Dishes are Therapy: Thank God for Food

Madame Missoule told me she could wash the dishes.

The students were all gone; she’d finished serving and could resume her dish-washing duties. I could return to class. I was a teacher, after all.

But if I returned to class the tears would come.

Washing dishes was therapy. It kept the tears at bay and gave me some extra minutes to pray, to thank God for what He’d given us and disregard the lack.

Lentz started it.

The first time I remember was in Recreation.

Michelet sent him out because he was crying. He didn’t want to play because his stomach hurt.

 “What’s the matter? Poukisa ou kriye? Sa ou gen, bebe?” I asked.

« Vent fè mal, » he confirmed. « My stomach hurts . »

As we don’t treat stomachaches I told him automatically to drink water. “Bwe dlo.”

But as this is a school of children unable to afford school, full of children who walk from shack wood and tin homes, who sleep with their families in one cramped room, who have never used a toilet before attending—as this is Haiti, the land of preventable tragedy—I also asked the necessary question.

“Did you eat today? Ou te mange nan kay ou? Ou te mange maten-an ? »

Lentz said no.

« Eske ou grangou ? Are you hungry ?”

He nodded his head, gazing at me with those large eyes fringed by beautiful thick lashes, then dripping with tears.

“Ou vle mange? Do you want to eat?”

He nodded again.

So I bade him sit down on one of the benches around the kitchen and fetched him a plate of rice. Our class eats after Recreation so he wouldn’t have had long to wait, but I couldn’t ignore hunger that caused a stomachache that overcame the desire to play.

Lentz ate quietly on the bench then returned to Recreation in the next room.

When I next checked in he was laughing and playing with all the rest.

After Recreation was finished the class lined up to wash hands, sweating and panting and inevitably pushing. Lentz washed and received his allotted food and ate his plate of rice and beans in class.

From then on I kept an eye on Lentz. If he began to cry in class, putting his head down on the desk, my first assumption was discomfort from hunger.

I took to sending he and Shemaly to the office in the morning for extra crackers.

Beverly told me Maman Lentz doesn’t have food at home. Actually, they don’t really have a home. They stay where they can when they can.

Manman is young.

Every morning she is at the gate, lingering on the neighboring store’s porch, chatting with Michelet and Manman Shemaly. I wonder how she spends her days.

Shemaly is one of the brightest students in the class. She can read well in all three languages and is dependable. She works more slowly than the two leading girls, but she is good-natured and sweet and tries her best. She is good about self-correcting.

Her manman doesn’t have food at home, either.

For a few weeks I called Lentz and Shemaly out after the morning cracker with peanut butter. I sent them down to the office to ask for more, after confirming that they’d had no food at home that morning.

They’d return after a few minutes and settle back down at their desks.

Madame Alice noticed and one day commented.

“Ou renmen Lentz!” she said as I handed one of the precious extra peanut-butter dolloped crackers to Lentz before waving the empty plate before the class (it’s finished!)

I smiled and answered her in a low voice with a shrug.

“Li pa gen manje nan kay li. Li e Shemaly toujou grangou.”

She nodded and gave her customary “Dako, okay” response.

She didn’t comment on favoritism again.

Usually we have a few extra crackers on the plate.

From my experience of “making” the crackers—dolloping peanut butter—I know keeping track of the numbers is difficult.

I would have to restart my count several times and still be unsure of the number of crackers layering the tin plate. The largest class is 28 students, and ours is smallest with only 19. But we have the oldest students: students who should require more food.

Giving out those extra crackers is one of the worst parts of the job.

I hate to choose who will be blessed and who goes without.

Some of the children bring snacks from home. Some come with juice or milk boxes. Some come with plastic containers of macaroni, meat, paté, or fried banana. Many come with snack crackers “bonbon” which they pour directly into their mouths as the crackers have crumbled.

Some of them, like Lentz and Shemaly, do not bring anything from home. There is nothing to bring.

Last week we couldn’t teach. Many students couldn’t focus. They were too hungry.

Thanks to Madame Beverly’s daily question of “Are you hungry?” and required response of “Yes, I am hungry,” or “No, I am not hungry,” before they exit the kitchen with their allotted plate, the students can tell us in English their bellies are empty.

This day, several did.

Sometimes they look sad, mouths turned down and faces hidden on crossed arms, like Lentz and Ludgie. Sometimes they’re vacant, staring idly or unable to read the work before them, like Saloubens and John Theodore. Sometimes they’re angry or cranky, saying “Don’t touch me,” like Tchialensky and Gilberto.

That morning I kept repeating the mandate of “Drink water, bwe dlo” attempting to explain, in Creole, that water helps an empty stomach. Water can help to appease that demanding stomach. But even the ones who heeded me, believing those ludicrous words, couldn’t overcome the hunger to work well.

Students who normally work just fine through the morning, who don’t complain of hunger pangs, even those were pleading.

“I’m very, very hungry,” Ludgie said.

“I want a cracker, please,” Gilberto said, then amended to “I want some rice, please.”

The time crept toward 11:00 and I was at a loss. I was spending an inordinate amount of time repeating the command to drink water, encouraging with backrubs, and not enough time teaching.

At 10:50 I went downstairs with the empty cracker plate, entered the office and took the cracker container off the shelf. Then I stood in the middle of the floor, lost.

What should I do? Spread peanut butter on fifteen crackers and bring them upstairs?

I turned for the hallway and met Beverly coming out of the Recreation room.

“I don’t know what to do,” I confessed, lifting my helpless hands in the air. “There are so many of them who are hungry and just can’t work today. So many. Many more than usual.”

Beverly nodded. “You know what that means? They’re about to go through a growth-spurt.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

Beverly turned and called Madame Rose, who was supervising the feeding of the five-year old class who’d just left Recreation. Beverly explained that the children in second grade were hungry because they were growing, grandi.

“Do we give them more crackers? Or do we give them piti diri a little rice?”

Rose was decisive. “Rice. And later, more.”

Beverly nodded. “Yes, and we explain that this is a snack. They’ll eat more after Recreation.”

Madame Rose then made an about-face into the kitchen and commenced scooping a ladle of rice on eleven plates. Adrianna and I balanced the stacks and toted them upstairs.

Outside the classroom I peered around the doorframe. We had 11 plates and 19 students. Not all of them needed this offering.

I summoned Madame Alice from her surveilling.

“Ki moun bezwen manje kounya?” I asked. “Who needs food now?”

We looked into the classroom.

“Shemaly. Theodore. Lentz. Lovenita….” She shrugged. “Tout moun bezwen. Everyone needs it.”

“Okay,” I said, and we entered with the plates.

It was the first time since before the cholera scare we didn’t wash hands before eating. We just set plates down before children and let them scoop up rice as rapidly as possible.

We had to return for perhaps two more plates but a few students rejected the plate. A few opted to eat snacks from their bags, under instruction they should not eat much now.

“Manje piti paske nou ale recreacion. Pa bon pou manje two e fè exercise! It’s not good to eat too much before exercise!” I instructed, helping Shawn choose a few morsels from his lunch container and then stow it back in his bag.

It was rapid fire—that pre-Recreation “snack.”

We stacked the scraped plates and the students resumed their Creole grammar work.

By this time it was 11:15 and they had fifteen minutes to digest that bit before jumping and running and dancing with that unlimited youthful verve.

For most of them the food interfered not at all with their ability to leap and frolic—because it was the first food of the day and was immediately devoured by needy metabolisms.

Dancing commenced in Recreation a short while later to cheery students. They love dancing.

