last day...

...and the school year ended so well! This is my class (minus 1) after their final exam today. I have had such a good time with this group, and Masson, one of my favorites (are you allowed to have favorites?) handed me this letter, making me truly sad to see them "graduate" to English 2...

My dear teacher,

I am very happy to write you this letter, and I know you are reading these words from at the bottom of my heart with much joy.

So I would like to give you a gift for the way that you worked with us for your patience and your dedication. But unfortunately, I do not have anything to give you but my thanks. Please my teacher, receive my sincere thanks and know that I am praying for you and your family.

You are a good teacher, I never forget you.

Masson"
The school year isn't the only thing wrapping up...our Sharptown team and Uncle Don are leaving tomorrow morning after accomplishing SO MUCH. Sami, Don, Dutch and John have been so fantastic, and got some major work accomplished on the men's dorm and on Lucner's house.Meanwhile, the girls, Lisa and I have been working like crazy to finish off the decorations. The girls spent the day ribbon-ing the cowboy hats, and Lisa and I spent hours on this HUGE sign the staff and students have asked to have by graduation...It may not have flames and scrolls, but it will be symmetrical! We'll see what the guys think...:)

All that followed by a gorgeous sunset tonight...Haiti might be a fifth world country, but it is such a beautiful place with such beautiful people. We head back to the States on Saturday for 7 weeks of medical appointments, family visits and lots of speaking...While we're ready for some VERY delayed vaccinations for Lily, some Dairy Queen and some good time with family, we are truly saddened to be heading out. God has truly gifted us with some dear family here and some beautiful and stretching work, and we will miss it!

a beautiful church and some graduation beautification

Yesterday was a beautiful Sabbath, starting out with good communion with our brothers and sisters in Pastor Elizay's church. Located right next to the airport, their tin church has been built on top of a garbage dump, and consists only of tin siding, wood, and beautiful people.

John, one of the men visiting us from Sharptown Church in New Jersey, is a worship leader, and shared some special music with the congregation. As he put it, "it is a little slice of heaven" to sing "How Great Thou Art" in English, and have a whole congregation of people lift their Creole voices to sing the same hymn. It was GREAT!

I was also overjoyed to listen to only the second woman (in our three years here) preach yesterday, and preach WELL. Their men's group also sings some fantastic gospel music, and Elizay is such a humble and passionate man for the Lord...It was a great service.

In the afternoon, the "decoration committee" made up of 10 women from Saccanville in partnership with a group of students, brought the decorations to our house for graduation. The students are going ALL out, complete with decorated cowboy hats, painted palm trees, and paper cut out hearts. While Matt and I are about as crazy for cowboy hats as we were for the blue-scroll wall painting, we keep telling each other: Repeat after me...this is NOT an American graduation!

Paul, Matt and Luke told the guys to make it BEAUTIFUL, and it will be Haiti-beautiful! I'll have fun pictures coming...

Aunt Lisa is coming today and we are SO excited. I'm not sure how we would make it through this week of final exam grading, decorating, graduation planning, final year staff and student parties, finalizing summer presentations, packing, cleaning and hosting four visitors, without her!!!

a precious moment

I rarely blog "in the moment", but this particular experience is too sweet to pass alone. I am sitting in my office, working feverishly to finish planning tomorrow's lesson before I get Lily from Gertha. Everyone else is in chapel, the last Friday Praise Service of the year. The chapel is 50 yards in front of me, and the community of Saccanville, 50 yards behind.

With all the loudness 50 called men and women could possibly produce, the students are singing praises to their King, OUR King, sounds of worship echoing all throughout this dark world.

I sit alone, in the middle, between radiant light and stifling darkness, listening joyfully to the one spilling into the other.

"Even the darkness isn't dark to you, O Lord" David says, and I testify today that this bold claim is true.

