Haitian Happiness!!

Well, we're back from an awesome two-week experience in Haiti!!
Phe-nom-in-al!!
I so didn't want to go home. If someone could have shipped me my girls, I would have stayed.

It is always amazing to me that when life is whittled down to survival-mode, the things that truly matter become ubiquitously clear. I find that in these times there are only two paradoxical responses. For some, sadly, it becomes all about self-preservation. The overarching concern of what they will eat next, when they will rest next. Their individual comfort and survival become all-consuming. To the other group, they choose to deny themselves. To die to their own desires for the sake of Christ. The proliferation of the gospel, the spiritual battle, equipping and encouraging the saints, become more important than what they will eat or drink. They become consumed with the desire to be God's hands and feet, and their own state is less than relevant.

I cannot begin to tell the depth of love for which I have for people I only met a few days! I miss my friends Dr. Ed, Sherrie, Antoine, Johnny, Guerline, Dorce, Joseph, Eveillard, Francis, Benjamin, Charles, and Darlin! I miss all the mothers and children we tried to help at the clinic. I pray for and wonder about the little boy critically malnourished. I wonder if he is still alive, if his mother has any way to feed her family. I hurt for the sea of humanity that I waded through, who stand at the threshold of death or worse, hell.

What we did when we were there seems so insignificant and irrelevant. But we serve an amazing God! Any tool in His hand, no matter how fragile or rusty, can be wielded in such a way as to produce marvelous results. His perfect result.

The trick is to keep living in that abandon-mode here, even among all of the affluence and apathy. We shoot ourselves in the foot with all of our conveniences and agendas, programs and modern technologies. We are blinded by the ease of life that true living is a mirage.