my illiterate teachers

I know I just blogged this morning, but you know I write to process.

On Saturday, we have a wonderful group of family coming from our home church in Pilesgrove, NJ.  Matt's flying down to Port-au-Prince to get them, Uncle Don is leading it, his daughter is coming with him and so are 9 others from Sharptown.  Because one of them is a pediatrician, and because we wanted the team to have a chance to spend some good time in the community, on Wednesday they'll be running a medical clinic in the Saccanville Church.

The students will work alongside them to evangelize all the people seen, Dr. Rodney from the Bethesda Clinic in Vaudreil will be helping, and team members will be helping to register patients, take blood pressures/temperatures/weights, fill prescriptions, etc.

So, we've been spending a lot of time the last few days getting ready for the team, planning for the construction they'll be doing, and planning for the medical clinic.  With most everything in place, Lily and I headed out this afternoon to spread the word about the clinic.

I thought a good way to do this would be to write down the basic information in Creole about the clinic, and then take these slips of paper throughout the community.

This didn't work out at all for two reasons:  first, because everyone immediately thought they were tickets required to get into the clinic, and wanted as many as I could possibly give them.  But before I even left the gate, there was a bigger problem.

At the gate, I stood and talked for a bit with Kesner and Joseph, two of our security/gate men.  I handed Kesner the first slip, and he clutched it as if it were valuable, but looked at it as if there was nothing on it.  I quickly remembered that he signs each monthly paycheck with an "x", and it dawned on me that he couldn't read it.  Joseph was looking at the paper just as blindly.  They knew it meant something, but didn't know what.

Embarrassed that I may be making them feel uncomfortable, I quickly told them about the clinic, repeating the information on the papers, caught up on their families, answered their questions about the clinic, and headed out.

This afternoon, Lily and I visited about 25 homes...spoke with over 50 people.  Old people, young men and women, parents, children.  Everyone was anxious to have a tiny slip of paper, and as always, anxious to sit and talk.  Of everyone that I handed a paper to today, there were only four...FOUR, who were able to read it.  (none rapidly)

To everyone else, it was like I had handed them a slip of Japanese currency.  They could tell it had value, but it didn't really mean anything to them.  Once I explained what the paper said, they tucked the slips carefully away to show husbands or neighbors, but everyone quickly memorized the date, time and place that I told them so that they could translate the paper to others.

Four in 50.  I almost felt like some sort of rich snob, embarrassed to be handing something out that pointed out to everyone that they couldn't read it and that I could.

For the first time in my life today, I truly felt the weight of the fact that learning to read when I was four or five was a luxury.  An extravagance that many in the world are never afforded.  A luxury that a large majority of this community, surrounding a seminary, rarely think about not having.  When I think about all that reading and writing has given me, has done to shape me, has done to form me, encourage me, and grow me in my walk with the Lord...I feel overwhelmingly blessed.

What you and I have right now in writing and in reading this is not a merited thing.  It is yet another gift.

And yet after seeing face after face stare blankly at their small scrap of paper, glowing over the prospects of medical care they can actually afford, (62 cents a person, with medication), we still came home marveling over the beauty of those around us.

We sat with fifty people, and all fifty were thrilled to sit with us.  All fifty asked about Matt.  All fifty grinned at Lily and half offered her food.  All fifty asked about Sofie, asked how I was feeling, wanted to hear about things at the Seminary, and most asked about my dad and sister.  All fifty, all fifty offered me the chair they were sitting on.

So no one could read.  There might be a lot of voodoo in this community, but sitting in the dirt so that someone you barely know can sit in your only chair has nothing to do with Satan.  Handing a round foreign child your bread when it is all you have and your ribs show through your shirt speaks only of Jesus and nothing else.

Once again, in a poor, dirt, Satan-worshipping, illiterate rice community, I ran into Jesus all over the place and came home awed and touched...not by a young man's inability to read 10 words, but by a people's ability to show His love, despite all the circumstances that would suggest otherwise.

What am I doing with all the gifts He has given me?  What am I laying down, giving up, forking over to make sure His love, His way, is obvious to everyone around me?  And with what attitude?

Will I ever stop learning from a people who cannot read?  May it never be.