The school-year is finishing, a year that should have been defined by sadness, darkness and death. We moved to one of the most voodoo entrenched communities in Haiti this year and lost over 200,000 of our countrymen, friends and family this year. Instead, the praise of Emmaus this morning is that "He is still on the throne", and I can't help but think through just the past 6 months and be floored by what beauty and light has defined the year instead...

a beautiful new mission field....followers of Satan turning around completely to follow the Lord...10 new passionate and godly students...a dead man walking and praising the Lord...hundreds of community members living in hellish circumstances now completing dry and strong homes...

As the praises of His children call out to a dark and weary world, I KNOW that things will never be the same. Haiti will never be the same, Saccanville, never the same. Emmaus will never be the same...I, never the same, because He is on the throne, still. The God who knows the flight of each sparrow, the growl of each stomach and the gnaw of each heart is ACTIVE on His throne and in the mud and dirt of OUR hearts and lives TODAY, despite ALL circumstances.

AH, how I wish you were sitting here with me, speechless with praise and astounded by His gracious hand, deeply aware of His every-moment, every-place, every-circumstance presence.

Tout bagay deja bien
Tout bagay deja bien
paske Jezu shita sou trwon-nan
Tout bagay deja bien, tout bagay deja bien, tout bagay deja bien.

Saton perdu batay
Saton perdu batay
paske Jezu shita sou trwon-nan
Saton perdu batay, Saton perdu batay, Saton perdu batay.

(Everything is already good, because it is Jesus who sits on the throne.
Satan has lost the battle, because it is Jesus who sits on the throne.)

another concrete miracle...

Jil's house two weeks ago...

remnants...

...and today. Jil (front) and his children are all helping with his new two room house, built in the exact spot of their old home.

Lily loving on little Wendy...

Jil and Mimose's 3rd looks JUST like Mimose.

Lily hanging out with some of the neighbor kids...

Just a few yards over, these three houses are being built as well, all 4-room houses. I passed 13 others between our house and Jil's, all about at this same level of construction.

It is set in stone: God continues to work and move and to bring Hope to seemingly Hopeless situations. It shouldn't be overwhelming.

But it is.

will you?

"YES!" she said (once she got over the initial shock of the question, anyway) and suddenly life feels so very fast: my baby sister is engaged!

Lisa and Adam got engaged a week ago today, and man, I am STILL crying! (happy tears, of course!)

My favorite person in the world is now planning a Christmas wedding in beautiful Colorado to a guy who is quickly climbing our "favorite people" list! We love you both and are already praying for a beautiful marriage blessed by the beautiful presence of the Lord!

ahhhh...if Aunt Lisa getting married has me this emotional, I am simply going to die when it's Lily's turn!

Lisa will be here Monday, Lord willing, to show us the ring and to help us out with graduation and end-of-the-year planning!

Meanwhile, Don's daughter Sami and good friend John from Sharptown Church arrived this morning to help with seminary construction and the major remodeling of Lucner's house.

Check out the seminary blog for some exciting news regarding Yolene, one of our fourth year students!

the bored Bride, hard questions, and ministry of the inner life

Haiti, or maybe it is just life, comes with such severe extremes.

Some extremes are just every day realities. We eat three meals a day, and dessert in the evening. Angline, Jil, most everyone else in Saccanville, eats one, with a mango in the evening. Lily has 20 outfits. I have never seen Carcourt in a pair of shorts. We are excited about going to the fair this summer, taking a family vacation to Branson, eating out at a few of our favorite restaurants. James is excited about a radio we gave him so that he and his friends can listen to the World Cup in Spanish, a language none of them speak.

But it isn't the material extremes that are so difficult. The financial situation of Haiti is not our ministry, and though we pray about it frequently, we don't feel led for it to be. Our ministry, it seems, is that of the inner life. And it is the extremes in the inner life that bring us the most elation, and as was the case yesterday, the most discouragement.

You know of some of the many beautiful things that are taking place right now in Saccanville...healings, impossible conversions, childlike faith, home constructions...We have been walking on a bit of a spiritual cloud lately!

But being in church yesterday just kicked me in the stomach. I had a pastor once that finished each sermon with the line, "Isn't it a great day to be in church?" Yesterday, it would have been hard for me to stifle a resounding "NO."

