Ministry Reversal

7/30/10

The night and morning were about the same as before, crazy and early. But this morning we got pancakes! Yes, real pancakes. The Roos’s brought the mix, because the Haitians hadn’t ever seen or heard of pancakes before. They had some trouble with the pans and ended up using only some of the mix so each of us only got half a pancake. They were delicious and rare. Then another day in the Grenier clinic began. Today was a little slower, we saw 161 people and ended early when the line died down, but that’s still an incredible number! It totals to a number of 389.. Wow, praise God!! We cleaned up and organized most of the medicine left over, logged the papers away, and gave out the last of the hygiene kits before having the same dinner of rice and beans again. Little did we realize that after dinner would hold an experience none of us would have ever dreamed possible. The clouds descended from the top of the mountain just like they had every day, but this time they were especially black and menacing. The winds came harder than they had ever previously and the rain hit like I’ve never seen before. Most of us ran into the church for cover, but our men and many of the Haitians ran up to our camp in the middle of the storm in order to save our stuff. They came carrying down our luggage in garbage bags along with anything we needed for the night. Then they had to stand up on the side of the mountain and physically hold our tents from blowing down the mountain in the monsoon. Those of us in the church were constantly praying for our family out there.. although Tanya did decide to wash her hair from the church door in the rain. Because of how scary and how hard the storm was, we really needed God’s arms to wrap around and hold us onto the mountain. Eventually the winds died down enough for everyone to come back into the church, but the rains were still so terrible that we decided that it would be better to just all sleep in the church. When the guys came in they were shivering so badly, especially the Haitians not used to the cold of the rain (they even said there was hail at one point), we had to grab all the sheets, towels, and shirts that we could find to wrap them up and keep them as warm as possible. By God’s sovereignty alone were we fortunate enough to have brought in our towels that day to hang up to dry, the Roos’s had brought their clothes into the church to keep the water off, and we had chosen sheets instead of tarps for the medical clinic dividers. So because of all these random things that happened to work perfectly together, we had sheets, shirts, and towels to warm up these freezing men. God is so good! So far this whole week we had been ministered to over and over by these people of Grenier Mountain. This was our chance to minister back. We gave them our clothes, our food, and literally joined beside them for the night. What a picture of Christ’s love! It was such a blessing to be able to be the arms and heart of our very Lord to these people. I got out my guitar and two different cultures, languages, and church bodies joined together to worship the name of Christ in the midst of a massive monsoon. For the next few hours we set up mattresses and prepared the church for a huge slumber party. It’s slightly chaotic, but totally cool. And of course since the storm started around 5 we were stuck in the church from then until bedtime so we had many hours to kill. I of course practiced my ethnomusicology and played music with the Haitians. I learned more Creole, some of their life stories, and taught them one of my favorite songs in English. Eventually it was close enough to night for us to be tired and try for some sleep. God had certainly given us a day we will never forget for the rest of our lives. It was incredible to say the least. I wound down the day by reading my Bible and writing in my journal. It was almost hard to write about today because of how emotionally packed it was. Talk about a missions extraordinaire.