how it really is.

Last week, with a mango cobbler in the oven and wearing pajama pants, a team from Florida unexpectedly appeared at my door and came in to chat for a while.  

The team leader, Wayne, was a man I've met a few times before and I know he and Barbara to be faithful blog-followers and partners of the Seminary.

Before Wayne asked me to share a few thoughts with the team, he said to them, "Now, most missionaries won't tell you how it REALLY is...they'll just tell you the good stuff off the surface.  But if you want to know what it's really like, the Ayars life in Haiti, you gotta check out this blog."

At first, I was a bit honored.  Hey, something different.  That's good!

But then, I thought...huh.  Why do you think most people don't do that, Stace?  Sometimes if no one else is doing it, maybe YOU shouldn't be doing it, either.  It's possible he's kindly saying you're a nut-job who's splaying all her issues on the world wide web.

WELL, that may be, but good or bad...too late now, and as a disclaimer, the point of this blog was never to inform you of our life or to make people feel good about begin involved with us, EBS, or Haiti (though I hope that is sometimes the case).  

Instead, I hope the blog can be used by Him through this call He has on our life to impact Our relationships with God...a cross-cultural, multi-lingual, personal God.  

Sometimes, this means opening our hearts and minds to a very different perspective...a challenge, pain and joy that we get to experience daily here...and is worth sharing.


THIS is one of those posts.  You don't have to understand it.  I don't understand it.  You probably shouldn't let your children read it.  You don't have to agree with my conclusion.  

All I ask--should you chose to continue--is that you try, with me, to have an open heart, open mind, and open-cultural lens, and that we take our questions and confusions and heartbreak, as always, with faith to the feet of Him who knows.

Agreed?


When Lily told me there was a woman at the end of our path Monday, I wiped my damp hands off on a holey tea-towel and stepped out the door ready to greet whomever. But as soon as my eyes met the woman's, I balked. 

I've never figured out how to truly describe the look of one close to death, but the woman at the end of my walk looked like she had stepped out of a coffin and onto my path.

Her arms hung limp and heavy at her sides, her cheeks were gaunt, her shoulders and hip bones protruding under her child-sized t-shirt, and the breeze, the BREEZE, was moving her ever-so-slightly as she stood, lifeless.  

Even her skin looked HEAVY, too heavy for her to hold up.  

She looked every bit a dark skeleton, and as I drew closer, I noticed large sores all over her arms and face, her lips cracked and white and flaking, her hand clawing occasionally over a scab on her forearm. 

I had seen her before in town, but NOT looking like this.  She didn't lean in for the customary kiss, nor pick up her hand to shake mine.  Honestly, I'm not sure that she had the energy.  I'm not even sure how she made it to my yard.  

I asked her her name, trying to act like her appearance was normal, and without moving her lips, she told me Cadet, wife of Ti-Boss.  

Yes, that's where I knew her from.  Ti-Boss's real name is J-something, but everyone calls him Ti-Boss. He's a skilled tailor, whipping out uniforms, our curtains, clothing and sheets rapidly and well from his tiny foot-pedaled iron sewing machine.  

I had heard from Rene a few weeks ago that Ti-Boss was very sick, that his wife was very sick, too.  That Ti-Boss's family had come all the way from Au-Bois to get him and that he was there, she was still here, both unable to care for themselves, neither caring for their boys.  

They were always a very skinny, very quiet, very respectful family.  But not like this.

When Cadet realized I knew who she was, I saw a hint of relief in her eyes, but no smile from her now bleeding lip.  

She struggled to get out her reason for coming, gasping.  She didn't really need to explain anything.  It was obvious.  It was already killing me.

"I have no money to go to the doctor.  Ti-Boss is sicker than I, gone...can't work.  No income.  Kids, hungry.  No school.  I have nothing."

My mind is swimming, and while I frequently pray in "ask" situations about what to do, there was no question of whether I needed to help or not.  I couldn't not help.  I could hardly stand it, even WITH helping.

I asked her to come to the office the next morning to talk with me, promising I would talk to Matt and that we would do what we could to help her.  

I didn't just want to give her money.  I wanted to talk to her.  She couldn't stand there much longer.  I needed to think.  I knew her appearance would greatly disturb Lily, who is downright obsessed with maladies as it is, so I didn't feel I could invite her in.  This seemed like the right thing to tell her.  I don't know.  I hope so.

So, I shared the heartbreak with Matt that evening and he agreed we definitely should help if I felt led.  He and I were thinking the same thing based on other cases we've seen...maybe something like AIDS.   

As promised, her stick-figure appeared at my office door first thing Tuesday, and I begged her to sit, though I could see she was uncomfortable...She really just wanted the help and wanted to go.  

I asked a bit about her family, and talked for a moment about the recent rains and events, and then slid an envelope across the desk to her.  

"Because you are giving me this money, I'm going to go to church Monday," she said immediately, eyes wide and voice urgent.

"Ummm, ok."  I said, caught off guard by her bizarre response.  "That's good, if that's what you want to do.  But you don't have to, you know."

"We used to go to church, you know" she said just as urgently, weakly.  "Then we got so discouraged.  But you gave me this money, and Monday there is a weekly prayer service, and I'm going to go."

"I understand.  We pray that this money will be a blessing to you and your family.  If you want to go to a prayer service, that's great.... but..."

This was my chance.