Before they began, Madame Beverly called upon those who had been hungry to stand in a line.

“Gade, Madame Rose,” she said. “Look and see who it is who’s hungry.”

The majority of the class formed a line, wondering why they were on display.

“You see?” Beverly nudged Rose. “See who it is?”

Madame Rose nodded. “Yes, I know.”

Many of the students standing on that line were ones whose homes Madame Beverly and Madame Rose knew well: the kind of homes that make Madame Rose shake her head and Madame Beverly turn to God in anger. The kind of homes that might have been acceptable in the 19^th century. The kind of homes like forts children build of scraps, before returning to their solid, insulated, secure homes of loving comfort.

The Madames nodded their understanding, nods of regrettable acceptance. Then the students broke up into mingled lines and the music began to play. With the usual buoyancy and contagious laughter they danced, showing off their progress in the Chicken Dance and Macarena.

I laughed and smiled and danced too, knowing that this physical therapy was a daily necessity, as is the dawn devotion on the rooftop, watching the sun rise while reading the Bible and praying—but as I frolicked, watching Ludgie swing her hips and sway with brilliant diamond smile alighting her ebony dark face, watching Saloubens kick his pointy-shoed feet with vigor, I couldn’t help but think of what they were missing.

“Thank you, God, for their ignorance. Thank you that this is all they know,” I said in my crumbling heart. “Thank you for their joy.”

After one dance I exited Recreation and stepped into the kitchen to wash the dishes my class had made. Madame Missoule, the cook, was occupied scooping portions onto first graders’ plates, and I began washing.

Dishes are therapy.

In days past I would retreat to the woods to walk off emotions—to appease stress, release anger, to sob out sadness under comforting, sheltering branches. I would pour out my heart among the roots and stay out until I’d exhausted body and eased the heartache.

Even in Korea I could walk or run out those emotions, barreling down a sidewalk with headphones in or following the river, or trekking into the woods, losing myself on a dirt path passing azalea bushes and memorials.

Here in Haiti life is more confined. Often I have no option to venture out, walking or running in solitude. I can retreat to my room or the roof, and I can work.

Dishes are constant here, with so many folks in the house. Dishes are simple. They’re predictable, mindless and sometimes tiring. Do enough dishes, certainly scrub enough pots, and you’ll be worn out.

That morning I washed all the plates for my class, all the spoons, too. Then I started washing the first graders’ dishes as they returned to the kitchen, smiling wanly at my students as they entered, sweaty and glowing from Recreation.

They got their second serving and marched out eager to eat again. I kept washing.

When the crowd had gone, the line diminished and all students back to their classrooms, Missoule sat herself down on a bench by the door and called to me.

Jonas helped her communicate with my faulty Creole.

“You can stop now. All the students are gone and she can wash,” Jonas said.

“I want to wash,” I answered, dunking plates into the bleach water. “If I wash I won’t cry.”

You’re probably able to figure out why I was repressing tears. You’re probably sitting there in your comfortable home, well-fed and enjoying certain holiday gluttonies like gingerbread men, pecan pie, whoopee pies, eggnog, a Starbucks peppermint latte, Grandma’s fudge…we all have our food vices.

The children in our school don’t have those. Sure, they enjoy candy and cookies. They’ll ask for lollipops when they see Madame Beverly has given them as rewards for English class or Recreation competition. They’ll try to share a friend’s bonbon. Most of them probably love pate.

But they don’t know homemade cookies. Some of them know nothing homemade, save rice and beans on a good day.

They know hunger. They know fatigue from empty bellies. They know eating that first serving quickly so they can return to the kitchen first and secure the second helping before the food runs out.

Second grade is the last class served, and by the time they’ve eaten once, the pot is nearly empty. There’s usually a race to return and offer the plate again—and then an exercise in scraping the bottom of the pot for the remnants of rice and beans.

Gilberto is quite small. He’s petite all around, including his baby teeth that smile so charmingly. Beneche is bigger with a round, dark head and secretive smile. Both of them always request large servings, and both usually return for seconds.

That midday meal may be the only one for the day.

Watching these seven-year olds undertake heaping plates of rice, you wonder where they can fit so much food. But then you remember how much food other seven-year olds you know eat through the day. They eat before school, they eat snacks in the morning, they eat lunch, they eat another snack in the afternoon, they eat dinner, and they probably eat a snack before bedtime. They drink water, juice and milk all day. They may not like to but they have fruit and vegetables to eat. They have meat and cheese and yogurt. They get protein, calcium, vitamins, and minerals.

They have regular doctors’ appointments, school nurses, guidance counselors, and worrisome grandparents who fuss after their health, who insist they eat more. Their families celebrate holidays featuring traditional food. They attend parties stocked with treats.

Our students do not.

I don’t want you to feel sorry for them. Do not harbor pity in your hearts. Do not consider them the world’s lowly unfortunates.

God has blessed these children with joy abundant.

Of one, Madame Beverly says, “God has given him the gift of not recognizing his reality.”

I agree. Blissful ignorance is personified in many of our students.

But you should be angry. You should be outraged that in a fertile world where crops of all kinds are cultivated, where fruits of immeasurable value and exquisite taste flourish, where restaurants and school cafeterias and overfed children toss away uneaten food en masse—you should be outraged that there are children going hungry.

That there are children who come to school with naught in their stomachs, who cry at their desk from stomach pain, who nod off during lesson, who race for second helpings to tide them over until tomorrow.

You should cry for the children who dread school vacation because it removes them from the only safe environment they have ever known, keeps them from toilets, clean water, hugs, affection, praise, and food.

I do.

Yes, I know hunger is a world epidemic. I know that near your own neighborhood are folks struggling and deciding between electricity and groceries. I thank God for Feed My Starving Children which enables us to have food. While washing dishes and blinking back tears I praised God again that we had food to give these hungry children.

Let us be continuously grateful every time we sit down to eat. Whether the food is your favorite, that special homemade tradition, or whether the food is merely for survival, lacking taste or appeal. Let us be grateful, and let us never feel entitled.

Sure, everyone should be guaranteed food. Everyone should be guaranteed nourishment and nurturing, a safe place to sleep and a hygienic bathroom.

But not everyone is.

Maybe you need to take a break now. Go for a walk. Put on your headphones. Take a drive. Wash some dishes. As you do, pray. Pray for wisdom to help feed the starving children. And say thank you for what you’ve eaten today.

And it’s okay, you can let the tears come. 

December Newsletter from Petit Goave

Dear Friends,

Joyeaux Noël! Merry Christmas!

We are blessed more than ever here at Christian Light School Petit Goâve.

Ti Goâve is a beautiful place year round, but come November the weather takes a most pleasant turn. Even inside the school building the air is better.

In Recreation we have been learning a new dance every week, commencing with an instant favorite: The Chicken Dance. From the three year olds to the second graders, every class has enjoyed wiggling down and turning around. Even the staff took an instant liking to this silly dance.

As the year draws to a close we are also focusing upon Christmas: the celebration of Jesus’ Birth. Every week we introduce and study a story from The Jesus Storybook Bible: the three weeks in December permit three stories of Christmas, from Jesus’ arrival to the shepherds’ attendance to the wise men’s journey. The children are perfecting the French lyrics of “Away in a Manger.” Each class prepares to perform 2 songs at the annual Birthday Party for Jesus on December 20^th.

Madame Beverly and Madame Rachelle continue to teach concentrated English in the afternoon, while teaching English and new methods of teaching for benefit of teachers and students alike throughout the day.

