this post has no answers

Two very different things seem to be dominating themes in life and ministry right now: the dependency issue, and a newly discovered Godly pride in many of the men and women we’re working with.

Hard stuff first.  Maybe you’re not aware of “the dependency issue”….I sure wasn’t until we moved to Haiti full-time.  Short-term visits to third world countries, I saw and experienced and played rolls in dependency…but I never really realized it was a problem.

But once we started seeing  the people who received the hand-out, whether it was 20 bucks or a new soccer ball the next week, and the next week, and the next week, and met their kids and passed their house every day…it became different.

Once they have a name, once they are a friend, once they are a neighbor, it’s all different.

Once a talented, intelligent, capable and strong young man comes to you and tells you something you KNOW isn’t true, hoping it will get him what he wants but not actually help himself at all, it’s different. 

Once you know the names of the children, most often sent to beg on behalf of others, and see them—no exaggeration—beat to a bloody pulp by larger children to get the ____ that you just gave them and you feel sick, it’s different.

Once you see a capable, funny, creative and strong woman come to you and ask you, again and again, to care for her children, and she can’t look you in the eye, it’s different.

And--as is a particularly epic fail issue I have now created--once the person comes to you almost every single day, asking for money and starting at the dirt, and you feel downright irritated and frustrated every time you see the person to the point where you can’t look THEM in the eye, and you came to be SISTERS and to give Jesus unashamed…it’s different.

It is that time of year.  The time of year when lots of people need extra help.  Most kids who will be going to school are there by now.  We helped a lot of people get started, and helped even more people finish.  If they did books, we did uniforms.  If they did uniforms, we helped with tuition.  It feels a lot healthier all around to help rather than to do, and a lot of proud parents made it possible, with a bit of help, for their children to go to school. 

It is good, help is needed, we are helping, and sometimes we find a way to help well.

University starts November first, so we are now in the far more expensive round of school help. 

Far more expensive = far less possible for people, making the asks far more costly and much less “50/50”.  Most everyone wants to “borrow”, but you know when you’re lending a farmer producing enough food only to feed his family with no other source of income $600 USD, it will never be paid back.

And we’re ok with that.  We call it all giving, and if we never see it again, we never see it again. 

But from then on out, the farmer, who was your good friend, kind of disappears.  You don’t see him around anymore, he doesn’t come to visit and doesn’t ask you to visit, and when you do see him, he looks at his feet and shifts from side to side.  He knows you know he knows.  And he can’t.

And while you did EXACTLY what he asked you to do, sacrificially, there’s little joy for anyone involved, and a relationship you all worked hard on, and was beautiful, almost feels ruined and cheap. 

Even Ezechiel. Enick.  We bend over backwards to give everything we can to their families, their schools, their churches.  It blesses us to be a part of what they’re doing.  It blesses them to be able to DO some things in their communities, like educate the children.  It blesses the church and school to have these helps. 

But you know what?  Everyone knows that money didn’t grow on a tree.  And as much as having some money has helped people, it has also brought a lot of people to them asking for more help, and brought a lot of negative pressure on them when they can’t help, and made it awfully hard for them, at times, to give Christ but NOT money when people KNOW they have a way to get money to give.

Back to our worst current situation, the mom.  I know where she lives and it is awful.  No other word.  I know her five children, and they are emaciated.  Entirely.  Her common-law husband has a cow, and they drink the milk and sell the rest.  I buy it every week, at double the cost, trying to help.  It is not enough.

At first, years ago, she just came and asked for 1 or 200 gourdes at a time, 2-5 dollars US…and never more than once a month.  It was nothing, I was happy to help. 

Eventually, a job opened up cleaning a house, and I asked her if she wanted it.  I was pleased she could now take care of herself and help her children, and it seemed win-win!  Her pay was enough to care for them all.

But not a lot of time passed before I realized the house just wasn’t getting cleaned.  I met up with her again, told her again what needed to happen, showed her, did it myself in front of her, talked to her about it, asked if she had any questions.  Nope, she was good.

A few more weeks went by, and the house was a disaster.  I popped in once when she was working, found that she was using the washer to wash her kids clothes, the freezer was full of ice she was selling, and she was ironing clothes from the community and charging people for them.  All to add to her salary.

While I appreciated her sense of entrepreneurship, this was not working.  Visitors were coming and going and the house was a mess.

Instead of firing her, I started going in after her each week and cleaning the house myself….so deep runs my fear of confrontation and my desire for this to WORK.  I talked to her again.  I cleaned it again.  Again. Again. 

A few weeks later, I found the washer running, dishes piled up…and my friend asleep on the bed.

I had hired her.  Now I had to let her go. 

I  got up all my braveness and told her we just weren’t pleased with her work and had to let her go.  “Hah, I thought you were going to let me go MONTHS ago!” was her response.  “No problem!”

Sigh.  If I'd known she KNEW she should be fired, I wouldn't have been so sick over telling her!

But, you guessed it.  Not a week went by before she was back at my door with the same true stories…”my kids are hungry…they need to go to school…we are hungry...now I have no income.”

And yep, I started giving her help again, and fast forward to now…she comes to the house or office 4-5 times a week.  She will stand outside of the Seminary for hours, waiting in the hot sun for me to get out of class only to ask me for $2 for her children, who are starving.  And they are.  When I give her a big chunk of money, she returns a few days later with new weave in her hair and a new shirt, asking for $2 for her children, who are starving.

And they are.

I can never say no because it’s $2 and it’s children. 

But every time I see her at my door, I inwardly groan as I reach for my purse…the friend I once had I have played a part in ruining, and now this woman, who has proven to be smart and creative, but terrible with money and irresponsible with work, sits at her home and does nothing, because tomorrow I will give her $2 again.

I have helped her thousands of times…and yet I see now that I haven’t helped her at all.

This is, of course, a very extreme example, but you are starting to see the picture.

Now, imagine you know hundreds of people in your fifth world country, and that dozens are coming to the steel door of your block house to ask over the electric whirr of your fan for $2….$10…$600.  Every single week.  And that 75% of what is being asked for is truly needed, and most of the rest would truly be a good things.  

And that no matter HOW much money you do or don’t make, you will ALWAYS be able to afford $2, $2, $2, and your children, your children, will simply never go hungry.  I can’t even imagine any circumstance in which we would have NO POSSIBLE way to feed our children.

Sigh, this post has no answers.

Matt and I have wished for years for God to give us a supernatural excel spreadsheet.  We would enter in name of family, type of house, number of people, household income, portions of Scripture dealing with giving coats and feeding poor, hit “enter” and out would calculate the "perfect love" response.  And WE WOULD DO IT. 

(if you happen to have one of those, please attach and email ASAP.  thank you.)

Until then, it’s one friend at a time, a lot of praying, a lot of yeses and the blessings and burdens that come with them, a few no’s and the blessings and burdens that come with that.

The things we know for sure:  

1) Jesus understands…He was surrounded by a lot of needs in His days on earth, and I’m pretty sure He still is. A lot of times He helped and a lot of times He slipped away.  He always seemed to deal with the REAL problem...sin, faith, darkness, light.  He's our model.

2) The yes OR the no, if not done through and because of His great love, is a clanging cymbal... another thing Haiti and the world do NOT need.  

3) The only truly life-changing, sustaining, powerful thing we posses and can give is Christ.  

4) We appreciate your prayers (and the help several of you have sent!) as we try to navigate how to love, and help, well. 

I’ll have to share the positive side, “newly discovered Godly pride in our brothers and sisters,” next blog. This is already a mile long…

As always, share your thoughts!!