Thursday, November 19, 2009

Already all-ready.

Yet another eventful week has come and gone.
A blur of school projects and planning, out trips, guitar jams and decking the halls.
Yes, I'm happy to announce that Haiti has been CHRISTMASIFIED!
But all extras aside, there is one thing that I can conclude after a week like this...
The Lord hears the prayers of His people.

Let me bring you up to speed.
A LOT has happened from the time from my last post about the mountain family until now.
First of all, after my blog about my first visit with the family, I received a comment on my Here on Earth blog from a guy named Chris who gave me great hope. He and a few other people from the States had already made contact with family and were organizing fundraisers and team trips to continue to help the family recover from last fall's hurricane. Unfortunately, due to the nature of a blog post, I could not follow up with him (no contact info), but the good news is this: Just last week during team orientation, Chris happened to be in the group! As you can probably imagine, I was thrilled to re-connect with him!
Then on Wednesday afternoon, midway through our Grade 5 solubility experiment, I got a knock on my door from Sadrac who said that he was traveling with Chris and a few other team members to take a bunch of supplies to the mountain family. Grayden and Sammy were not to disappointed that school had to be cut a bit short as I switched my head out of Grade 5 science charts to help Chris and the group pack up for our mountain trek.
From there we headed out with peanut butter sandwiches, clothes, tarps, solar powered lights, toys, and as many other supplies that we could carry. As usual, they welcomed us with open arms, and we spent the next two hours inflating air mattresses, arranging for baby Fania (who has a bad cough) to be seen at the clinic the following day, re-tarping their tents, playing with the kids and on and on.
While all of this was going on one of the team members was also taking live footage on a little flip video gadget, which Chris is hoping to post soon on Youtube. He left the video recorder in the hands of us Mission staff so that we can continue to track with the family and send live updates back home.

Now press pause.
Even as I type this I am in total awe.
As I watched everyone work together and interact with the family on Wednesday afternoon, my mind flashed back to the first encounter I had with Shalyn and Senson back on the mission road. The emotions I felt - The responsibility, the hopelessness. I was so overwhelmed. Where to begin? How can I, with a plate already so full, help this family? What do I do? It's too much. And yet as I doubted and asked those despairing questions, God was already working. He had more hope happening than I could imagine.
Once again He trumps any 'if' 'and' or 'but' situation. He's already all-ready.
And to think how the circumstances have changed in a matter of WEEKS. I am no longer the only person that these people are depending on. I am just a tiny piece of the puzzle. The Lord has been working on people's hearts far before I came into the picture, and has raised up a body so much bigger than me. What a blessing I have been given to be a part of the wonderful hope that is being offered to this family!
Chris was only here for a few days, and no doubt he will be back again. In the meantime, he'll be fundraising and uploading Youtube videos and raising awareness back home far more than I ever could. And while he and his friends are there, I get to stay here with the staff in Haiti where I can make regular visits to the family, take videos and relay news back to North America.
What a privilege to work together as the body of Christ.

And here's a bonus - Hope you don't mind if I brag about you Chris - It turns out that Chris is an extremely talented musician who has recorded with Michael W. Smith, Jaci Velasquez, Jan Arden and many others... Oh, and he's currently on tour with SheDaisy. So cool! Rachel and I took full advantage and spent Wednesday evening jamming with him while he also taught us the professional way to change guitar strings and an easier way to play B minor.

In other news, Oma (Laurens' mom) has been here for the past two weeks, offering assistance to the Loulous during our morning school times. It has been such a relief for me to have extra hours with my primary boys and junior students. Lately I've also really noticed the girls catching on to English. No longer to I have to repeat sentences 4 or 5 times before they understand. Even though they can still interact in Creole with one another and with people outside of school time, our strictly English school hours are slowly but surely helping them catch on. For example, yesterday in our morning prayer time I was delighted to hear Ana use a majority of English words in her popcorn prayer. We call it Cringlish, and may or may not understand it all, but God does. :)

2 comments:

Opa said...

Very interesting and encouraging thank you Diana. Opa.

Renee said...

I love that piece of the puzzle that you're fitting into. God has the big picture and we don't always see how things will work together. I'm excited to see the videos. Praying for you
Renee