With the first grade class Beverly motivates with stickers and lollipops: the children compete to recall sight-words. They’ve been focusing on essential objects, colors, months and days.

With second grade, Rachelle is focusing on classroom phrases and introductory conversation. Students are now forming sentences to identify and describe objects, and can answer and ask questions about name, age, birthday, and family.

In Recreation, everyone practices English counting and alphabet, the weekly Bible verse and song, and action verbs. Students love shouting out “I can run!” as they run along the spray-painted black line and clap.

In this Fall Semester we have been overjoyed to witness progress in all classes and students, and in our teachers’ lives. Madame Eunide, the three-year-olds’ teacher, gave birth to twin baby girls in August. Every few weeks we visit her home to deliver formula and hold the babies: Olarm Ifanuella and Olarm Ellael. The girls are growing rapidly and display increasing individualistic features.

Eunide is a woman of great faith and powerful prayers. Three years ago she was a married woman with no children and no job. She began praying earnestly for both of those things, despite her husband’s advice against so doing. He warned her that with children she would not be able to work. Nevertheless, Eunide prayed. She was soon pregnant with Raphaella.

Then Madame Beverly followed God’s call to Ti Goave, began the school, and Eunide was recruited as a teacher. She was soon pregnant again, but this time the doctor revealed dangerous news: Eunide’s cervix was open. There was no way she could keep the baby without surgery, and even then delivery was unlikely. However, Eunide refused surgery. She insisted that God had given her this baby and He would deliver her.

Beverly implored all to pray, month by month, that Eunide would keep her baby for those four more weeks. She did.

And in mid-August Eunide delivered two beautiful, full-term little girls.

The incredulous doctor said that he would never forget Eunide and her faith. She answered that she serves a big, big, big, big God. After the twins’ birth, a Sunday School class in Kentucky that had been praying for a safe delivery began sending money every month to purchase formula.

Last month Eunide woke to a man robbing their home. The house is two rooms—she and the babies were sleeping on the bed and her husband on the floor in their bedroom, and the intruder came in around midnight. He fled when she woke, taking phones and a computer but touching no one.

For weeks afterward Eunide had trouble sleeping, but her husband insisted she should have no fear. He told her her faith encourages him, and she ought not give up now.

More recently, Eunide came to school in pain. Beverly looked at her teeth and saw severe cavities. The dental work would cost 300 USD. Teachers earn a monthly salary of 9000 HGD (Haitian Gourdes), about 140 USD (U.S. Dollars). [The Haitian Gourde is continuing to decrease: in September there were 63 HGD to 1 USD, now there are 65 HGD/1 USD.] Beverly sent out messages presenting Eunide’s need and inquiring if anyone was interested in helping Eunide. Within two days 300 USD had been pledged.

Eunide teaches her class of – three year olds and her toddler daughter Raphaella with Bible stories and songs. A sure way to get Raphaella to smile through her fear of strangers is to dance a doll before her chanting “Mesi, Jezi! Thank you, Jesus!” and lift your hands saying, “Le sang de Jesus! The blood of Jesus!”

Although she cannot speak much English, Eunide understands and communicates well. She speaks purposefully and slowly, pausing for translation. She laughs often.

We see Madame Eunide and shake our heads, thanking God for this woman of faith. And when we want prayers answered, we ask her to pray. God listens to all prayers, but He is particularly responsive to Eunide. We are so blessed to have her at the school and in our lives.

Please pray for God’s continued blessing on His servant and amazing witness Eunide. Pray that she receives more help as the babies grow and her husband will have ample work to support their family.

Second quarter exams will be from December 12 to 16. December 19 will be the final day of class, and December 20 will be the Birthday Party for Jesus with parents and visitors. The children will perform and receive gifts and their report cards. The next day the Americans will depart for the United States and everyone commence Christmas vacation.

On January 9 school should recommence. Madame Rachelle should be present, scheduled to return to Haiti January 6, but Madame Beverly should remain in Texas with her husband. He is in poor health.

While she is absent Madame Rose, Haitian director, and Madame Rachelle will continue English classes with the first grade and Michelet will manage Recreation.

Please pray that much can be accomplished in the remaining weeks: that momentum will build and carry over into the New Year. Pray for continued unity and increased relationships for teachers and students and parents. Pray for wisdom for all of us as to how to teach and love better.

Pray for safe travels for Beverly, Rachelle, and Adrianna as depart for the United States this month and campaign for God’s work in Ti Goave. Pray rapid healing for Beverly’s husband Wally and smooth operation of the school in her absence.

And thank God with us for every child in the school who every day can enjoy a safe, loving environment, receive medicine, attention, food, and education of academics and Jesus’ love.

Thank God for His constant amazing provision and protection of us and the family.

Most of all, join us in rejoicing this Christmas Season, when we pay particular attention to the miracle of God becoming human and condescending to the lowliest of birthplaces, to prepare for the lowliest and most excruciating of deaths on the Cross.

God bless you and thank you for your prayers and support in all ways.

From Ti Goave, Haiti, we wish you Joyeaux Noel and Peace.

Love and God’s blessings,

Beverly Burton “Madame Beverly”

Rachel Collins “Madame Rachelle”

A Day in the Life

Wake up call is between 5 and 6.

During the week I don’t set an alarm but usually God awakens us before the sunrise.

I head to the roof for the essential Quiet Time. Electricity shuts off between 5 and 6, usually, as well, and before too much is stirring the air is actually cool and quiet. You can hear the ocean.

From the roof I watch the sun come up as I read the Bible, pray and sing, usually preceded by a brief yoga routine to loosen muscles and circulate the blood. These days it’s so cool that exercise gets me comfortably warm.

The sun rises at about 6:40—cresting over the trees so the roof is lit and probably uncomfortably warm.

At 6:45 I should return to my room to prepare for the day : dressing in our purple and black, pulling back my hair, taking a vitamin and then heading downstairs.

I make coffee with an old style percolator—the kind which accepts no filter and boils on the gas stove (no electricity required!)

Breakfast is between 7 and 7:15 – many days it’s spaghetti, cooked with oil and diced hotdogs, often onions. We eat it with ketchup.

Sometimes Pastor returns from his daily Sport (exercise group) with a welcome bag of bananas, avocados, and fried paté (a treat of fried dough encasing shredded meat and egg)

We depart the house between 7:30 and 7:45, trying to arrive at school before 8.

Beverly is the common chauffer, driving one of Pastor’s vehicles, a 2014 Suzuki she was here to help purchase.

But if the vehicle is needed by one of many family or church members, or Pastor himself, Pastor will drop us off.

We stop at the shanty house beside Pastor’s to pick up Sandrina, one of the four year old class. Mama or Papa hoists her up to sit on a lap, as we’re always crowded in the backseat.

If Beverly drives, Adrianna and Saintilus (one of our 2^nd grade students who lives at the house), and I are in the backseat and Madame Rose is always riding shotgun.

Sometimes we drop the youngest son off at his school.

Always we crowd the hatchback with our “luggage” for the day

When we arrive the students are assembled—not usually in their proper lines but clumped, buzzing about the small courtyard. By this point with 122 of them the space is really too small.

They form an orange swarm.

Teachers gather at their arrival to sing and pray together in the first classroom. The children wait outside for however long it takes.

We sing in Creole or French and English, and then pray together. Everyone prays at the same time and then usually Madame Rose closes us in the “nom de Jezi.”