Matt, Don and Micah went to a student's church about 2.5 hours away, and Lily and I walked to Saccanville church. I was really surprised to see that the church was almost empty, with maybe 50 people there. Abel, during the announcement portion, noted that most of the congregation was at the Catholic (closely associated with Voodoo in Haiti) church because they were having a special service that morning for kids and would be giving out candy.

So, almost all of the kids (and there are usually a LOT of kids) and about half of the grown-ups had gone to the front yard of a voodoo temple 20 yards down from the church that morning for a service with candy.

The service continued, but I quickly wondered why anyone had come. It was very apparent that no one wanted to be there. Everyone was talking while the leader was talking. The worship leader asked everyone to stand. Only about half the congregation did. Most of the youth were playing games on their cell phones. People were coming and going continually.

Finally, the singing group got up to sing, and two elderly men came around with the offering plate. I was in the last row to receive the plate, and when I dropped our tithe in, it joined a quickly calculated 36 cents US. From the entire church.

The pastor, a truly godly and earnest and patient and loving man, continually made small urges from the pulpit for the congregation to "have praise in their hearts" and to "give thanks with joyful song" and to "give God the glory that He merits", but his begging seemed to do nothing for the spirit of the group.

I looked around me and while most of the long-time Christians I know in Saccanville were not there, EVERY SINGLE ONE of the newest converts were. Pehpay was there. Freindia. Kenson. My heart just sank. They were there, and the church was not giving them HIM.

The moment the pastor stood to give the message, every single person sitting near me (EVERY ONE) flopped their arms onto the bench in front of them and dropped their heads onto their "pillows", and within moments, many were softly snoring.

Though the pastor is one of the most godly and sincere people we know, the sermon yesterday was rather struggling, focused entirely upon one idea: if you were sleeping with your boyfriend or girlfriend before becoming a Christian, you must stop once you become a Christian. Over, and over, and over....amen.

When he finished, we stood for the closing prayer, with over a dozen people still sleeping soundly around me, and the church then cleared out immediately.

I blinked back tears into the blazing sun, and poured broken prayers to the Lord on my walk home.

LORD, how can we ask you to bless us financially and yet not be willing to give you anything? I KNOW that this is a poor community. But everyone had something this week. Several of those people have jobs...several have jobs from the Seminary!

How can we pray week after week that you will give us money and food and clothes and education but we won't give you ANYTHING! We give you 36 cents and want 36 dollars...There should have at least been MANGOES in that offering plate! One mango for every ten that was picked up...one spoon of rice for every 10 that was eaten...

LORD, how can we ask you to hear our prayers, but fall asleep the moment the pastor starts preaching? How can we ask you to listen to us when we won't listen to you? How can we ask you to be passionate for us, to fight for us, to stand with us, when we won't stand for you, wake up for you, have joy for you?

LORD, how can we tell new converts to come to church and to leave their old ways when we skip church to go for candy at a voodoo temple?

LORD, how can Haiti be on fire for you when your bride is barely interested?

LORD, I know that by your infinite grace and mercy that we don't have relationships with You in which we "get" what we "give"...praise the Lord! But how can we expect you to pursue us if we aren't pursing you? How can you draw near to us if we don't draw near to YOU?

LORD, WHAT CAN I DO?

The first thing He did, as He ALWAYS does, is worked on my own heart...

...Am I giving the way that He gives?

Generously, recklessly, mercifully, undeservedly, with abandon?

While I ask Him to take care of us and Emmaus and the students and my family am I doing all that I can to be that vehicle of care for others?

Am I giving as He has asked?

Blessing as He is blessing?

Dying to others as He died for me?

...Do I worship Him because it is my habit?

Because I have to?

Or do I worship Him because it is the great desire of my heart!

Do I worship Him with joy and singing, or do I just come to Him with groans and whining?

Do I treat His Word with great and Holy fear, do I study it as the Word of God, or has it become idle words that I listen to while mentally thinking through the menu for the day?

...Am I, the church, His beautiful, pure, spotless, selfless, ridiculously in love, joyful, enraptured and devoted bride?

