This Is Haiti

   We are four weeks away from our leave date for Haiti! I am so excited I can't stand it! Yesterday I bought shoes and other clothes to take... I hope I will be prepared, stress free.  I hope I have something to contribute.  I hope I am not viewed as dead weight.  I hope that every second I am being stretched and refined I will grow closer to Jesus.  I hope that I will leave my family in the hands of the one who should be holding them.  I hope they grow in Him too!    Now is the time to truly prepare myself and the kids for when I am gone.

      I am nervous about the other people on the Haiti team. What if they don't like me?  What if they are mean to me?      Doesn't that sound silly? We are all grown-ups... past that time in life when we are mean to each other. Or are we? It takes so much for me to be around people for just a few hours.  How will I do it for a week?     We will all be tired from the first moment we leave our homes. Most of these people are bringing some family members with them. I just realized that this is the first time in my life I will be without a "security blanket." First I had my mom or my sister, and as soon as I left home I had Peter. What am I getting into? 

   I have all the money I need for Haiti. Yesterday, at church, someone gave a lot of money for me. With that, plus what I was already provided with, I seem to have more than enough. Hooray for not needing to use my Christmas money (or the kids') for my mission trip. I need socks! They want pajamas! Someone, or some people, have been giving, giving, giving to my family. I am so grateful for the Lord's blessings...   He gave his life for me, and that is truly all he needed to do.   And, I don't even deserve that!    Haiti is something I am doing so that others can know... I am doing it because it is the very least I can do for Christ, and still he gives his money for broken, selfish me.  For this journal entry, I am learning about the depths of God's love.  There doesn't seem to be anything he wouldn't do for me, and I am so very undeserving.   Ephesians 3:17-18: And I pray that you, being rooted and established in l...

   Today I am struggling with sadness.  I am broken over sin.  My dear friends we were in seminary with have separated. Their marriage is suffering the results of neglect and stress.  This can't be the way it was supposed to happen.  I just found out that someone I love deeply has cancer. She and her husband are positive, and facing Christ in this.  I am sad, because sometimes the result of the fall, the human condition, seems to be getting the best of all of us.  I don't know how Haiti is tied into this. These are The Haiti Journals, after all.  I am discouraged.  I want to quit every effort to make the world better because right now it feels impossible.