an "Aha Moment" worth writing home about

This morning was a big morning.

To the outsider, it wouldn't have seemed big.  No one could find the key to the church, so a little children's classroom was opened and around 8 am, young men and women hiked up the final hill to the church and bee-lined for the dark room.  Six or seven climbed into each tiny wood bench-desk, and I had to laugh at how huge my students seemed crouched over their notebooks overlaying a single rickety plank of wood.

So in the musty room in tiny desks without so much as a chalkboard, we reunited...a pregnant foreign woman and about 25 passionate, 20-30 year old, mostly university educated and very driven young Haitians.

We always begin with about 20 minutes of conversation, and today I gave them the subject of "what I wish for 2011."  I expected that politics would come up quickly, and it did...but not in the heated fashion I had expected from a room representing the brightest, most involved of Haiti.

I quite unexpectedly found myself standing before a very defeated group of friends.

"Everything is awful," Donny began.  "I mean, we all see pictures of Port-au-Prince, and I am so embarrassed.   I am ashamed that the world knows Haiti can't do anything right."

Others jumped in on the same line.  "Other countries, the United State (always forgetting the -s here :), they all give us money and help, and what can we show?  Haiti probably got more free money in 2010 than ever in history, and look at our country."

"We can't even do an election right," said Benjamin, the biggest and probably most influential guy in the class.  "Everything is wrong, and no matter how much we try, WE, the people, can't seem to change ANYthing."

"You know what I want in 2011, teacher?" Ricky asked, a very thin and timid kid of about 20 who has no family and lives on his own.   "I want a job.  I went to school.  I sold everything we had when my family died and went to university.  I have a degree.  I just want a job.  I could DO something if I could DO something, you know?"

An eruption of agreement followed as I saw the great burden in each of the men's eyes.  "I want to go to work in the morning," Renauld (pronounced "Ray-Know") said.  "I want to work all day and come home at the end of the day and give my wife and our children a little money.  I want to pay for MY family."

I felt devastated for their frustration, for their unmet GOOD desires, for their helplessness.

"I have thought something over the break" Renauld said thoughtfully from the back row.  He is a very rare light-eyed Haitian, and when he looks at you and carefully pieces his feelings together in English, everyone listens.

"They say that if Haiti doesn't improve and that if we don't have a new president in place by February 7th (the date the Haitian constitution demands a new president), that the other countries will stop giving us money.  So I was thinking over break, and I thought about all of the money Haiti has gotten recently and over the last 200 years."

"And," he continued thoughtfully, "I have realized that I don't think it is what Haiti needs anymore."

"We've had so much money, and it hasn't changed anything for 99% of us at all.  Things just become more corrupt, and we become more hopeless and angry."

"Hmmm." I said, waiting with the rest of the class for his conclusion to this issue.

"I think," Renauld said carefully, "That Haiti needs to try the one thing it hasn't."

"What's that?" I asked.

Benjamin quipped back in, "I think it's Jesus."

"Jesus." Renauld said.  "We've never tried Jesus as a country.  We've never lived a way so that He can bless us, like Joseph.  I've never tried Jesus for real.  We've tried leaders, and money, and freedom and Satan."

"I think this Jesus is the only hope that Haiti has."

To my shock, gruffs and nods of affirmation again filled the room, and it was obvious that the class agreed with Renauld.

If I had said that to this class at any point over the last 9 months, I would have lost my class.  I might have been scoffed and laughed out of the church.

These aren't "easy" men and women...These aren't people that buy whatever you sell them, aren't men and women that say things without thinking...These aren't men and women who have never seen anything different...these have not been students I have been able to any way convince of ANYTHING...I've just taught through the Bible, and they've just come because they are bored and because English seems like a way to improve their lives.

This whole time, I've believed Jesus to be the only hope for each student, and they have believed it to be English.  And in English, and entirely on their own, they have mentally and critically found the only answer to be Him.

Today, their "Aha Moment" brought mine.  I am praising the Lord and thankful for all the terribleness.  Men, and money, disease and the job market, presidents and world powers have brought Haiti nothing but despair and deep-rooted dissatisfaction.  I Praise the Lord...because today what I have never been able to tell them, what I never could have convinced them of, my students selected on their own.

How many throughout history have been led to Jesus with their Brains!

"OK," I said, not wanting to scare anyone off by laughing or crying.  "Then let's talk about Him."

And we did.  Two hours later everyone headed home clutching precious pieces of the book of Luke, anxious to discuss the life of their Only Hope next Saturday.

It might have just been a discussion in a dark, dirt-floor room in a tiny village called Saccanville, in a tiny, dark, dirt-floor country called Haiti that has been accused of being unable to produce anything but more Haitians...

...but today it produced Joy in His heart, Glory to His throne, Singing from the Heavenly Hosts, and I am confident that today it produced in a bundle of hearts a beautiful seed for salvation.

As long as He so clearly continues to be at work here, pursuing His people, we will be too, and you with us (we pray!)  Thank you for your continued prayers for this special group of men and women, and for Haiti.

I have several more beautiful things to share with you that have unfolded in the last days...but this blog is too long.  Monday!