Or am I His haggard, bored, selfish, greedy, distracted yawning old maid?

...Am I "proclaiming the excellencies of Him who has called me out of darkness into His marvelous light?"

Am I "a people for His own possession?"

Am I following in His own example of unjust suffering "suffering for doing what is right and patiently enduring it, as unto the Lord?"

Am I still "continually straying like sheep" or do I now live a life "returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of my soul?"

...Am I "longing for the pure milk of the word, so that I may GROW?"

or am I content with the baby formula?

The moment His Holy Spirit checked my heart on all of this, His abundant grace covered over the frustration I had felt for my Brothers and Sisters in Christ. How great His love for me and for His bride, blemished as she may be!

I felt such a sincere and deeply broken and overwhelmed love for them, for US each, and such a sad and overwhelmed love for the church...NOT just here, but around the world...

If we want HIS BEST, we HAVE to do better...starting with me. I praise the Lord for His ministry of my inner life!

Please pray for us as we continue to try to minister in those deep, complicated, painful and intricate places of the soul.

Please pray for His continued grace and direction as we do so.

Please pray for us as we search out what His place is for us in the transformation of the Saccanville church and community.

Please pray for His Bride around the world, that "Our UTMOST for His Highest" might be our every-moment-offering...

all Scripture references from 1 Peter 2.

out in Sakenville

SO TINY!

new baby Wendy and Mimose

Praise the Lord for the Renner's and their seemingly unfailing internet! Here's all the photos I've been wanting to show you for the past week...

Check out Lily's blog for some great new ones there...

day-to-day and a still present past

This has been such a busy week with virtually 1% internet success...getting just a LITTLE bit frustrating, and our list of "to do online" is growing more urgent by the day! Lily has also had a cold, but was finally feeling well enough today to go meet some new neighbors who have three little girls. It is insanely hot right now, but Don, Maxi and Abel are working away, adding sweat to cement!

Matt's 1st Samuel class has been fantastic so far, with lots of afternoon student visits, asking for prayer and guidance regarding issues in church and in ministry that 1st Samuel has been speaking to. It is SO fun for Matt to teach 1) God's Word, 2) to an interested audience, 3) and then work on application in the afternoons!

I was cleaning off my desktop yesterday, and quite erroneously today I stumbled across a blog entry I wrote in August of 2008. The memories of the morning hit me so fresh that that Sunday might as well have been last Sunday… What a beautiful reminder for me this morning about what the face of Jesus looks like, that I might not pass ONE Jesus-chance over. The prayer I asked for then is the same I ask for today! Thank you for traveling the small and bumpy path with us…

It was the little girl who stuck out to me first, almost immediately after we had wedged our way onto a backwards school bench in the back of Paul Vilmer's church, once again, packed out. Her crazily braided hair was tinged with flaming red and her small skeleton held itself upon her mother's bony lap in such a weary way. Red hair means major dietary deficiency, though it was already obvious from the twigs in her neck and her tiny yellow dress hanging off her body that she was starving.

I tuned into the service for the first hour, glancing at this small bird child from time to time. Matt pointed to the two little boys in front of him during the singing, and it quickly became apparent that these were her brothers. They sat behind their mom and sister, both in holed t-shirts (you never see this in church) and propped up against each other. The oldest boy must have been 7 or 8, and the middle son, 5, but both were very underdeveloped and attracted swarms of flies. Both of their heads seemed uncommonly large perched on top of their sunken necks, and they seemed to hold each other up. It wasn't the insects crawling over the sores on their scalps or their malnourished states that had gotten Matt's attention, but instead their unblinking and unwavering focus on the pastor, eating up every word he said, for literally hours on end.

I watched this small family throughout the long service, feeling broken for them and unsure about what to do. After two hours, the sermon finally began, and just a few moments later the middle boy began to shake. We thought he was falling asleep, but soon realized that he was silently sobbing, gigantic tears streaming down his pulled face. He looked back at me, and his eyes...his eyes were just HUGE and the skin on his cheeks was almost wrinkled it was pulled so tightly across his sharp cheekbones. An older woman beside him quickly asked him what was wrong, and almost wordlessly, he muttered "I'm so hungry."