We then greet one another with the customary kisses on the cheek and the custom of our school: “Jezi renmen ou. Jesus loves you” and “Bondye beni ou. God bless you.” That’s ten women of faith praying together. There’s mighty power in that room.

After greeting we go to the children.

Together we sing the song of the week, are led in prayer by one of the teachers, sing the Haitian National Anthem to the flag, and finish with the Pledge to the Christian flag in English and French.

Students are dismissed to their classrooms, beginning with the oldest second grade and down to the tiny three year olds.

I accompany my class upstairs, usually diverging into the first floor office for whatever the day’s needs are.

Madame Alice usually begins the day with a warm-up assignment of math or grammar. By the end, when the slowest of students are almost finished, we usually have our morning crackers.

Each child receives a cracker with a dollop of peanut butter.

Some of them eat before school. Some do not. Some are sent down to the office to get a second cracker because there’s no food at home.

Before eating we must wash hands.

After crackers I take over for Bible time. Sometimes we focus on the weekly story, reviewing vocabulary and lessons, then coloring a page that includes the vocabulary and appropriate sentence, always in the three languages.

Coloring is one of the very few creative outlets the children have. Madame Alice, too. She enjoys taking a rest and sharing colored pencils with the students.

Sometimes this time is spent practicing the verse and then copying it into notebooks.

Sometimes we play the arrangement game, when each student is given one word on a strip of paper and they must arrange themselves in the proper order to complete the verse.

After Bible there should be a movement break.

Despite its rigidity and majority of rote and lecture, Haitian curriculum is full of songs. Haitians have amazing ability to remember not just words but melodies.

Madame Alice may start a song, or I may, and this includes parading around the room. A favorite is “Father Abraham,” where we march around the room and do the motions of right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot, et cetera.

Sometimes we do “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” or “Mickey Mouse,” where the motions are simple but can be vigorous.

By this time it should be after 10 AM, and there’s only an hour and half left of our morning. Madame Alice usually teaches math, grammar, reading, and experimental or health sciences at this time. I generally circulate and aid those students who need coaching: we have several.

When they’re finished students ask for a board or a book from the shelf. We don’t have many books: some French/English picture dictionaries, a set of “Dlo Sal” books that instruct against contaminated water, and the few books I’ve contributed, which are in English.

At 11:30 we go to Recreation, where Madame Beverly fills 30 minutes with as much amusing movement as possible. Recreation is also the first English lessons the children receive, from the baby three year olds up to the second graders. They practice counting and reciting the alphabet in French and English, doing simple movements to accompany the recitations. They also sing the weekly song and recite the memory verse. Then they pray before they commence the new exercise of that day or week.

The past weeks have introduced dance routines. The children now know and love the “Chicken Dance” and the “Macarena.”

After Recreation everyone lines up to wash hands and then collects their food. Even the students who bring food from home are required to eat “piti, piti,” a very little bit, to ensure they’re sharing in the vitamins packed into the manna-pack rice we receive from Feed My Starving Children.

If they’re dancing, I stay in Recreation. If they’re not, I probably stay for the introduction, reciting the verse, counting and alphabet and prayer, and then depart.

I collect my own food, the teachers eat what the students eat, sometimes purchasing a Malta for additional energy and nutrients, and usually browse news on my phone for a few minutes.

Haiti is a turbulent place, so there is often news to be seen. But lately, America has been turbulent as well.

After eating I usually talk with Madame Beverly or prepare for the upcoming English lesson.

We both do intensive English from 1 to 2, she with first grade and me with my class.

The class eats from 12 to 12:30 officially, but is usually finished before then. We copy homework into agenda books, Carnet de Leçon, and Madame Alice has each student recite for her what they ought to have studied the day before.

By 1 I have started teaching English.

Sometimes we do math, currently we’re working on addition and subtraction.

We review the alphabet with the Wilson Language alphabet chart that helps the students practice phonics sounds.

By now we have several sight words and sometimes practice spelling with the individual chalk boards. The children love this—to write and then proudly display their boards in the air for Madame Alice and I to see and approve. The competitive edge motivates them. Who can finish first? !

So far they have three books. One is already assembled—an alphabet book that features three words for each letter and corresponding images. I created and put these together, and we’ve been going through them, focusing on three pages at time. The children can color the pictures and we review the vocabulary, how to sound out the words, and their Creole translation.

We practice the word “have” and common vocabulary, including bottle, board, colors, floor, desk, shirt, skirt, pencil and notebook.

The other two books are growing. One is an “All About Me” book that lets the children fill in the spaces with their individual answers. I am --- years old. I live with --- and --. I have – brothers and sisters, et cetera. This helps them practice essential introductory conversation.

The third book is “In Class” and is phrases useful for the classroom. The phrases are typed in English and we have been going through writing the Creole translations.

Our class is quick to pick up and eager to perform.

We try to do something more low-key between 1:30 and 2, such as coloring or a movement break. At 2 we descend, the kids filing down to sit in a classroom awaiting dismissal.

Parents should pick-up at 2. Consistently there are students until 2:30. Sometimes there are students until 3. But if this happens more than once the parents are supposed to pay a fine.

After school we go home. If we have the car Beverly drives. If we don’t, we may walk.

Once I’ve taken a moto taxi home, behind two children and the driver. Madame Rose took another taxi holding onto the large cooking pot that we use to serve the meal.

School is very close to our house. We take the safest, best-maintained route, no more than five minutes on a normal day. Usually the biggest risk upon leaving is backing out from the space in front of the school gate.

Once home we unload. Saintilus carries the pot to the kitchen. The three year old who accompanies us from school toddles off to join her mama in the kitchen or yard where she cooks, washes dishes or clothes, and we ladies head inside.

We call out greetings to the vicinity. I often head upstairs immediately afterwards to deposit bags and change clothes.

Sometimes we have errands to do and purposely retain the uniform.

Food is usually on the table shortly after 2, so we can eat upon returning.

This is the large meal of the day: rice and beans or rice or corn—the meal centers around a carbohydrate which is accompanied by sauce. There’s black bean sauce, sos pwa; legim, a thick almost paste like sauce with shredded vegetables, bits of meat and usually crab; there’s red, soupy Creole sauce with onions and bits of beef or fish, et cetera.

We drink water.

“Lunch” is usually eaten quickly because there’s so much to do—and the table has a miraculous ability to collect the hot air from the house and retain it, and an understandable tendency to collect biting flies.

After eating we wash dishes. We wash with soap and water and rinse with bleach, klorox, and water.

Now we may leave for errands, take advantage of temporary electricity to communicate or research, take a rest, organize or plan.

Errands include walking to the copy shop to pick up or drop off. We go at least once a week to make Bible activity pages or our English classes.

We may go to the bookstore to purchase books for students who don’t have them. We may head to the pharmacy to buy inhalers for students with asthma or formula for Madame Eunide, our lovely three-year olds’ teacher with baby twins.

On any of these errands it’s probable we stop for a drink. If we are driving we almost certainly go to Black Star market, which is the surprisingly well-stocked convenience store in town. They carry Coke Zeros, Gatorade, Bongu “milk” shakes, the usual sodas in plastic bottles, Malta and juice in refrigerators! The store is good for a cold, refreshing beverage, and the manager speaks good English, and finds us highly amusing.

Beverly relishes Coke Zero for its caffeine. I appreciate Bongu for its milkiness. We both appreciate Malta for the energy.

If we’ve purchased formula we then deliver it to Madame Eunide’s house and hopefully spend some delightful time holding her twin little girls who were born at the end of July.