"You know, Cadet, you don't have to go to church.  If you are looking for God, you don't have to go to church.  You can meet God here, in your home, on the road.  If you are looking for Him, He promises to be found."

She looked overwhelmed.  No.  Terrified.  

"Oh, NO"  she quickly said.  "I'm not looking for God.  I don't want to find Him.  I just want Him to do a thing for me.  I've tried everything..." she looked down quickly, and I knew she meant she'd spent some good time and money with the witchdoctor..."and nothing is working.  I just figure if I have this missionary money, and I go to the prayer service, maybe He will do something for me."

I told her that God was nothing like the witchdoctor...functions nothing like a witchdoctor.  You don't take your problem and some money to God, and He does what you want for a great price, and holds it over you in the form of fear forever.  I told her what God HAS done for her...

"Whatever" she finally said, very anxious to go.  "I just want healed.  Thank you."

I didn't think I could feel more bewildered after she left. 


I was wrong.

Almost immediately, a Haitian female friend and godly woman popped her head in my office.  

"Stacey, please tell me you didn't give that woman money."

"Uhhhm.  Yeah, I did.  I mean, did you see her?  Of course I did."

"Stacey!  She and her husband have the sickness of Satan."  (Open mind, friend...you promised!...this is a GOOD friend who has proved herself wise and godly and full of fruit!)

"You mean they were cursed or something?"

"No.  They made a deal with Satan and when you open yourself to Satan and ask him to help you, the result is death.  What do you think your money is going to do about THAT!?"

"Uhhh.  I don't know.  Feed their kids?  What do you mean?  I'm sorry... what are you talking about?"

So here's the very-long-story-short.  As apparently "everyone" knows.  

They've been living together (and "man-that-you-live-with" and the word for "husband" are the same exact word...seen as the same thing by non-Christians) for several years, and he thought she was cheating on him.

He asked her, she said no, but he was confident that she was sleeping around.  SO, he went to one of the many community witchdoctors, forked over a sizable amount of money and bought the poison of Satan.  

This poison of Satan, apparently, would go into any man she slept with, making him very sick, and would make her very sick, as well, and Ti-Boss would have his revenge.

It is understood that Ti-Boss gave her this poison without her knowing, and watched the men of the community closely, waiting for her and her lovers to fall sick.

After several months, nobody seemed to be sick, so, he figured he had been wrong, she hadn't been cheating on him after all, and he let her come back home.  

But, Satan's poison can't do nothing when it was intended for evil, so after Ti-Boss slept with her, he was poisoned instead, as was she.

OK.  

So, remember where we are, remember there is no Web-MD, remember there is way more knowledge of and confidence in Satan and tradition then there is of viruses and transmissions, and here we are.

It occurs to me when she finishes that maybe we actually ARE talking about AIDS or some kind of virus, but by different terms, because if you haven't noticed by now, we all have very different terminology.  Maybe we're just talking about sexually transmitted diseases, and a witchdoctor got paid in the middle.  Or, maybe we're talking about the poison of Satan.  I don't know.  

What I DO know: If I let you into my life, invite you into my home, bring you into my family circle, then what you do and say will affects us.  If I invite you in, I invite you to have power...the power to help or hurt, the power to build or destroy, the power to bring joy or pain.  

I believe firmly, after these years, that if we are not alive in Christ, and we go out of our way and invite Satan into our lives, into our homes, into our families, that he then has power there.

Add in that your country has invited him?  Your community?  Your leaders?  Your grandparents?  Your parents?  Yeah.  That's a pretty decent foothold, if we give it to him. 

By the time she left, I was right where I'm asking you to be.

Sitting at His feet, not knowing what the truth is (after all: God=The Truth, Satan=King of Lies), not knowing what I should have done, should do, not even knowing what to think.   A lot of emotions...discouragement, doubt, depression, frustration...thinking...thinking...wondering...


Then O. Chambers for November 13th (SAME day) told me this:

We must battle through our moods, feelings, and emotions into absolute devotion to Jesus.  We must break out of our own little world of experience into abandoned devotion to Him.  

All of our fears are sinful, and we create our own fears by refusing to nourish ourselves in our faith.  How can anyone who is identified with Jesus Christ suffer from doubt or fear?  Our lives should be an absolute hymn of praise resulting from irrepressible, triumphant belief.

Doesn't quite answer all your questions?  Mine neither.  

But it sure did change my focus.  

It doesn't matter.  In a very large scheme of things, it doesn't matter what really happened, nor what they have.  Doesn't matter if it's AIDs or something else or Satan's sickness.  

All that matters in this situation is THEM before HIM, and whatever they have and however they got it puts them NO farther from the reaches of His grace, forgiveness and salvation than anyone else.  

What matters is that my belief is irrepressible. Triumphant.  That my devotion is utterly abandoned, despite my little world of experience.  

That there is no doubt.  No fear.  

So, there it was.  

That money might be handed right to a witchdoctor.  But it was my hymn of praise, and therefore, lovely unto Him.  

And my sharing of the Gospel might not at all be what she was interested in or looking for.  But my abandoned devotion requires I share it, and if I see her again, I will share it again.  

Culture, confusion, change, concern, compassion, craziness...nothing can be allowed to take me from His feet.  

So I'm just giving Cadet and Ti-Boss to Him, and hanging out as close to His robes as I can get.

And THAT's how it really is.

Hang with me.  And pray...