I thought my heart was going to explode right then. I was numb. How is it that I am still shocked at such things? I speak of Haiti as being a hungry place, speak of the current food crisis and the "face of hunger" that Haiti and it's children are currently experiencing. Yet it is one thing to know it and to talk about it, and another thing to SIT behind it and WATCH it...see it's TEARS.


The woman quickly tapped the boys mother, telling her that he was hungry. "I have nothing" she told the woman, then repeated to the boy, rapidly and guiltily swatting at his tears with her bony hand, shaking him lightly and telling him not to cry. "Don't cry," the older lady next to him kept repeating, obviously hurting for him and disturbed by his tears. Quickly she pulled 5 gourdes out of a hidden kleenex, and in moments so did the woman in front of her, then a woman one row over. They all thrust their tiny offering, some 38 cents US, at the mother, who rapidly swooped up her now sleeping daughter and headed out the back.

Moments later she returned, clasping three tiny foil packs, each containing four Saltine-type crackers. It took each child only seconds to open their tiny parcel, but almost 30 minutes to eat it...each savoring every tiny bite and picking up every crumb. The tiniest, wide-eyed and happily munching her cracker, continued to play games I've seen much chubbier children play with their mothers, "one bite for me, one bite for you," insisting on sharing every other bite with her mother, who obviously hadn't eaten anything more than any of her children.

By now I was finished, hot tears running down my sweaty face as I watched all of this...the pain of their suffering and tears, the beauty of everyone's collected sacrifice, the love between these children and their mother, the agony of sitting behind starvation and having no idea what to do, the torture over the 2 bites of cold scrambled eggs I had tossed out this morning and the bucket of crackers sitting on top of my loaded refrigerator...the pain of knowing this was just one small family in THOUSANDS...MILLIONS around the world.

I wanted to take off my wedding ring, my glasses, take my hymnal, Matt's wallet, our Nalgene bottle, the keys to the dump truck we drove into town and just give them all to this family. I wanted to pile them into the car and drive them home and shower them and feed them the biggest meal they had every seen and just...KEEP them....FIX it.

Suddenly the service was over and everyone was standing, hurried to leave as the dark block room had become an oven in the noonday heat. I grasped at the oldest boys hand and he smiled shyly at me. The little bird girl was shy and hid her small face in her mother's dirty t-shirt. I grabbed the mother's hand as the crowd pushed her past, and she smiled full joy as well, and I told her her children were beautiful, because I didn't know anything else to say, and she nodded in agreement.

The middle boy, however, had held back a moment, and I sat down on my heels to be at his eye level. "Good morning" he told me as I held his hand and then he grinned the most ravishing smile I have ever seen, his glassy eyes full of joy. I smiled at him brokenly, and a remnant tear slid down my cheek. Without missing a beat, he swung his tiny hand up to my shoulder and patted it quickly before he ran after his family.

This morning my face was four inches from the skeletal, open-sored face of Jesus...and when you meet Jesus face-to-face, it has to change you, doesn't it.

Please keep praying for Haiti, for Jesus to be made known, for all those that are so hungry in so many ways...and for all the pieces of our hearts.

new baby, visitors & finishing well!

Because our internet died simultaneously with the start of the World Cup, we’re pretty sure millions of people trying to watch matches through the internet is to blame. There is very little television and internet available here, so it seems that what is available is being maxed out!

So, photos might have to wait until after Brazil wins (at least, if Haiti has its way!)

However, I’ll try to at least keep getting text up, though this post alone has taken several days to get online.

Story for the girls out there: Mirlove Mimose (Jil’s wife) brought little baby Wendy for us to meet on Tuesday morning. Ah, she is just gorgeous! Mirlove, Wendy, and several of the other kids are living with Mirlove’s father until the house is done, as that their current little hut has been destroyed to make room for their new ti-kay (little house.)

