If I had to some up my thoughts and feelings about Haiti, “Hard” is about the best I can come up with. As the last two months has crawled by here, I have come to the unerring conclusion that everything about Haiti is hard. Haiti is incredibly hard on everything. The rough roads beat vehicles to pieces. The salt air causes everything to rust in no time. The heat and humidity make life miserable for everyone. The water, when you find it is full of calcium and other assorted nasty things and will probably get you sick. The ground is thin and rocky, and the only thing that grows the most is mosquitoes, which again, will probably get you sick. Haiti is really hard on the people who live here, making them old before their time, and wearing them down. Everything about Haiti is so difficult, it really makes me wonder if anyone should actually live here, or just abandon the whole country to the insects and go somewhere better. Haiti is really, really hard on missionaries. Trust me, I speak from personal experience. I have been bitten by more mosquitoes then I can count, and continue to be their favorite snack! I have heat rash, I can barely sleep. Most days I’m so exhausted and dehydrated that just making it through the day is a chore. I have several weird sores on my legs that won’t seem to go away, and I have a fungus on my big toe that I think may cause it to fall off soon. The food ranges from bland to scary (if I never again have to eat beans & rice, it would be too soon), and you quickly learn to eat for the purpose of living, not to enjoy.
Haiti is hard, and I can truthfully say that if someone offered me a plane ticket home tomorrow, I would go. I would go back home to Indiana, enjoy some time with all my friends and family, eat some good food, and sleep in my bed. It would be great.
Then, I would re-supply, pack back up and head back to Haiti.
Here’s the thing: No matter how hard Haiti is, no matter how much it feels sometimes like the entire country is trying to kill me, I have seen the beauty here, and I know now more than ever that I have been called to serve here. I have seen the beauty of a people and a country, that no matter how much the devil tries to hurt them, still stand tall and worship the Lord with all their might. I have seen the beauty of lives that have been changed in the Miriam Center, where children with special needs ( who are abandoned and shunned by Haitian society) are growing and flourishing, learning to walk, to talk, even going to school. I have seen beauty as the Miriam center has reached out to parents of these kids, showing them how to love and care for them, changing the attitudes, one family at a time. I have seen beauty in the lives that have been changed through visiting surgical teams, who work tirelessly, helping as many patients as they can, fixing everything from Hernias to Club Feet and anything in between. I have heard beauty in the sound of newborn babies, delivered safely in our Birthing Center. I have seen beauty in the faces of the Gran Moun, the elderly who live on campus. In Haitian society, if you’re too old to work, you’re too old to eat, so many of these people would be left to die. Yet here they have a place, a society, a reason to go on. I have seen the beauty of a church service, filled to overflowing, with praise and devotion so powerful, you think the roof is going to come off the church. And i have seen the beauty in a people, that no matter how hard their life is, that are quick to smile, to tell you hello, to offer a hand in friendship. And I have seen the beauty of God’s love in the passion, commitment, caring, dedication and love of the American missionaries that I am privileged to serve alongside. They are simply amazing people, and I count myself blessed daily to be able to work with them, to help them by supporting their ministries, using my God given gifts and talents to serve our Lord and Savior!
IIn my time in Haiti, I have been broken by God again and again. Everytime I think I have a handle on my life here, God shows me again and again how wrong I was. I have come to look forward to learning everyday what new ways I can be stretched, what new ways God can show me how to truly feel others pain, how to truly love, how to truly serve. I don’t claim to know the future, nor what God has planned for me. I do know that I have been called to serve in Haiti, and I serve with a glad heart, a weary body, and the knowledge that great things are being done for the Kingdom, and I am honored to answer Jesus’ call in Luke 10:2
He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Haiti is an amazingly hard, extensively difficult, brutally demanding country. What better place can there be to serve?
