Sometime in the middle of the night I wake up due to an unusual silence. The fan blowing humid air at me has shut off and everything is still and dark. With no city power, the battery bank powering the guesthouse must have given out. A few moments later I hear the rumble, rumble of a generator being started up. Within seconds the fan kicks back to life once again. I doze off again only to be awakened shortly thereafter by growling dogs and crowing roosters.
6:15 a.m.
Wide awake long before my alarm goes off, I take the time to read through the devotional guide Hungry For Life has provided. Today’s topic is the importance of solitude and how quiet time is not about being all along, but being alone with God. Some of the reference verses include:
Mark 1:35
And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He (Jesus) went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
And Lamentations 3:25-28 The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because He hath borne it upon him.
By 6:50 a.m. the rest of the group begins to wake up and get ready so I get to work unlocking a myriad of security gates and doors so we can get into the courtyard. The final hurdle is an iron gate leading onto the street, but no matter which one of the forty keys I try the lock refuses to budge.
By now it’s already 7:30 a.m., the time our driver, Pierre, is supposed to pick us up and drive us to the airport, but I have no way of seeing if he is waiting outside the gate or not. I decide to just call him and he reassures me he is coming. This really means nothing to me as in Haiti “I’m coming” could mean in 5 minutes or 5 hours.
I get back to work on the gate with the help of a Haitian youth who has at some point replaced our guard from the previous night. When we finally manage to get it open he high fives me with a big grin.
A few minutes later I hear the friendly beep beep of our taxi van and after piling all our suitcases on top we squish in.
It takes thirty minutes to drive over extremely rough backroads to the airport.
As soon as we arrive at the domestic terminal we are swarmed by baggage handlers and money changers. Many of them recognize me and ask where Jason is. When I tell them he is taking care of our boys they have a big laugh.
Once inside, we head straight through security and then wait by the MAF office. I greet the staff there and it’s special to catch up with them. Heading over to the office window I’m handed two flight manifests so I quickly get to work dividing up the group and writing down names.
The flight from Haiti’s capital to her north western tip is both familiar and beautiful. Tin shacks crowded together haphazardly, thin and then disappear, replaced by brown and green mountain ranges.
On the left a turquoise ocean sparkles invitingly.
Thirty minutes later as we near Anse Rouge colourful palettes of salt flats dot the shoreline.
The vegetation becomes more and more desert-like the closer we get to Anse Rouge.
When Lemuel mission materializes beneath us, the airplane banks sharply and then descends down, a few minutes later connecting solidly with the hard packed earth below.
On the ground we are greeted by the Brunsch family who joined the Lemuel Mission six months ago, and who I had met on my last trip to Haiti in March.
Photo missing their two daughters.\
After a delicious breakfast of tropical fruit, cereal and freshly baked bread we receive a tour of the ever growing compound.
It now includes a church, school, several homes and guest rooms, outhouses and shower houses, a giant cafeteria and kitchen, an outdoor gazebo and a new kindergarten building under construction that the team raised money for.
We spend the day gettting to know the local youth and making home visits.
One thing that quickly becomes very evident is how valuable water is to the community. To think that people actually drink the water from this waterhole is inconceivable.
It's also incredible to walk through the hand dug canals that the locals have dug so that they can channel water from the mountains to their gardens.
How quickly do we take for granted that clean drinking water just flows into our sinks at the turn of a tap, when others struggle so much to receive even this most basic necessity of life?
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