Recalculating

How much time do you spend wondering about your life? Family, friends, work, church, recreation, habits, addictions, issues, health; the list goes on and on...

Or is it more likely that you - like me - tend toward what, in the political or corporate realms, is known as damage control? If things are going well in your life; if you're getting enough to eat, you've got a comfy place to sleep and watch television or movies or play video games or read, if things are going okay at the office, you've got no major blow ups in your relationships...things are good, right?

But when you wake up one day and find yourself lashed to the railroad tracks and hear the whistle off in the distance...to quote a popular beverage commercial, "Here we go!"

                        Nell is saved from mean ol' Snidely...

That's when things get crazy and you wish you could hear that annoying GPS voice say, "Recalculating!"

For those who may not have a GPS yet or who haven't seen (or don't get) one of the more recent Allstate commercials...the ones that have the character I like to call the Allstate Harbinger of Doom...

Sometimes recalculating is a good idea - like when you're lost with only a vague idea of where you are and the GPS can actually recalculate and get you back to recognizable terrain.

But often, as is the case with the video above, recalculating at the wrong moment or in the wrong way can have disastrous consequences.

If you would've asked me ten years ago or maybe even five years ago, 'How about you go down to Haiti and spend some time with a few hundred kids,' I don't know what, exactly, I would've replied. But I can pretty much guarantee it would not have been, 'Sure, when do we leave?'

God has a way of leading us to recalculate.

As followers of The Stream will know, I just returned from my second mission trip to Haiti. the organizers call what I do in Haiti Vacation Bible School. I don't really go along with that. Maybe it's the years I've spent recently teaching VBS in Florida or even teaching teachers how to teach VBS at their churches...something about Haiti and the kids we minister to and the term vacation just doesn't seem to mesh.

Maybe it's the fact that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere...

Maybe it's because the culture in Haiti doesn't lend itself to the term vacation...

In a country where life revolves around a daily effort just to have food, water, and shelter...vacation anything seems out of place.

Recalculating...

The week I spent in Haiti was awesome. It was not without challenges...but it was just as rewarding as my first trip last year. The people we worked with were just as committed to helping the people and children we ministered to. The people and children we ministered to were just as happy to see us.

                                   Deye mon, gen mon...

In Haiti there is a saying that reflects the difficulty of life the Haitian people face every day. Deye mon gen mon basically means beyond the mountain is another mountain. One of the things that surprises just about everyone is how mountainous Haiti is. The mountains make everything a little harder there...often a lot harder. But while there are those who use the expression to give up, after all, why try so hard when we'll just face another mountain when we get over this one; there seems to be a mindset that is more along the lines of getting over this mountain will prepare me for getting over the next one.

Recalculating...

                    What do we know about mountains...

For example, the second day we were in Les Cayes, our Bible school team went to two different schools. The first one, pictured above, consisted of a two-story, cinder block building. Upstairs were the older kids. Bare walls, no windows, a nasty old chalkboard, no doorway between the three classrooms. And here we were, a group of weird Americans who showed up to play some games, sing some songs, make flowers and talk about God and life. It would have been easy for them to look at us and say, 'You've got no idea what our lives are like. You can't relate to us now be gone with you.'

Instead, we found a group of roughly middle school to high school-aged young men and women who welcomed us, listened interestedly to what we said, laughed with us, sang with us, made silly paper mache flowers with us, and felt so comfortable with us after a couple of hours that one even decided it was okay to ask us hard questions about God. Beyond this mountain is another mountain...what do we think God thinks about that?

Recalculating...

                  Life in Haiti is not all sweetness and light...

The picture above is a very mild example of what passes for daily life in much of urban Haiti. Port au Prince especially has areas of heart-wrenching squalor and poverty. Our team spent time during our trip discussing how we felt God wanted to use us - to use our church - going forward. Did He want us to continue to minister to the people of Haiti alone or should we step out farther and go with the message to places where many have not heard?

Before we arrived home, I think most of us were ready to cast our steps farther abroad. But not too many weeks after we returned to the States; returned to our nice homes, comfy beds, and refrigerators that dispense ice and water you don't have to wonder about, we are already talking about a place in Northern Haiti where there is only one church.

Recalculating...

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