a bumble and mumble....all of my written thoughts from Haiti

I felt like God was getting me to write while I was in Haiti. Not even clear and awesome or overwhelming epiphanies, just my experiences so that I wouldn't forget. So this is what I have from the time I was there and I came back, and mix of thoughts and memories from the trip. There is a lot of confusion in my head, a lot going on, and it's not all answered questions now that I got back, I see a lot of hope and a new love for these people, but the story isn't finished it's just beginning..........

We arrived in Haiti a few days ago, and because everyone had prepared us for all the craziness at the airport it didn’t really seem so crazy to me. The view flying in was intensely beautiful at first but then very devastating. There were shanties and tent cities everywhere and I began to realize that the shanties were the same as the slide show I put together 6 months ago right after the earthquake. Kelsey said the city was only 2% along with it’s reconstruction and driving through just from the airport to the hotel was insane. Rubble is everywhere, but Angie began explaining as we drove that this is almost the same as the city looked before the earthquake. It was always dirty, there were beggars and robbers and people living in trash heaps and filth minus the broken concrete and blocked off roads because of the mounds of debris. The earthquake was devastating and none of us will ever know to what extent but the mixture of technology and absolute poverty is a confusing contrast. You will literally see a baby walking barefoot and naked in a trash heap with everything from broken glass to rusty metal spikes and dead animals while next door to him there is a man on a laptop. What shocked me when I first got off the plane was the children along the fences from the baggage claim saying in English “Excuse me, give me a dollar sir,” some didn’t have limbs and some would be furious as we walked by and said nothing (because we were instructed before not to give anyone money or we would be mauled by crowds of people wanting money). It was heartbreaking to me to know that we were going to an orphanage to love on children who had escaped a feat like these but could do nothing to these in the midst of heat and and dirt and trash right in front of us.
When we got to the orphanage the first day, I started tearing up walking past the toddler room with 20 little ones, half crying, a few naked, and bare tile floors for them to lay on play on and everything else. We walked to the back, saw a baby room with tons of cribs pushed up against the outsides of the rooms and in the middle about 15 babies, also often crying just laying on the floor fighting for attention. Outside the older kids stay in 2 small rooms, one for the boys and one for the girls. They have cubbies, sort of like tiny bunk beds that are just wooden frames to sleep on. The kids came out to play with us immediately, they see American teams constantly so they know why we’re here better than we do in some ways. They know they can play with us, take advantage of us, get some love from us, and then we will be gone before they know it. They’re used to it in some extent but that doesn’t change the fact that they need more love than the 2 or 3 nannies they each share every day of the week, one for 12 hour in the day shift and another for the 12 hour shift at night. Basically, 20 little girls, and one nanny trying to love them and discipline them all….we’re the backup if you will, and they’ll take all the attention they can get from us.

The first couple days I started getting sick, and sickness made it hard to feel like I was doing a good job, and it makes it hard for me to be confident of God’s love and pride in what I’m doing. Issues that I struggle with constantly, but sickness makes it worse. So I got to spend a lot of time at the beginning of the week wrestling with God over loneliness and sickness. There is definitely spiritual war here and I think knowing that helped me see it for what it was, the words “man cannot live on bread and water alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God…” helped me when I felt I was being torn down and tried. I’m still learning in the midst of this to stop trying to earn God’s love and just take it and trust him to always be my rescuer.

So some days we would take short trips in the mornings before going to the orphanage. We saw the palace that was the government headquarters and it’s completely collapsed. They’ve set up a tent city right across the street from it with thousands of people. A man outside it told Ryan that the palace was the house of the devil, “there is always war and killing and stealing in there”, he said, the people have never had a government for the people it seems but one who exploits the already starving people and builds mansions and wealth for themselves.

That same day we went to the poorest part of the country, Cidi-Sol-A (I have no idea how to say it or spell it) where Angie told us many of the kids at the orphanage come from. No one in this whole country has anything (except of course the crooked government officials) but this city is even worse, the shanties aren’t even tents, many of them are just tin roofs with 4 poles sticking up. It rains every day here and cidi sole a is next to the port and the ocean...they have no protection. They weren’t even affected from the earthquake, Angie said it has been that way there for a long time before the earthquake. There was a huge hurricane that wiped out everything about 3 years ago and they had never recovered. The people there look hopeless. It smells like burning rubber and garbage everywhere and it’s hard to breath driving through. Babies were walking on trash heaps, lots of people were just sitting around in trash or under rubble…there are very very few real buildings there they aren’t demolished or anyone lives in. There were a lot of gangs there too and the UN came in to stop there wars and ripped the roofs off of building to find them all.

