.  It is heart wrenching to take it all in.  It is just that I wasn't walking around with this heaviness as a result of it and with a new found desire to help.  The thing is, I think God broke much of that in me long before I got there.  I knew I was visiting a place with many different needs and I had seen some similar needs in other places.  I just thought that was why I was going and something God would have me take away from my time there. 

God impressed something so different on my heart.  He is there.  Big, I know.  You are probably thinking, "Are you kidding me?!"  No, I'm not.  I felt like He kept showing me that He is there...and everywhere.  I mean I knew that.  I have been told that my whole life.  God is everywhere, I get it.  But I didn't, not in the right way.  I went to Haiti focusing on what many told me I would experience and feel.  I focused on the bad, the dark, the sad.  Growing up, this was my default mode.  It was easy for me to focus on the scary, the bad, the sad and I have spent years changing that pattern.  Here I was slipping back into it though.  So, God needed to show me that yes, there is spiritual darkness in Haiti but His light is there as well and even more powerful.  Yes, there is evil there but God is visibly at work as well.  Yes, there are sad things but the joy of the Lord is visibly present in people as well.  He is there, and His presence can be felt not just by me but the people that live there, and His joy is eveident in them.  Though darkness exists there, God's presence does as well and He is much bigger.  So I felt darkness, and saw hurt, and saw terrible living conditions, and heard of living in fear, but I also saw Him.  I saw believers filled with His joy and saw Him working in their lives and doing amazing things!

Some of the ladies arriving at the conference

The ladeis holding up their new Bibles

Our cargo arriving, PTL!

One of the breakout sessions

Playing a game the ladies taught us

 My friend Johanne

Another game the ladies taught us.  The sweet thing about this picture is you can see the joy written on their faces and they never do things like this where they just have fun together as women.