At least once a week we try to walk to our quiet place: a compound owned by the John Weslyan church just two blocks down from our road. Here we can sit under the mango, almond and coconut trees beside the ocean, enjoying the view and sounds of nature, and attempting to ignore the inevitable haranguing of passing locals who can’t resist calling up to foreign blan.

Sometimes our visits there are spent conversing with other visitors, usually high school students who come to study and enjoy engaging in English.

Sometimes these visitors will sing with us.

Sometimes we are left in peace, and can enjoy time in silence, interspersed with Bible reading, singing, praying and reflecting.

Our preferred visit time is between 4 and 5, so we can watch the sunset over the mountain before walking home.

Sometimes I meet with a church member, a pastor’s daughter who’s preparing to go to Florida for study. We talk and go over her English homework I’ve assigned and she departs before dark.

Sunset these days is about 5:15. We avoid being out after dark.

Usually electricity at the house turns on at 6 PM.

Shortly before sunset and until electricity is available, the roof is the best place to be. Air is moving up there.

I spend as much time as possible on the roof.

There I can work, study, read, or simply gaze at the stars in peace. Usually.

In the evening we do school work.

Between 6 and 7 I give Lhens, the eight year old son, English lesson. These are generally about 30 minutes, which may be productive or continuously distracted.

Around 7 there should be “supper.” This is usually labouie, which is creamy, sweetened oatmeal with cloves and ginger. It’s served with bread and peanut butter.

There are then more dishes to wash—always there are dishes.

At 8 the household gathers for “service.”

This is a roughly thirty-minute devotional time which everyone enjoys, even if they drift off. Everyone is tired from rising early and working hard, not sleeping enough and having very little time to relax, but everyone attends and everyone sings.

There is singing, praying, and usually Pastor speaks about a scripture.

We close with greetings of “God bless you,” and “good night.”

After this the house begins to wind down.

Most members do not go to sleep, although Lhens and Saintilus are sent to bed, because the students must study and the house be secured for the night.

I often retreat to the roof for a little more time under the stars in the cool night air, sometimes talking on the phone.

Possibly I meet with another household member who wants to practice English.

Sometimes Beverly and I meet to plan or discuss or share some work.

Usually around 10 I close my door for good—take my shower and wash the day’s clothes. Then there may be unwinding time browsing news on the internet and sending messages.

I may take the quiet time to finish off and post a blog or photos.

I may be utterly spent and drift off while reading my Kindle.

Bedtime is usually about 11 PM.

Sleep is always welcome to my fatigued body, and often mind, but most days also taken with a mite of wistfulness: another day is passed, and how very blessed it was. 

Moments of Peace: Because He Lives

Yesterday I sat beside the ocean and reflected on the sweetness of that hour of peace.

Like most Saturdays, I’d begun the day with time on the roof to pray and read the Bible. Then it was shower, laundry, sweep and clean. Then there was breakfast, study, and departure for Creole lesson. For two hours I had Creole class, then returned to the house, deposed my belongings and commenced a project. In the mid afternoon we had our meal, then after washing dishes my housemate A and I set out for the beloved Weslyan center.

This compound owned by the John Weslyan church is large, boasting an impressive, well-maintained lawn with luscious growth of trees and floral bushes. There are several buildings and classes which meet outside. But the grounds are expansive and a quiet welcome sanctuary for students (and sometimes couples). It’s our sanctuary, too, a place Beverly and I were introduced to, and started venturing to ourselves to sit in tranquility under the palm, mango, and almond trees, beside the hibiscus bush, on the stone wall beloved by lizards, buffeted pleasantly be sea breezes and departing before the sun disappears over the mountain in its cascade of gold.

Yesterday A and I sat on the concrete ledge (which always makes Beverly nervous), dangling our feet over the narrow strip of sand between sea wall and tide. The view is of the mountainous coast, the island of Gonaves, and a perpetually glittering sea. Delightful breezes usually ruffle the waves and our hair, and we join our voices in song with the rustling palm fronds and percussive tide. Sometimes we read Scripture aloud. Sometimes we share our reflections, tell stories, share insight or seek advice. Sometimes we just sit and gaze.

Yesterday after we’d sung and read Scripture, we sat and gazed.

I gazed over the silver-spangled waves and reveled in the fresh salty breeze in my hair and sunshine on my face.

And I determined to remember that these moments of peace are all the sweeter because of the usual chaos of our lives.

In the same way, the laughter and silliness are more vibrant in the tragedy and hardship.

Sleep, showers, and food are all the better, more relished, refreshing, and savory because of the fatigue, copious sweat, and draining labor. We eat a limited diet every day, drink water constantly, and shower without heat. We’re perpetually sticky, and more often than not malodorous. We wake up scratching mosquito bites from those insidious pervasive insects that evade screens, walls, deet and citronella. We stand on concrete floors to teach in rooms without electricity, mats, or proper ventilation. We breathe charcoal and dust, trod through waste, and use haphazard internet with almost predictable electricity.

We don’t keep to schedules. We don’t stop.

We are blessed beyond measure.

We serve a God who knows just what we need before we say a word. He anticipates our every thought and has planned our every reprieve. So just before we collapse from fatigue, faint from hunger, crumble under the tragedy—He gives us repose. He gives us those moments of peace.

Peace on the roof at dawn when the rooster has finished crowing and the moon hovers on the treetops, watching stars abscond in furtive couples, and the sky herald in the sun with streaks of color.

Peace dangling feet off the ledge to the tide below, breathing salty air and counting boats on a blue-hued, gray-toned, green-tinted, silver-spangled ocean.

Peace closing eyes to bask in the melody of song, enveloped by worship of different tongues and nations, united in the harmony of a common Father.

Always we are singing.

Singing carries us through the chaos, the fatigue, the sweat, the tragedy, and the frustration.

Singing over the ocean is to join chorus with the wind and rustling branches, to blend with the waves and tumbling stones. Songs there admire the majesty of sea and mountain and cloud.

Singing on the roof at sunrise is to anticipate another day of challenges and victories, of joy and pain, of another chance to show God’s love to another needy soul. Songs there marvel at the prism of shifting color from teal to tangerine, salmon to mauve.

Singing on the roof at dusk is to give thanks for another day winding down, another set of goals established and obstacles overcome. Songs there welcome the burgeoning stars and anticipate a time of rest.

Singing in the salon during service, the household’s evening devotion, is to raise hymns of grateful praise. We give thanks, we marvel, we anticipate, we admire, and we cry out with all emotion. We blend our voices, beat out rhythms and hear the astounding echo of our harmony. The acoustics of the house are ideal for voices raised in song. Sound is magnified. Praise is amplified. The weak are made strong.

Today we sang a lot. At church this morning the majority of two hours was spent in song. In the afternoon there was singing and prayer over Doctor F, our housemate who passed out last night after his hospital shift and himself spent the night in a hospital bed. His sister, Madame R and Pastor had been at the hospital until midnight. Before departing for church at 6 AM we who’d been abed the night before heard this news. We gathered and prayed for F, and for Madame R, his older sister and delegated Manman. Ten minutes later they brought F home, face haggard and steps slow.

Through the afternoon there was singing of supplication and gratitude as he rested and the elections continued.

As I washed dishes after supper, I kept singing. The rest of the household in the vicinity were quiet. They were listening.

In the salon, Madame R was sitting while IL braided her hair.

As I commenced “Because He Lives,” she began to sing along.

Together, in English and Creole, we poured out our hearts in praise, grateful beyond expression for the sovereignty of our Savior.

Resting in the peace of that sovereignty.