They asked me to name the baby, who as of Tuesday was still title-less. I just plain refused, knowing that anything my American tongue picked would be Haitian-ugly. After a while, Mirlove gave in, and finally deemed the baby “Wend-leh-er-sees”…or at least that’s how her new name is pronounced.

She consented that I call the little one “Wendy” after I butchered “Wend-leh-er-sees” several times, and wow, am I smitten…she is just a GORGEOUS little girl, who looks just like her mother and is endowed with a beautiful head of soft curly locks…I NEVER remember Lily being so tiny and fragile! Just gorgeous… Lily and I came right home and dug into the closet, pulling out Lil’s littlest garments and packing them off to Jil.

All of the blocks for their new home are finished, and a foundation is in the works…I think it might take more than another few days to be finished, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, Matt started teaching the LAST course of the school-year today: 1st Samuel. He’s teaching both the 2nd and 3rd year classes, and despite the ever-reoccurring pre-feeling that he does NOT have time to be teaching another course, today went wonderfully and he came home singing the same tune he always does, “I LOVE THIS!” Praise the Lord!

We have received final word that Aunt Lisa is coming to the rescue. These next two weeks of finishing the school-year, teaching, preparing for graduation, preparing for summer speaking, preparing to leave for 7 weeks and hosting 4 people for a week of seminary construction has our heads and days swimming.

Lisa is a teacher in inner-city Chicago, and will be done next week, and has then selflessly agreed to come and help out with all of the above, and with Lily, for our final week, flying out with us on July 3rd! I cannot WAIT.

Don’s daughter and friend from church will be joining us on the 23rd to help finish the second story of the men’s dorm, and to work on Lucner’s house. He will be getting married in November, Lord willing, and their little house needs a LOT of work.

Thank you for all of your continued prayers, especially as we finish out this school year. There have been many times this past year that we weren’t sure how the Lord was going to pull us through, and here we are at the end of the year, marveling at the perfection of His plan and timing.

major internet issues again. Met Jil's precious addition, and have lots to share...

coming soon, hopefully!

major internet issues again. Met Jil's precious addition, and have lots to share...

coming soon, hopefully!

a miracle worth it's wait

Jil's oldest son and middle daughter, standing in front of their home.

For what seems like the 100th time this year, I'm sitting here at my desk glowing...with joy and with sweat...downright delighted to share with you the miraculous movement of His hand.

In March, I first told you about Jil, beginning with these words: Sometimes it is just too much. Today was one of those times.

Since that distressing day, we've received countless beautiful emails and phone calls from many of you, echoing our same overwhelmed sentiment: "WE MUST HELP." We spoke to several of you about starting a housing project, about building a house for Jil, about your churches coming and building a home for them, about beds, school, food, health care, and brainstorming dozens of ways to help.

Last week, we even took Don of "Hulmes Construction" to visit Jil and to help us begin to organize a way to REALLY help. Don immediately understood our increasingly long list of problems...

How do you help Jil's family without causing community jealousy and more problems for Jil?

How do you even get supplies and materials back to where Jil's little house is? There isn't even a water source anywhere near his house!

How do you build a house on land that he is illegally squatting on?

What if the land owner saw the house and took it from them?

What should the house look like?

Who should build it?

What about all the OTHER families living nearby in equally dire situations?

For months we have struggled with not just how to help, but with the whole issue of extreme poverty.

How is it best helped?

What is the real problem?

How can you help without hurting?

How do you involve the community?

Ever since going with Don, we have barely spoken about it, all overwhelmed with the reality of the situation and the feelings of helplessness, trying to trust the Lord to show us how and when.

Last night, Julie, Hannah and Don watched Lily while we went to eat in town for our anniversary. On our way there, we were quite surprised to see small mountains of sand dumped quite sporadically all along the side of the road. "Wow!" Matt said, "Someone must finally be fixing the road!"

But further down, we saw piles and piles of freshly made cement blocks, again, all quite randomly sprawled across a 3 or 4 block area. Hmmmmm....

