Race Ready

I wouldn't necessarily say I'm "race ready" but I've paid the registration fee and washed my running clothes in preparation for Saturday's race. We head out to Jacmel tomorrow morning hopefully before the dusty trucks back up in a crooked line and block our path. Most things in Haiti don't work out as planned. This week we faced a few hiccups with these plans and still managed to keep it on the calendar so I'm holding them with open hands and hoping the adventure works out. Jacmel is a beach we haven't been to so even if we just reach the destination, it promises to be a new adventure. The 20 km there will just be bonus. Farmer man laughed and said he'll be at the hotel eating breakfast Saturday morning if I need anything. Ha!

The girls are especially excited to get there since friends are going with us and they'll have instant entertainment (in their mind) of two people dying to hear their latest jokes or listen to their read a-louds or hold their baby dolls. It's a win-win for all (from our end).

This week has been a different kind of week. The regroup kind. The make dinner in my kitchen and sleep in the afternoon kind. School has been effortless and testing has been uninterrupted as we have plugged away with much fewer people at the door and distractions right outside. The evenings are dinner when it's ready, extended church services, laying hands on those who need prayer, trips to town and so forth. The afternoons are full of sidewalk chalk and watercolors, jungle gyms and guitar practice. We've been at the orphanage a good bit loving on our little friends who are practicing their penmanship and numbers. I hold up a flashcard to Gillot and watch him make his best effort to make his lips come together to say "one." He smiles gently when I lay that one down and hold up the next. Davinsky rolls across the carpet and echoes the tune of Lilly and Ava's lead in Jesus Loves Me. Lovenica smiles her toothless grin and says something snappy in Creole she only half way wants me to hear. It's home. It's the laid back life here.

Ministry is still happening in its fullest here. Women's Bible study lingered with 20 + women  (and 3 men) spouting off their  prayer requests in the form of new jobs and new beginnings. One lady says all this wind is making her lose hope. She lives under a tarp that seems to collapse on the windy days and she asks that we pray for the wind to cease. As I hear those trees blowing right now, I think God, please help her with that tarp. He hears, I know. I barely think about the weather. It has so little effect on me here. In the States, we would look every day at the forecast and set plans accordingly. Here it's sunny and hot. Sunny and hot. And on and on in a rhythm like that. While we get news of flight delays and inches of snow, we are sweating through our clothes and drinking fruit smoothies for lunch. Another woman said her sister doesn't have clothes for church. A skirt is really the only dress code here. But people say all sorts of things. I hand off a skirt and say see you both on Sunday. Another request from one, Mary Carmel, says her son is in prison somewhere but she doesn't know which one or what to do with his children. Third world problems still surprise me. I see one lady in the back who gives a half smile as we make eye contact. She lived in a little shack next to the church until one day we saw Monsieur come take it down piece by piece and heard Creole exchanged in angry tones between them. And off into the sunset he went with pieces of tin under his arm and all their money in his pocket. These stories are common but never get easier to witness. She has three sweet little boys who were dressed in rags at the church and I watched as the others snickered in children's church over their underdressed attire. I hugged them and they ran back to their momma. The only safe place they know right now. The snickering was not the only struggle that hour. Madam Junior taught the Isaac and the sacrificed ram story and it was one of those Sundays with 45 children of all ages who couldn't keep hands to themselves, listen and follow along. A two-year-old decided he would start biting his neighbor so I put him inside the orphanage walls where he started throwing rocks at the gate and other kids. (Rock throwing by a two year old at children's church?!) Sometimes it's a struggle. Thankfully that's the exception not the rule with this bunch.

I've been keeping up my little ESL gigs here and there like with Ydalia and helping Mickie with her new English classes. Mickie just taught her first Saturday English class and had 85 students show up! It was quite a crowd with cell phones buzzing and motorcycles honking outside the door. Unfortunately, the class was cut short due to some electrical problems that oh, sparked a small fire coupled by the dreaded bzzzzzz sound that makes one think shock went through their own body. The electrician saw the box and before he could stop himself, he used one of his only English words, "Oh S*it" to express just how incorrectly the wires had been installed. That says enough about the zapping we've gotten from turning on a light switch or a treadmill or electric saw. Wires not grounded. This seems to be a common theme in Haiti. Just a few weeks ago a young Haitian man reached up on the top of his Karnival float in Port au Prince with his microphone and hit the power lines which unfortunately were not grounded either and killed a dozen people.

I pray all day long the days Charles is in town. No live wires. No protests. No traffic jams. I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear the gate open and he returns.

I've also been praying and asking God to show me how I can appreciate and bless and honor people. I want to go above and beyond. I want to follow through rather than stop with intentions. This is my motto for 2015. More Than Intentions - Follow Through! This week I've had another opportunity to try to bless one of our Haitian staff. Frantz helped me with Bible study Monday, came back to help Mickie on Tuesday and then stuck around to eat lunch with us. (Another gift on weeks sans teams). He talked about his dreams to study abroad. I made a commitment to look into helping him with this. He's thanked me several times. It's little. I folded someone else's laundry this morning because the alternative is leaving a pile of clean clothes in the laundry room likely to fall to the dirty ground and need the entire process repeated. And because it's the nice thing to do and it's follow through instead of just a thought. Recently a team member was talking about being a yes person or a no person. My new objective is to say yes when I can and no when I can't. It sounds easy but it's not. I say no all the time. No you can't wear that, no you can't get in the shower with me, no you can't have an extra snack, no I don't have this or that to give you. I've really tried to say yes more and I find there's really more I can say yes to. Yes we can jump on the trampoline, yes you can wear those shoes 3 sizes too small, yes you can have some of my chap stick, yes I have an extra egg or water bottle. I'm trying and finding joy in it.

Speaking of joy, I am so excited about an answered prayer that extends beyond just something someone did for us but something that is going from them through us to bless someone else. I have agreed not to disclose the something but tomorrow will be a surprise that will allow someone else's prayers to be answered. You know when you can connect someone with a resource that will open doors for them? There is so much joy in the giving. I loved that Lilly Cruz is old enough to get this concept and share the answered prayer with her. She is barely able to sleep tonight given her excitement in the giving!

At the same time, I continue to be overwhelmed at the Haitian way. I swapped emails with a dear pastor friend who also lived overseas in a third world. We talked about how much corruption one can take and where is the tipping point. How do you reach a few people in a sea of corruption? But it helped me to see it from a new perspective. He helped me see that so many here don't see corruption as wrong. They see it as wise. Taking money off the top, saving it for their family, they are using their wisdom and smarts to work the system. In their minds, it's using the brain they were given to the best of their ability to survive the greatest poverty in the Western Hemisphere.

The problems and blessings abound and we're here living the Haiti life trying to take it as it comes and make good of it.