Tomorrow is rife with unknowns.

There could be rioting in the streets. There could be violent manifestations over election results. There could be a hurricane forming to the southwest, following Matthew’s legacy of destruction.

There could be school with children not listening, arguing, having accidents, getting sick—there could be no school because of aforementioned rioting.

There could be moto accidents, road blocks, electricity, rain, extreme humidity, large spiders, feast or famine.

There could be a spectacular sunrise. There could be cool breezes.

Tomorrow may not come.

Only God knows that.

But I do know that He lives. An empty grave is there to prove our Savior lives.

No, I can’t tell you where that grave is exactly. I can’t lead you there, let you feel the ancient stone or trace the impression of his body where it laid temporarily.

However, I do know that such a place exists. And he is not there.

Just as he left that stony tomb, so we will leave this world. One day.

In the meantime, in the fatigue, the hunger, the sweat, the uncertainty, sickness, and tragedy, we can take heart. For before we are undone, before we are defeated by all this opposition, by the challenges large and small, God will aid us.

He will give us those moments of peace.

He will give us songs to sing.

He gives us rice and beans, peanut butter crackers, Bongu and Malta, when we need energy. But he sustains us through his Word.

Beneath the concrete on which our feet tire and knees groan, his foundation holds us up.

He rains down rejuvenating mercy with that unheated water, cleanses us with grace sweeter than the (brief) freedom from sweat.

And at the moments when we shake with loneliness, he sets a hand in ours, puts a smile to us, wraps arms around us. He surrounds us with tangible love, with valentines signed with his name. At our school alone we have 121 tangible valentines with hands to hold, joyous smiles, and loyal arms.

Through all of those blessings, all of those rejuvenations, we can sing. There are songs for every occasion.

I’m tired now.

I’m free of sweat but misted in deet.

I look forward to sleeping but I look forward to getting up, too.

I look forward to seeing Doctor F on his feet, venturing from his room to make silly, sassy comments, tease his sister, and giggle like a little boy.

I look forward to seeing our 121 valentines and their luminous smiles.

I look forward to hearing our voices resound in the kitchen, in the salon, along the balcony, off the rooftop, through the classroom where the teachers gather before school to pray and sing.

I look forward to recognizing God’s peace in the midst of the chaos.

Because he lives, I can face tomorrow.

Mwen Konnen L’Vivan

Bondye voye pitit li, rele l’ Jezi

Kite vini e padonen

Li rachte nou e li mete nou lib

Konye a la, li ak papa l’ ap ret tann nou

Kè

Mwen konnen li vivan

M’ap konte sou demen

Paske l’ vivan, enkyetid mwen ale

Paske m’ konnen, o m’ konnen

Li se tout lavi mwen

M’ap konte jou pou l’ vin cheche m

Paske l’ vivan

Sel espwa mwen se sou li selman

Paske l’ di mwen, l’ap vin chache m’

Eprev nan lavi sa p’ap fe m’ doute ditou

Bondye m’ nan gran e li vivan m’ape tann li

Because He Lives

God sent his son, they called him Jesus

He came to love, heal, and forgive

He lived and died to buy my pardon

An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives

Chorus

Because He lives I can face tomorrow

Because He lives, all fear is gone

Because I know, yes I know, he holds the future

And life is worth the living just because he lives

How sweet to hold a newborn baby

And feel the pride and joy he gives

But greater still the calm assurance

That child can face uncertain days because he lives

~“Because He Lives” Bill Gaither

You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.

~Psalm 139:1-4 NIV

“Do not be like them [unbelievers who pray publically and repeatedly], for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” ~Matthew 6:8 ESV

“You know just what we need before we say a word. You’re a good, good Father.”

~ “Good, Good Father” Chris Tomlin

No Pity Parties: The Gravity of Simple Truths

Jesus loves you.



You have value.

You are not useless.



God will make a way for you.

God can do anything.



Wait for Jesus.

He is Sovereign.



Every day there are reasons to be grateful.

Every day there is something good.

These are simple statements.

Simple truths.

But over the past two and a half months in Haiti, and particularly in these past two weeks, these simple truths have resounded in my soul and shielded me from despair.


The other night I came very close to a pity party.

I was tired. My body was sick and tired of being sick. The weather has been humid and draining. The once well-ventilated upstairs hallway is now blocked with a hastily constructed wall to separate our second grade classroom from the newly installed nursing school at the front of the second storey.

I was stressed. A teacher’s work is never done. We teach all day at school, in all ways, from hygiene to manners to academic subject matter. After the children leave we go home and commence preparations for the next day’s class. When you’re the resident English teacher you’re also tutor to whichever household members need English aid.

And in the personal part of my life, the part kept separate from school and from most of the household, a hoped for communication was left hanging.

God had spoken clearly. Now was the time to wait. But waiting is never easy. And the uncertainty of a thing is nearly always worse than the outcome.

So I was tired and stressed and disappointed and very nearly ready to throw the pity confetti and light the candles of woe.

But I had a text message to answer and determined not to spread the gloom.

A friend had asked how my day was.

My self-centered soul wanted to lament all the pathetic disappointments of the day.

But that was too pathetic.

So instead I typed I was okay and that school went well.

And it had. The children had been cooperative and eager to learn, as they usually are. They’re sponges yearning for the water of knowledge and praise.

Then I typed something I didn’t feel yet:

There are many things to be thankful for.

A minute later I typed one more word.

Always.

He replied “Amen.”

I’d not typed anything genius. Anything remotely original.

I’d just repeated a common statement, a statement determinedly positive. A statement profound in its simple truth.

It was provocative. To me.

Typing those words I didn’t yet believe was absurdly helpful.

Or perhaps beautifully helpful.

I didn’t need eloquent reassurances or long lists of blessings, descriptions of others’ misfortunes or comparisons of terrible hardship.

All I needed was reminding of the beautiful basic reality: there are many things to be thankful for. Always.

We are blessed. Amen.

I remembered that yes, I was sick with grippe, a cold with cough that strained my chest and shortened my breath. But I also had medicine. I had tea and vitamin packets. I had cough drops. I had water to drink.

I had a bed in which I had rested several hours the previous night and which was ready for me at any time.

I could expect electricity to power the fan at the foot of that bed to cool me all night and discourage mosquitoes, those few that permeated the room which had screened windows and a firmly closing door.

I had a shower and soap and a toilet, also behind a firmly closing door.

I had eaten two meals already that day and could look forward to more food. Food which I needn’t prepare, seek, or fight for.

I had come from a school full of children who loved me unconditionally. Who every day greeted me with smiles, hugs, and kisses, no matter how I greeted them in return or whether I could remember their names. They all knew mine.

In that same school were teachers who started every morning with kisses on the cheek, singing, prayer, and more simple truths of “Jesus loves you.”

I was in a safe house, secured by wall, gate, guard dogs, a well-respected and connected family—and God.

God.

That’s what all those blessings came back to.

God’s love.

God’s protection.

God’s perfect plan.

God’s sovereignty.

God’s unquenchable joy.

The pity party was dispersed before it began. The positivity police broke it up as my heart set toward Joy.

On Sunday I returned home from a weekend trip to Port au Prince. I was tired and sick, weary from coughing and woe. Of plans made, results hoped for, and a disappointing outcome.

My host mother, the indefatigable Madame R, a pastor’s wife and older sister who helped raise two younger brothers, school director and biological and adoptive mother to anpil timoun, many children, hugged me close.

She pulled me down to lean on her lap.
She told me again that simple, amazing, profound and crushing truth: Jesus loves you.