The next few days as we came back to the orphanage, especially after having experienced more of the city and had something to compare it to, we see the overwhelming love and hope that fills our orphanage. The nannies all try to make it into the baby room every day before lunch because they pray for about an hour in the middle of the day. The nannies come boldly before God, praying for the children at all times during the day but especially at noontime. We’d see the nanny in the toddler room sing loudly over the children and read to them with power as they fall asleep at nap-time. We named her super nanny. Later we found out her heartbreaking story, that she came to Christ only because of the destruction of the earthquake. She lost her 2-year old daughter in it, but she was safe, at work at the orphanage at the time.

The nannies are just a part of what makes this orphanage so special but it is definitely Pierre and Angie’s leadership under the Lord that holds everything together. Pierre runs this orphanage. He is a man of light, his smile sparkles and is one of the most contagious I’ve ever seen.

I guess I really don’t know what I’m doing here.
I’m learning a lot about people who have truly nothing. I’ve met, and hugged, and been kissed by women who get 3 dollars a day. Women who work 12 hour shifts and go home to even harder work and manage to still look pretty at work and still smile and laugh and sing praises and love kids that I can only handle in segments of a few hours. In the states, even as a college student, I wouldn’t sit at a computer doing homework and waiting for someone to need help with the printer for 3 dollars a day.

Pierre told us he was going to take up to a new piece of land that he bought to build a new orphanage, it’s 6 acres and they just got the permit for it the day before we went there. The orphanage everything is done at now is being rented and is very expensive. As we drove out to the land we saw the people and the noise and atmosphere change. We drove in a tap-tap for about an hour, but people got friendlier as we drove out further and we were excited to see the children waving at us, mules and people holding shovels and rakes, actually working for a change, many people in the city are jobless, adding to their hopelessness.
Brian told Pierre as we saw the land that we were going to pray for God to expand the land from 6 acres to 60 acres. When we heard Pierre’s vision we were so excited to walk and pray on the land. He wants to build a chapel in the middle, to be able to keep kids until they are 18 and raise them in the word. He tells us, it’s not that people don’t have money in Haiti, there are many wealthy and educated people, the problem is one of the heart. So Pierre says, we must work to change the hearts, and this is it, the solution, the way we have been looking for! The land changed everything about our trip. We prayed over it and asked God to make it a beacon of light to the nations, the beginning of Haiti as a land overwhelmed by God’s love, and the end of Haiti as the poorest and most destroyed place in the world. That’s how I began to see it at least. And with the promise we see in this land I can read the old testament with a new sense of hope and understanding. Just as God promises that he will be our heritage, that He will pick Israel up from the dust and rebuild it, I see that Haitian are also His people and the same promises are extended to them as He asks them to turn from their hopeless ways and choose Him! I can’t wait for them to build the guest house/dorm at the land because I want to be there and help start the farms build the fences and the houses. I have no idea what talents I can give to help but I love this vision and it’s not a fairy tale, God is already coming through on the process of making this happen on the land…It’s going to happen either way, the question is whether or not we are going to be apart of it or let someone else do it.
Even after I saw the land I want unsure of what my call to this place is to be, but the next night made it much more clear.
Hearing Angie express her fear over us not coming back, not continuing the build the children and the new orphanage up. It’s so easy for us, but if I had not heard that it would have been so easy to never come back. We have to keep coming back.

letter from Haiti...

Hey,

I just wanted to send you an update to let you know that I'm doing well in Haiti. It's so crazy here, I've never been anywhere like it. No orphanage in Mexico or place in China that I've seen can compare with the destruction and darkness in this place. But on the flip-side like you might expect of Him, God is so strong in this place. The orphanage we are at immediately tore me apart, to see 20 kids packed in one room with 4 nannies screaming and hitting each other. But as the days progressed we began to realize that in this orphanage, though there is little space and it is always a fight for attention the presence of God reigns and His spirit and a spirit of protection and safety in the midst of a city full of very little safety overwhelm us and the children there. Pierre is the Haitian orphanage director, he is soft spoken and humble, his smile lights up a room and they are so generous to us. Pierre took us to some land that they just bought out of the city yesterday, n the countryside surrounded by the beautiful mountains. He told us his vision for the 6 acres of land there, an orphanage that is self sustaining, where we can farm our own crops with a guest house for the teams that come to build and to teach and love on the kids. This one would be able to house kids until they were 18. The goal would be to raise up this next generation with the knowledge of Christ and firmly in the Bible. He said there are many intelligent people in Haiti, but the problem is and always has been the heart. That's why we will start at the heart. The center of our land will be the chapel he said, and in his vision he sees he knows he wants to have a red flag, (the blood of Christ) and a white bird, the Holy Spirit. I can't remember what he said would be on it but i think he said Jehovah something will be written on it, but it will mean, where the spirit of God is nothing can harm us. We got to touch this dirt, this hope of a new land, much like that of the Israelites. As we read Isaiah and Joshua we know that these same promises are happening here, a land for the people who will rise up out of the dust.

