Today has been our last day here in Haiti, and I feel like all of us have felt the intense blessings of God over the past few days. There has been so many examples of God's grace and amazing love in the past few days that I don't even know where to start. God definitely has had this whole trip in his hands right down to the last detail. There has been so many times when God has spoken to us through verses to encourage us and keep us going, for example, yesterday was our last DVBS day, and at the end the pastor encouraged us and told us to go home and look up 2 verses. Anna had been at the back of the church and had not heard him, but when we were doing our debrief time that evening, she said that she wanted to encourage us and read those exact same verses, without having a clue that the pastor had given us the same verses.
Another time that I really felt that God knew what he was doing was on wednesday when we did our ask the Lord day. To be honest I was really skeptical of the idea of just praying and asking the Lord where to go, I never thought that I would ever really hear anything or that it would have an effect on me at all. Don't judge me, I grew up in a brethren church! 🙂 so, despite my doubt I sat down and I began to pray, asking God to give me some sort of idea of what we were supposed to be doing that afternoon. As usual, my mind starting wandering and I was frustrated with not being able to focus. I didn't really get a clear vision or anything at all and I didn't feel like God was talking to me in any sort of way, but I did keep thinking about the rural areas of haiti and how they probably are never reached by any sort of missionaries or anything. I also randomly saw a pig, and a river as well but didn't think anything of it. When we met back as a group, I told everyone that I was thinking about rural areas and a river and such, and a few others agreed that they had seen water and a river as well. This was big news already to my doubting self, and when our leader asked if we had seen anything else, I reluctantly said that I had indeed thought of a pig, and laughed along with everyone else at my ridiculous brain and its thoughts, thinking at the time that there were no pigs anywhere and they couldn't possibly mean anything.after putting the pieces together, half of us decided to go to a river and see what we could find, so we hopped into the back of a truck and drove along tiny back roads to the very edge of the city, where we found a river. As we were driving I looked down into a river, the exact picture of a river that I had seen in my mind earlier, and as I marveled that maybe God had actually put a vision into my brain, I looked closer and amongst the naked bathing people and the rubble, i saw a large black animal moving. It was a pig. Honestly, I don't think I have ever been so bewildered in my life, I could barley speak and I would have fell over if we weren't so squished in the back of the truck. We proceeded down to the river and talked and prayed with a few people, and really, i have to admit, nothing super extravagant happened, but for me this was a huge turning point in my life. I have always wondered why God never tells me anything, why i always feel like I don't know what to do because God never speaks, but that day I learned that he does speak. That experience was really good for all of us I think, to see people living in a rural area, who have never had anything materialistic, or any proper shelter even before the earthquake. God showed me that he can work in marvelous, even sometimes humorous ways, that it is possible for anything to happen, even when it's something as ridiculous as seeing pigs waddling through heaps of rubble.
I think the Haiti part of this trip has been so good for all of us, we all have been pushed out of our comfort zone and are starting to get comfortable. Just this afternoon Anna, Jason and I went to tent city one last time to pray for a few more people. We distributed balloons to people, and as we were walking there, people were yelling at us, children were chasing us, and of course, there was the usual constant random motorcycles and cars to dodge along the skinny street, in order to not be run over. Amidst all of this Anna and I were having a deep conversation about how we like our eggs done, while greeting children and jumping out of the way of honking horns and stray dogs. I never gave it a second thought until afterwards, but I thought about how funny it would be to see two white girls completely comfortable in this crazy environment, that they were talking about eggs and ignoring all the chaos around them. So I guess, that is a good example of how God has answered our prayers, and we have been able to get used to our surroundings and enjoy them as well.
Wow, that was really long, I am really sorry that you just had to read all of that. Woops.
Hi to everyone,
love shaylene
p.s. And apparently the trend is to tell my mother that I love her, sooo I love you Mom! 🙂
Hey it's Trevor. If this blog thing turns out to be a few disconnected sentences I'm sorry. It's probably because this computer was thrust brutally into my hands by Shaylene, and I haven't been able to collect my thoughts yet. Also, sitting in a hot room with Graham caressing my feet is mildly distracting. Anyway, today we took a bunch of kids from an orphanage to the beach. I almost feel guilty about how much fun I had, almost. The kids were all extremely happy to play with us. It was a relaxing day and a nice change from our pervious days. I think I am really going to miss playing with kids when we go to the Dominican republic. I really get recharged by a group of excited, screaming kids. Overall I thought this trip has been great. I have really enjoyed being in a place so incredibly different than home. I find the language barrier super difficult to overcome. Using interpreters is really hard to get use to, especially when praying. Other than that, I feel like God has really been answering my prayers and I miss milk. Jason is now telling me I have thirty seconds to finish because someone (Shaylene) wrote a lot.
Thanks for all the prayers,
Trevor