Then she pulled over a notebook page and drew a heart. Inside the heart she wrote “Jezi.” “This is your heart. Jesus is here,” she said, tracing the shape.
Jesus was the grand center.

In the upper right corner she traced a small section and wrote another name, an earthly name.

“This space is for him,” she said.
She put her finger on the space then flicked it away.
“So if Jesus takes him away,” she said, shaking her head and jutting out her lip, “it’s okay. You don’t have much problem.”
She shook me gently, still leaning on her lap, just a broken-hearted child.

“You can forget him. With Jesus. Understand?”

I nodded, and let the tears leak out of my eyes.

Simple truths are the hardest to accept.

“Everything with Jesus has to be intentional,” Beverly said last night as we lay on the roof, gazing up at star-strewn skies and thinking about the election results.

Above us, the clouds made parallel blockades across the skies. But between them were roads—routes of clarity through which we could see the twinkling stars, brilliant and pure. “He’s always speaking to us,” Beverly continued, “but we have to choose to listen.”

“And God will make a way,” I said, tracing those starry routes.

“Amen,” she agreed.

We spoke of Acts 17:22-31, when Paul addresses the Greeks and their shrines to the “Unknown God” (verse 23). Paul declares that since Creation God has been proclaiming Himself to us through His works, and He is never far from any of us.

We simply choose to acknowledge Him and follow, or continuously ignore and run the other way.

We agreed that in the United States, most people are continuously running the other way.

“But you,” Beverly said, our heads close together on the concrete, “you’re listening to Him.”

I’m trying.

Because although I’ve known for a long time that God is Joy, that there can be no fulfillment apart from Him, that every person and every beautiful thing in this world will disappoint us, I don’t often live that way.

I have not spent my life intentionally seeking Him. I’ve not spent all of my free moments considering Heaven, wondering how my actions in the moment are benefiting the Kingdom or making a good way for the future.

Far too often I’ve acted for the moment, for the rush of satisfaction, of adrenaline or pleasure. For the temporary, the short-lived and the rapidly forgotten, or long-regretted.

But more and more these days I find the Truth, and the desire for the lasting.

I don’t want to waste more time doing and then regretting.

I don’t want more guilt, more resentment, more disappointment, more turning away and running in the wrong direction.

I want the Joy, the love and the good memories, the reflections of contentment and Godly pride from a job well done, time well spent and love well given and returned.

I want that precious purity, untarnished by selfish desire and utterly clear of guilt.

And God is pleased to give us the desires of our heart. When our hearts desire things such as these.

When we yearn for Joy and purity and integrity, He is pleased to comply.

He gives us children who love us unconditionally. He gives us work to remind us of purpose, to fatigue us physically so we rest well, so we feel more fulfilled and useful, so we use the talents He set within us and hone skills He’s planned for us.

He paints the sky with colors of hope, trails the clouds in patterns of inspiration, tumbles waves upon the shore and cools us with fresh salt breezes.

God revels in showing His beautiful Creation, in surrounding us with breathtaking sights and heart-swelling love.

He gives us friends who need us, seek our embracing arms, our listening ears, our soothing voices, just as we need their arms to lean on, ears to hear, and voices to advise.


God reassures us constantly that we are loved. That we are precious in His sight.


Last week there was no school. All week.

Teachers always have work to do, whether class is in session or not.

However, after three days without school or internet, work was slim.

Then I didn’t feel well, strangely exhausted with great pressure in my head (the onset of that cold.)

The family went out and I stayed behind to rest.

In the evening after a day of impressive un-production I started to wash dishes in the kitchen. Whilst piling bowls I succeeded in dropping a bowl to the floor. It broke and someone then had to sweep up the pieces, me tiptoeing around the scattered fragments in my bare feet.


Eventually I got the dishes started, trying to do something remotely useful.

Our newly arrived housemate came down and joined me.

She noted my melancholy expression and asked if something was wrong. I told her about my latest failure of shattering a bowl.

“I’m just so utterly useless today,” I said, looking down at the suds.

“No you’re not,” she answered, rinsing the dishes I handed her.


That was all she said.

All she had to say.

In her words I heard Truth.

I heard affirmation of what Jesus tells me all day long: what He whispers, what He sings, what He shouts, what He proclaimed as He hung on the cross.

Jesus does not see me as useless. He doesn’t see me as a failure. He isn’t keeping track of all I haven’t done, of my lack of accomplishments.

He sees me as a work constantly in progress; as a beautiful Creation He’s proud to watch and help to flourish.


You’re not useless.

You have purpose. You are mine. You are beautiful.

You were designed especially for My plans.


I love you.

I will make a way for you.

Wait for me. Walk with me.

I want to help you.

These are the simple truths. The promises of God. The love letters of Jesus.

And you might dismiss them as obvious. Not noteworthy. Not remarkable or worth writing about.

However, I caution against dismissal of the simple. Of Truth. Life with God is simple. Walking with Jesus is the obvious best choice. 

No, it’s not easy. No, it’s not often attractive by the standards of the world around us.

But it is simple.

God is the only one who will never forsake or disappoint us. He is the only constant in a temporary, dying, chaotic world.

In the midst of your strife today, amid the protests, riots, turmoil outside and inside your soul, remember the simple truths.


Jesus loves you.

You have value.

You are not useless.


God will make a way for you.

God can do anything.

Wait for Jesus.

He is Sovereign.

Every day there are reasons to be grateful.

Every day there is something good.


“This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.
“He is God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth…He himself gives life and breath to everything and he satisfies every need…
“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—although he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist.” ~ Acts 17:23-28 NLT

Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will act.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.

~Psalm 37:4-6 ESV

Isaiah 42-49

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
~Matthew 11:28-30 ESV

Berline: In God's Time

In 2006 I met a little girl.

The second morning of Vacation Bible School at Quisqueya Chapel was a Tuesday, and I stood like a stone in a river of orange-clad children, lost, stuck, forlorn and incapable of articulating why.

Even greeting these jubilant, beautiful children was a daunting, impossible task. I wanted to hide away until they’d all departed.

Then, a small person hugged me tightly around the middle. I looked down to see a girl with her arms wrapped about my waist. She looked up and I met bright black eyes with typical thick lashes, and a smile bright as that Caribbean sun.

This was Berline, and she adopted me as her own.

Berline became my shadow those next few days.

She was the one I looked for in the morning and on whom I could depend for attention, for favor.

I was not outgoing or boisterous or squishy or amiable, I could not speak Creole or French, lacked confidence, tact, and all manner of charm. I was an awkward fourteen year old who was far from settling in my own skin and still harbored ludicrous notions including my own obesity.

Berline didn’t care about any of that. She didn’t mind that I was painfully awkward, prone to say the wrong thing, use the wrong tone, motion incorrectly. She didn’t care that I was withdrawn and red-faced.

She took a chance on me. Perhaps because no one else would.

Whatever her reasons, we enjoyed one another’s company.

On that final day of VBS, which the team had predetermined to be a fiesta like no other where we would dance the kids out the door rather than consider our separation and weep; on that final day she joined me on the stage. I sat her beside me as we listened to the Bible story, had her mimic our gestures during the songs.

I was proud to have this eager little shadow, and I’m sure she was proud to be on the stage before her peers, many of whom were older than her seven years.

That raucous day of VBS was the last time I’d see her that year.

But one year later I returned to Haiti on another well-intentioned team. Our first Sunday we attended Quisqueya Chapel and there she was.

