Worship

Our first night in Haiti we slept on the second story porch of the mission compound, mattresses for twenty-three bodies laid out like a loose jumble of tetris blocks, girls on one end, boys on the other, leaders more or less across the middle. After twenty-seven hours of travel, an entire night's worth of skipped sleep, a van tour of Port Au Prince – where rubble from the earthquake is still piled up and broken buildings stand empty and sagging – and a long, hot, close, bumpy ride from Port Au Prince to Fond Parisien; we had stepped out of the vans to worship music, a pastors' conference on the compound. Three hundred voices were slicing through the darkness that falls early on the equator.

For more than one person on the team, it had been a God wink, one of those, “Nope. I haven't forgotten about you, and I still love you,” moments, a glimpse of peace after a long day with far too many emotions. For a few people, it was an instant lullaby once we finally laid down on borrowed sheets and pillows. For most of the kids, it was something to listen to while their minds raced far too quickly for sleep. (Somewhere around 1:30am, the last of the kids finally drifted off to sleep – just in time for the rooster to start crowing and the donkeys to start baying!)

In some ways the night was rough: not a lot of sleeping, one person up with a panic attack, and enough totally overwhelmed stress that you could practically touch it... but, that's the kind of a God thing that you couldn't possibly pre-plan or set up ahead of time. When our trip dates were moved from mid June to late July, God knew that the conference was going to be happening. He knew what was going to be going through hearts and minds of a team that had, largely, never been outside of the US, and He knew what would be needed to encourage that specific team. So...He sent us an evening of worship music.

*And, in my own personal God wink, I woke up to sit with my Bible and journal under a Muarubaini (Neem) tree, listening to the song “Showers of Blessings” float up from the morning worship service down below. Neem trees were a normal part of my life for sixteen months, and I spent nearly every other Sunday of that time singing “Showers of Blessings” in a small Anglican church with roosters and donkeys outside the windows. Two little reminders of G-town and Kenya and a God who is always in control.*