This morning, Matt headed to a church about 30 minutes from here as the guest speaker of an Evangelism Seminar. On his way there, he stopped to chat with Jil, already drenched in sweat and working aggressively in the road, patching holes as always. When he saw Matt, he was overjoyed, and Matt assumed it was because of the beds and mattresses Abel had dropped off a few days earlier. Not so...

"My friend!" Jil exclaimed, "Mirlove had our baby! She is a little girl!"

"Wonderful! Congratulations!"

"And my friend!" Jil exlaimed, "In 10 days, we will have a new house!"

WHAT?

The mountains of sand. The blocks. Food for the Poor.

Beginning on Monday, Food for the Poor, "serving the poorest of the poor", an organization who has a branch located about 30 minutes from here, is building Jil a new house. And not just Jil. LOTS of new houses.

Apparently, Jil's area has caught their eye over the past few years as a zone especially impoverished. This is how their program works: If you have no cement foundation, and no blocks, no cement in your house, and if you have NO foundation or start of a new house, and if they select your zone, and IF you agree to feed 6 workers 2 meals a day for 10 days...You can move into one of their new houses.

They are all built identically, with a strong foundation and cement block, painted vivid colors, each long house split into two "apartments" and shared by two families. Front doors. Small porches. Solid roofs. One qualified "Food for the Poor" boss comes in for each home, hires laborers from Saccanville, and builds each house. They have bought a patch of land right next to Jil's zone, and everyone in Jil's zone who meets the above requirements will have a new house waiting for them by the end of JUNE.

FOR MONTHS we have fretted, worried, thought, planned, talked, cried and prayed. And it was already taken care of. Not just sufficiently, but WELL. Perfectly.

It is already done. For the price of 10 days of rice and oil, Jil will have a new house. Young men in Saccanville will have work. Young men in Saccanville will get fed. The poorest families in the zone will have dry places to sleep, strong walls to protect them.

AND I DIDN'T DO IT.

Just as the smallest homely sparrow falling from the heavens isn't lost before our infinite Father, neither is Jil. Neither is Jil. Neither is his brand new precoius baby, conceived out of violence and violation and darkness. Neither are his dear children, hungry and dirty and happy.

Neither is Jil. (Neither is YOU).

All along, God was Jil's Father. God had a perfect plan in the works for the perfect time in His perfect way....and swept the miracle in, knocking me humbly to the ground, reminding me of three things:

1- I am NOT the only way God works.

He can choose to use me or He can choose to accomplish His will through someone else. Me, my plans, my money, my talents...all just tiny specks before Him...NONE of which He NEEDS in order to take care of His creation, to bring people to Himself.

2- We must keep working with what God gave us.

God has clearly brought Matt and I to Haiti to help train His children to bring Haiti to Christ. We don't know how to build a birdhouse next to a Lowe's store, much less stake out to construct a new Saccanville. Does this mean that He doesn't sometimes ask us to do things out of our comfort zone, personalities, talents or giftings? Heavens no!

But it does mean that before I pick up a new "rock for my cart" that we have to spend a lot of time making sure that God is indeed calling us to do something totally outside of the ministry He has made us for...trusting that if He's NOT asking US to do it, and yet desires it to be done, that He WILL PROVIDE.

3- WAIT.

Why does the Bible talk so much about "Waiting on the Lord" and then I am always anxious to make stuff happen? Does God not know infinitely more about Jil's situation and Jil's solution than I ever have or ever will? Has He not followed Jil every day of his life? Heard every cry of his heart? Known every need that he has? DO I NOT TRUST HIM?

Again, this is not to say that we should say in the midst of heartbreaking situations, "Well, trust God. Have a nice day!" May it never be!! But this whole time that I have been fretting for Jil, in the SAME WAY that I was hopeless for Pehpay, it never occurred to me that GOD COULD TAKE CARE OF IT. Without me. With awesomeness.

AH, I have a ways to go, don't I? I feel so incredibly small in light of His beauty and perfect plan and His abounding grace today. Incredibly and happily small.