Her hair was short and braided straight down, a very demure hairstyle. Her dress was red and her smile was huge.

She remembered me.

Certainly I remembered her, and excitedly introduced her to Alison, my best friend from the States who’d joined the team. Together we posed with her and two other children seated beneath the palm trees beside the baptismal tank on that verdant chapel lawn. The camera quality is poor but our smiles are visible. Obvious.

A few days later our team visited the Baby Orphanage run by Berline’s adopted parents. Yes, in that last year she and her baby sister had been adopted by the American couple who’d founded an orphanage. Those children had attended VBS with us the year previously.

Our team trekked up to the second floor with its white tiles and chocolate brown babies, many of whom wore diapers and all of whom needed attention. The few workers were kept constantly busy with maintenance of children and facility. There was not enough time, not enough hands, to sit and play with the babies. Mostly they sat on that white tile.

When visitors did come, they were swarmed with babies. The challenge was the incapacity to hold them all.

When we crested that staircase we immediately fell to, scooping up babies left and right.

Then Berline appeared, and led me by the hand up to the third floor. I do believe I was holding a baby in my arms, a wee one who didn’t weigh enough to recall.

On that floor Berline curled up and held my hand.

She may have been adopted but she still needed attention. Among so many children and so much need, and with a history of God knows what, this little girl yearned for exclusive attention, unchallenged cuddling.

Unfortunately she couldn’t get it from me either.

A foreign worker busied with feeding on the tinier residents, an enormous-eyed little boy with a feeding tube, told me off for being on that floor. Visitors weren’t allowed. Like a coward I gestured to Berline, telling the blan Berline had brought me up.

I’m still ashamed of that—throwing my dear little shadow, this cherished child, under the Blame Bus. Sheer cowardice, it was. Berline said nothing to the blan woman, just kept looking down, wanting no more than her and I and peace and love. Oh, if only the world allowed.

We left the Baby Orphange later that afternoon and I didn’t see Berline again. I’d expected she’d come with the other children to play at Quisqueya another afternoon that week. The expected surge of children did indeed come through the gate and run screaming onto the soccer field, ecstactic about the new nets we’d assembled just before.

However, Berline was not one of the screaming runners. Nor was she one of the more docile, bossy, girls who set themselves by Alison and I, playing with our hair, especially admiring Alison’s light blonde long hair so smooth in their fingers.

I kept searching for Berline among the smiling faces, but she didn’t appear.

I didn’t see her again.

Not until now.

Last Saturday Beverly and I worked at Agape Missionary Flights for a few hours. The office is located on Delmas 75 just across from the large epi d’or. We left the office just after noon and crossed over to epi d’or to await our friends.

On our way to the restroom we passed a party, several tables pushed together to form an enormous rectangle around which an uncountable number of children and young people were sitting. At a table parallel there was a white woman with softened brown hair (mostly gray) and a man who’d come to the mail office, a large, squarish man with a friendly red face and an admirable white mustache. He’d looked so familiar to me when I’d searched for his packages before.

Now the woman by him was familiar too.

Their names were Hal and Chris, and they were the founders and yet managers of a collection of homes for children.

Beverly was speaking with Chris when I joined them and when my turn came she took my hand as I explained I had met her long ago. She surely didn’t remember but…

I told her of my memories and the blessing I was now living here in Haiti, teaching in Ti Goave. How I’d waited a long time for this. And although I was afraid of the answer, afraid that that little girl of the bright black eyes and longing for affection might still harbor some bitterness towards this faithful blan who’d left her—although I feared the response, I knew I couldn’t relax without trying for the answer.

“Did you adopt a little girl named Berline?” I asked, still holding Chris’s hand, as I had through the conversation.

“Yes,” she responded at once. “She’s over there.”

She led me around the tables and then brought forth a young woman. She was big—taller than me and well endowed. She looked healthy and strong and sure and beautiful. Her hair was long, admirable long braids half-pulled back. She wore leggings and a bright pink shirt. There were braces on her teeth.

And there were her bright black eyes. The same eyes that had boldly looked up at me that Tuesday morning at Quisqueya when she’d wrapped thin arms around me and hugged me tightly, setting forth her heart with nothing but hope.

Chris introduced us and I tried to explain. Smiling in disbelief and determined coolness, I told Berline how we’d met. And I thanked her.

“You’re one of the biggest reasons I wanted to come back to Haiti,” I said.

Those bright black eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, don’t cry!” I said, stroking her face. “I’m so happy to see you, see how beautiful and grown-up you are!”

We hugged. I scribbled down my name and phone number and told her to look me up on facebook. I wanted to keep in touch this time.

We parted ways, Berline joining the group of many from the children’s homes. I’m sure she has many responsibilities being her parents’ daughter.

I watched her walk past as Beverly and I sat waiting at a table some minutes later. Her stride was confident and her hair swayed in a lovely dance.

There are many times I am overcome.

Sometimes tragedy overtakes me, sometimes mourning. Sometimes it’s anger. Sometimes immense frustration. Sometimes it’s fatigue or hunger or a certain hopelessness that all this is too much.

But many time I’ve overcome by disbelief. Disbelief that this is my life now. Disbelief that after years of hoping, of waiting and looking and working and wanting, here I am, living in Haiti. Not only am I here, I have a place. I have a purpose.

I consider all the preparation over the past ten years. That includes three years of high school, four of college, two of working part time, odd jobs and odd assignments, one of working as a fulltime ESL teacher in Korea. That includes a lot of heartache, a lot of growing up, a lot of friends, adventures, new places and faces and rarely days without yearning for Haiti.

Often when I’m quiet, sitting on the roof while the sun comes up or goes down, when the sky is displaying the marvelous craftsmanship of God [The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display His marvelous craftsmanship. ~ Psalm 19:1], or when the WORD comes alive and knocks on my heart like Pastor honks at the gate—often when I take moments of stillness, that disbelief hits me anew.

Then I can only repeat my awe and my thanks to God, who knows what He is doing, and is ever arranging an exquisitely complex yet breathtakingly wise tapestry of our lives.

He sent me to Haiti long ago. He went with me to Missouri, to South Carolina, to Paris, to New Hampshire, to Camp, to district schools and classrooms, to Korea, and brought me back to Haiti for the eighth time, telling me “Now you will stay.”

And He brought me against my plans, against my preparations.

He brought me on His plan with His preparations.

He brought me to Beverly and Petit Goave, to His marvelous Christian Light School. He kept me during the hurricane, during the whole of October, so I would need to get away for the final weekend. He brought me along with Beverly to work at Agape in PAP last Saturday. And He brought me full circle to meet one of my heroes, one of the inspirations, one of the reasons for this inescapable love for Haiti.

Now I sit here and marvel yet again at the sovereign wisdom of our God.

And all I can say is Thank You. Thank you for that little girl’s hug so long ago. Thank you for giving her the courage to take a chance on a stranger, a blan: on me.

Thank you for taking care of her all these years. For me, too.

And thank you that now I am proudly connected with a seventeen year old young woman with bright black eyes, reunited in space, truly united in Christ.

Habakkuk 2:3

“For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. But if it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.”

“When I’m lost in the mystery, to You the Future is a memory, because You’re already there, You’re already there. Standing at the end of my life, waiting on the other side, You’re already there, You’re already there…

Someday I’ll stand before You and  look back on the life I lived. I can’t wait to enjoy the view and see how all the pieces fit.”  “Already There,” Come to the Well Casting Crowns

Berline, at VBS, 2006

Berline and I at Epi D'Or, 2016