beauty for ashes

Loved Ones,

I returned safely home last night around 7:00 from Port-au-Prince. After speaking with our field director Friday about a major need to get photos, interviews and video of the havoc and hope of PAP for OMS, I called our friends, Greg and Cathie, first thing Saturday morning. I discussed with them the idea of coming, and they expressed complete confidence, as ones living right in the middle of one of the most damaged areas, that this would be both a safe and important trip to make.

(Greg, Cathie and I, in front of the destroyed CSI Guest House where I spent so many months)

In an effort to not cause any added concern, we decided to share this trip with you once I arrived safely back home! I cannot tell you how fantastic it was to arrive last night to sweet wet Lily kisses and a wonderful husband, who joyfully and graciously cared for Lily for three days in my absence (the longest I’d EVER been away from her!)

Needless to say, I have SO MUCH to share with you. It was a trip that absolutely worked on my heart, and that I returned from a different person. However, it was also a trip that was significantly different and BETTER than I had ever expected, and as we pulled out of Port yesterday afternoon and hit the open road, I felt a surprising sense of hope and PEACE for the city and for the many I had known for years there, or had just met.

(Tent 'villages' have sprung up everywhere...Many families live in these sheets because their homes were destroyed, and many others sleep here at night because they are too afraid to sleep in their homes.)

I have stood in the middle of Port-au-Prince, and there is much that was ugly before and still is, much that is newly heartbreaking, and much that is truly beautiful. I have seen His children sleeping on slabs of dirty cardboard in the middle of sewage filled streets, have seen heaps of dust mixed with teddy-bears and tennis shoes that were once tall buildings holding hundreds of people, have seen people with gashes and wounds and damages unspeakable.

(The Palace)

But I have also seen vendor women sitting atop mountains of vivid green cabbages, brilliant yellow mangoes and huge muddy carrots (food!). I have seen tap-taps abundant (fuel!), children with buckets full of bags of pure water for sale (water!), thousands peacefully in line at newly opened banks, (money!) literally THOUSANDS of aid workers from every country of the world I could think of (help!) and dozens of children everywhere playing soccer, women braiding each other’s hair, men playing dominoes (fun!).

Best yet, I have stood in the middle of dozens of open air churches proclaiming His praises, captured many standing in the streets, pouring over dog-eared Bibles together, heard dozens of beautiful people, some without limbs…sisters…parents…praising the Lord for His many gifts and for the joy of their salvation on the cross.

It’s going to take me a few days to share with you all of the photos and stories from the last days, but it is my prayer that you would see in them much of the joy and beauty that I have seen these last days. I prayed that I would FEEL much of the Lord this past weekend, and I did, but I also unexpectedly SAW much of the Lord everywhere I went, and there were many times that tears of “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord” welled up in my chest.

Is it too cliché to say that we serve a mighty God? That I have SEEN His might? That I have seen His love of His children and theirs of their God? What a JOY, what an honor, to have stood in the midst of the worst physical things I can imagine, and see some of the most beautiful spiritual things we might ever be privileged to see here on earth.

I love you each and am excited to share with you these next days…

Put Haiti on your “long-term prayer” list. There are many believers that need the encouragement of your prayers, many NEW believers that need the support, many who are searching that are begging for the prayers of the world.

Because He lives, Haiti can face tomorrow…

(Port's soccer stadium has now become home to hundreds of families...but a fourth has been left empty for, what else? A soccer field for the kids)