Humbled and overjoyed by the reminder that HE is on the throne, orchestrating His will, uninhibited by where we live or poverty or the powers that be, government, the economy, hatred, violence, sin, selfishness, culture, language, land ownership, bank accounts, water shortages, location, and beautifully uninhibited by the best-intentioned-yet-skeptic-in-the-hands-of-an-All-Powerful-God ME.

PRAISE THE LORD.

Still wanna help? Interested in helping the poorest of the poor with some of their pressing physical needs? Check out Food for the Poor.

Pictures of Jil's newest little one and the project coming soon...

5 years...

In January of 2004, I went to Port-au-Prince to live and work for 6 months with Christian Service International. Matt and I had JUST started dating in September, and the international mission field was something he had never experienced. I knew by then that the Lord had called me to make Him known in some of the darkest and forgotten places, and Matt and I knew that if "we" were going to continue, then he needed to know if this might be something the Lord had for him as well.

So, as soon as the semester ended, he came to Haiti for a week, fell in love with the people and the work, and we knew when we took this picture that week: God had brought us together to bring people to Himself.

A year later...

A year after that...

...then 2...

Moved to Haiti and soon after, 3 years of marriage and pregnant...

4 (and a little more tired than we used to be :)....

...And suddenly, today, it's been 5 YEARS. Unbelievable. When we look over the past 5 years, it is almost overwhelming to think about how He has directed, carried and loved us as a couple. No one over the past five years has done more to stretch and sharpen and guide me in my walk with the Lord more than Matt, and together, God has done so much to transform and grow us.

It has been the times when Christ is the foundation, stability, desire and motivation of our marriage that times have been so sweet!

We praise the Lord that He has a plan for our lives, and that He put us together for His glory...

golf, beds and being part of His plan

Finally, a group shot of our students joining us from Port-au-Prince. They've now been with Emmaus for over four months, and have become a beautiful, passionate, intelligent and driven part of the student body. Please continue to pray for this group of Our Family, as they continue to heal, continue to have great concern for their siblings, parents and friends still living in tents in Port-au-Prince, and as they continue to seek the Lord's will for their futures.

THANK YOU to the many of you that have made their presence, transformation, growth and care at EBS possible...
We don't have enough English speakers this week to do our normal Wednesday night "English Conversation" Night, so last night Don and Matt did a special "Sports of the World in English" seminar for interested students. Here, Don is trying to explain the world of baseball, and later, Matt introduced them to an entirely new sport: golf.

The fact that someone could make a million dollars in just a few hours for playing ANY sport was just overwhelming to the first year class (and albeit, to me!), but ESPECIALLY for hitting a little white ball in a little hole. They had a really good time, and asked this morning if we could replace the daily 5:00-5:30 soccer match with whiffle ball, golf, or frisbee instruction some days. Now THAT would be fun...

However, the World Cup starts tomorrow, so it is still soccer that is capturing everyone's attention. My Saturday English class even requested its' first cancellation due to the Saturday morning match! As always, Brazil is Haiti's favored team, especially since Haiti won't be represented this World Cup.

Yesterday, Abel purchased and delivered more than mattresses to Jil's family, but metal bed frames, too. While we hated to miss out on seeing Jil's reaction, we try to stay "behind" giving as much as possible, so just took Abel's word for it that they were THRILLED. Looking out into the night sky last night, I felt SUCH joy and praise KNOWING that tonight, for the first time, Jil and his wife and their children all were sleeping two feet above the mud and on clean, soft beds. Thank you SO much to the many of you that helped to make this possible.

What a gift, huh, that He uses us! What a gift, family, that He has chosen to use each of us to be His hands and feet to the World...giving a glass of water to the thirsty, beds for the weary, medicine for the sick, clothes for the naked, freedom for the prisoners, and BEST, HOPE for the hopeless, light for the darkness, new life for the dying. Maybe we'll never know how He uses each prayer, each dollar, each sacrifice, each work, each act...

....But we know that He has chosen to use those things to pursue His creation, to adopt His children, and THAT is beautiful enough for me. Thanks for being a part of that with us!