Home Again

Haiti.

How do I begin telling you about what happened in Haiti?

How do I explain teenagers lit up from the inside, glowing, brilliant with the light of Christ? How do I explain places and people that make my heart homesick for Kenya, so similar, and yet so very, very different? Mostly, how do I explain what it is to watch God work through human lives to make Himself glorified?

None of it was easy, and, yet, all of it was amazingly simple. God was in control, and, if we were available, He would bring glory to Himself.

(The kids that we took have an amazing depth to their spiritual vocabulary, that allows them to acknowledge that things may seem "good" or "bad" to us, but look entirely different from the perspective of eternity. I have heard people five times their chronological age struggle with concepts that just spill forth from these teenagers.)

Baggage allowances had changed between the time of ticket purchase and departure. Okay.

Not one flight into the trip, we found out that our diabetic had left his testing supplies at home. Oh well, we'll get something from the clinic there.

Two of the kids get pulled aside for filling out their customs forms wrong. Our porters are waiting for us to show up on a different flight. No problem. We'll get there eventually.

Rats, geckos, spiders, and cockroaches at night. Meh. That's what sheets are for, right?

Broken toe, missing asthma medication, waking up in the middle of the night to being rained on, upset stomaches, heart murmurs, fever, relational drama, no power, constantly morphing schedule, "first day of VBS" syndrome twice, marriage proposals, long hours together, and the list goes on: God is in control. No freaking out necessary.

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Phil 4:4-7


The response to everything was to find the God in it, to rejoice, to laugh, to carry burdens and wait out quiet fears, to pray, and to remind one another of the goodness of God. And, there was peace because of it.

There were "issues;" there were times when sensitive spirits would chafe under the sense that they were not right with each other and with God, but, as a team, they would spread out to their individual corners and pray. They would speak it out and then pray it out, and we would move forward stronger than before.

Whenever they were "working," whenever they were with kids or interpreters, they would explode with this internal light, as if they were the happiest and most present they could ever imagine being - deeply, gut level, untouchably, content. But, never in a way that was oblivious or ill-informed. Instead, they were on fire with a love that was so far beyond them.

They stayed up late the first night learning new words and names and practicing language skills. They were peed on by kids who they loved desperately. They were adored by kids who borrowed cameras and took picture after picture of these blanc yo, trying to capture something indefinable in eyes and smiles, some magic that passed when bigger hands connected with small ones.

And, the more that they let their hearts be broken, the more that Christ shone out through the cracks.

(As, a result, every story that I can, and will write about the trip somehow ends with the phrase, "and, then God showed up.")