After a more than slightly special evening (Did I mention triggers out the wazoo?!?) we woke up on Sunday morning ready to roll out for church in the village where we would be VBSing for the rest of the week. And, by morning, I literally mean between the hours of 4:30 and 5:30am. Sunlight, roosters, and early morning worship music will do wonders to a teenager’s sleep cycle.
The good thing about mornings is that, if you’ve dealt with God before you fall asleep, they’re brand spanking new, and it’s a total chance to start again.
For our team, this was a new morning.
*Please note that, on the second night, we literally were re-arranging mattresses like tetris blocks to get everyone into the space. Slightly hilarious, especially after so many ministry trips where even seeing the opposite gender in their sleep clothes would have been just this side of an abomination.*
We piled onto the bus that was soon to become a very familiar acquaintance and drove a hot, windy, bumpy, excited, two hours to the service. And then, we got to play the ‘stand up, sit down, bow your head, clap your hands, open your eyes, say halleluiah/amen, shake hands with your neighbor’ game while only vaguely understanding every sixth word that was being said. …Kind of like playing Simon Says in Creole, “Simon says, ‘clap for the visitors.’ Oh. You weren’t supposed to clap for yourself! You’re out.”
Our youth pastor gave the message, so we did understand part of it. :) And, it didn’t stop us from trying to translate for each other when we did (sort of) understand what was going on!
Service was awesome, though, slightly Kenyan in format, but very different in feel from anything in G-town. Lighter? Less desperate? Less combative? More…joyful? I don’t really know how to put it onto words. I would love to have some of these kids come to G-town someday and see what kind of words they put to it.
I won’t try to speak for every Haitian church, but this one is alive and well and on a mission to the people around them. (Medical outreaches from the church to surrounding mountain villages, Sunday school teachers who know and love the kids, people who are willing and ready to serve, etc)
Late that afternoon, after several hours of sorting through VBS supplies and more donations than it seems like we could have possibly carried with us, prepping play dough and lion puppet crafts, and taking a side trip out to see the houses that Bethel teams/funds are helping to build, we took the chance to go swim in the lake. (Any excuse for the girls to not have to wear skirts! Lol.)
It is one of the world’s few salt water lakes and has, apparently, been rising steadily since the earthquake for reasons that no one can quite figure out. Consequently, there are palm trees in the water and even more palm stumps waiting just below the surface.
It turned out to be the only chance we got in a packed schedule, so we were glad we took it!
Had we jumped from Saturday to Monday, the trip might have been a nightmare, but God is good, and He knew just the kind of “rest” we needed.
Sunday evening included more trips to the clinic for allergies, asthma, and one throwing up child, all of which had zero to do with travelers’ illnesses and everything to do with pre-existing conditions. (We love cleaning up vomit! Oh. Wait. Nope. We’re just good at it.)
Two homesick, crying girls, (both of whom were the sort to be fairly sensitive to the remaining tension in the group) but, if every night were the same, we might start to get complacent.
And, as I reminded them that night during debrief, after a few moments where the air was tight with the knowledge that ‘we are lying through our teeth about the dynamic of team relationships right now, but we don’t know how to fix it,’ everything that they had done up to that point was HARD WORK, even just being in a new culture or in a new team of people is HARD WORK.
Being triggered and reacting in fight-flight-freeze was/is normal. It’s not a sin unless you never let go and let God deal with it. It’s only a problem when you let yourself believe the lies that the Enemy tries to tell you because of it.
No matter what stories I may type, I was/am ridiculously, incredibly, unbelievably proud of these kids and the entire team. They have no idea how amazing they are.
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