I've NEVER seen a place that is this hopeless. Not the indian reservation in North Dakota or the homeless shelter in Ohio. I'm remembering all of these missions trips I've been on and the things I've learned, and until recently I think I've been fighting the idea that maybe this place I've been called back to. I've been so open to "ending up" in China lately, but it's hard to really think of anything when I know I'm going to Guam soon. Really I just want to be where people need and know they need. As we were all asked to describe our thoughts of the land we said things like awe, wonder, excitement....Angie, the lady who has been here for the last 9 weeks and takes care of more than any of us even know, said the word for her is anxiety. She explained that it makes her fear we won't come back. She fears that we won't realize that we have to be apart of that vision, we have to tell others of the need here and the hope here and of what God is doing in this place. We need to bring others to this desolate place because the government doesn't let orphans get adopted for at least 2 years. It's really expensive because they know the longer they have you wait the more money they can get from you. You have to be 35 or married for 10 years and the process is ridiculous. Never the less many children are adopted and many families are willing to go through all of the struggle to get these children out of Haiti and into families where they are loved.

But what will happen to Haiti? Will these children grow in the love of Christ and hear the call to come back and change the land they came from? Maybe the adopted children won't but for those who are stuck here we can only hope and pray that this is the seed being planted to bring about true change in Haiti. This is how we begin at the heart. This is how we obey Christ, by "visiting the orphans and widows in their affliction" James 1:27

Mary is counseling the children by playing with them, finding out their stories and giving them a chance to be known one on one away from the other 69 kids, if only for a little while. We heard from the nannies, almost all of them live in tent cities. I rested on the porch with a stomach ache as I listened to the translator tell Mary that the nanny I love, "super nanny" who sings and prays over the children for hours at nap time and all day long that her 2 year old daughter was crushed and killed in the earthquake. She said she wasn't a christian at the time but found Jesus after this. She said she fears her daughter might be in hell because she didn't know Jesus and maybe her daughter died because she would grow up to be a horrible person. It is not easy to separate their culture of voodoo from who Christ really is and what the Bible says. Mary added today that being illiterate keeps many of them from separating the two. God and Jesus are written everywhere. Everything is religious here because that gives hope, but just like in the states and everywhere else I guess....You never really know, only Jesus knows if they are His.

Anyway the nannies who live in the tent cities...we learn there are thousands of people in tons of different tent cities that we drive past. any empty field or lot or pile of rubble at time has become home to these people, most of which may never have a home again on this earth. Mary said the nannies probably get raped, beaten and robbed. Most do not have husbands we guess, but in the midst of the tent cities they are definitely not safe. They say at the orphanage they are safe and happy, but they cannot be fully happy knowing what they will go back to at night.

Pierre's vision for the land is also to have a place for the nannies to sleep. So that instead of night and day nannies the children will have family structure to grow in and be loved by.

Jesus we want this vision so bad. And it is so brilliant and as Ashley said so "kingdom minded", we know it is from You and we see You in this hope and this land and these promises you speak to us from Your word.

We need people to not forget. We need to not forget. I hate raising money. I hate being sick from the germs of another country. But I cannot ignore the need for workers to be apart of this beautiful vision. I want the nannies to have a safe place. I want the children to know the truth and not be confused. I want them to have hearts to help their own people understand the truth.

If it were my vision I would say burn and bulldoze the whole city and settle in some remote mountains and start from scratch. but YOU Lord, you plan to raise up children from the dust heal the broken hearted, moving stone by stone.

The analogies of dust and destruction are endless in this place. I think you get the point.

Anyway........this was never my dream. But this is what I'm always talking about. I want to be somewhere where people need. They know they need. And there is something I can do. Some skill I can add. Some love I can give. And it will test me and try me.

I don't know what that means for me yet, but I don't think this will be my first and last trip to Haiti. I hate the idea of raising money again but I will be tested and tried in whatever way God sees fit, and this is the kind of cause that is worth dying for. Christ died for children like these. for the robbers and rapists here even...and only a heart change can change this place.

Lisa