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...