an added crisis, English aches and proper placement

The Easley's made it back to the States safely, and our visiting professor who planned to come tomorrow cancelled yesterday.  This is the second visiting professor who has had to cancel for April, totaling 60 hours of teaching that suddenly needs covered!  Lucner and Matt "flipped for it" this morning and are each rather anxiously attacking 30 hours of classroom time...a HUGE amount of preparation!

Matt will be teaching Inductive Bible Study and Lucner, Civil Rights.  I'm very thankful for these guys and everyone's continual willingness to sacrificially help out when needed.  They are both also feeling the weight of their master's studies, administrative tasks, and the other courses that they are both teaching...please be praying for us!

Sofie is officially 30 weeks along (see the girls' blog here) , Lily and Dodo and I are all feeling better, Matt is on his way to town now to preach at an English chapel service that a friend is having, the heat keeps ramping up and life continues to be a busy joy.

Today's English class was especially fun.  We just began Unit 12, which talks about emotional, spiritual and physical health and problems.  It begins with learning the parts of the body, which had me bent over with laughter.

No one ever mastered the pronunciation of "thumb", which has lots of non-Creole sounds in it, and there were lots of good questions, like "Teacher, are mouth and belly synonyms?", "Can I add -ache to any body part if it hurts, like back-ache, elbow-ache and buttocks-ache?" followed by "What is a buttocks?" and "Why is your small finger called a pinkie?" and "What do you call a sixth finger if you have a sixth finger?"

It is also April's Fools Day in Haitian culture, as well, and I always get particularly nailed being rather gullible.  The favorite joke every year seems to be to tell someone that someone else was looking for them, and then laughing hysterically whenever the two people find each other and didn't need each other at all.  I fell for this at least 4 times this morning.  Junior got me particularly well, but then his dear conscious bothered him too much during prayer time in chapel and he left the service to find me and to apologize :)

This morning's "Utmost" reading nailed my days struggle again...

Look at our current circumstances.  Do crises which affect us or others in our home, business, country or elsewhere, seem to be crushing in on us?  Are we being pushed out of the presence of God and left with no time for worship?


If so, we must put a stop to such distractions and get into such a living relationship with God that our relationship with others is maintained through the work of intercession, where God works his miracles.  


Beware of getting ahead of God by your very desire to do His will.  We run ahead of Him in 1001 activities, becoming so burdened with people and problems that we don't worship God, and we fail to intercede.  If a burden and its resulting pressure come upon us while we are not in an attitude of worship, it will only produce a hardness towards God and despair in our own souls.    


God continually introduces us to people in whom we have no interest, and unless we are worshiping God the natural tendency is to be heartless towards them...giving them a quick verse of Scripture or leaving them with a hurried, uncaring word of counsel before we go.  A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to our Lord.


Are our lives in the proper place?

matt, church, and what more I could be doing with the language everyone wants!

Matt is coming home tomorrow (hopefully!) and we are VERY ready to have him back! What a wonderful reminder his absence has been of what an attentive, caring, God-fearing, sacrificial, helpful and loving father and husband and best friend Lily and I have in Matt! Despite all of the ways we have seen and felt the Lord working in our hearts during this time apart, we will be quite thankful to be seeking the Lord together TOGETHER. He had a wonderful residency in Jackson, had this past weekend with his family in Philly (finally got to meet that sweet baby nephew of ours!), spends some time tonight and tomorrow in Florida with Sam and Cammie (before they head for Kansas) and then flies back in tomorrow afternoon!

Meanwhile, Lily and I have had a full weekend. I taught my final Saturday English class, and man, the Lord is putting a spark in my heart regarding ESL (English as a Second Language) as and Evangelical tool. I just don't know HOW else I could build relationships with 50 men and women, largely non-Christian, who are out in Haiti, and tell them about Christ EVERY week. I mean, on Saturdays we have UN translators, airline employees, nurses, nuns, doctors, students, business owners, administrators and government employees COME from all over to sit for almost THREE hours (every Saturday for 9 months) and to listen to, absorb, write down, and SHARE every word we say.

After working with my group of 50 just 2 Saturdays, I could feel the change in their attitudes as they began to get to know me and let me know them some, too. The coldness that I felt the first week was entirely absent yesterday. What an AWESOME ministry opportunity, not just to reach these 50, but to then have these 50 reach circles of Haitians (and UN...Brazilians, Chileans) throughout the North that I would NEVER have a chance to talk to!

It was awesome, and I need to keep thinking about how I might be able to use the language I was born into as an awesome evangelical tool. I would also want to change the Christian curriculum we currently use at the Seminary to make it Evangelical in nature. I am confident that if we were able to develop EVERY grammar/vocabulary/speech lesson into a evangelical format, we would still have the same huge numbers of non-Christians coming for class...there are just not many native English speakers here to learn from! Hmmm...lots to think and pray about! Share your ideas/thoughts/experiences...

Today Kate, Lily and I went to Paul's church in town. He and the other two men Matt went to Jackson with returned to Haiti yesterday, so it was wonderful to hear a bit about his experiences today and to hear a "I've been studying the Bible 10 hours a day for 2 weeks!" fired up sermon. Paul is a godly and unique man, and his family is just as much of an encouragement to us as he is.

Ah, the harvest here is SO ripe and the work is SO sweet. Many days, like Saturday, with 50 faces listening in anticipation as I talked about what it means to "glorify God in all that we do", I have to stop in my tracks and praise the Lord for using ME, when I have nothing of value to offer outside of Him, when He doesn't need me in the least, to make Him known here in Haiti, here in the world!

I sought the Lord,

and He answered me,

and delivered me from all my fears.

They looked to Him and were RADIANT,

and their faces will never be ashamed.

This poor man cried,

and the Lord heard him

and saved him out of all his troubles.

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him,

and rescues them.

O, Taste and see that the Lord is good!

How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

Psalm 34