What Happened in Haiti?

I recently returned from my fourth trip to Haiti. I was honored to once again travel with Schools for Haiti as part of their ministry team. I was also honored to serve with these amazing people.

On this trip the Lord shook things up for me. God showed me I was becoming a paper person. 

I had drawn a picture in my mind of what the mission would look like and what we would do based on what we had done before and assumed was working.

On each trip I am blessed with an interpreter that obviously translates what I'm saying in English to Creole so I can communicate. This past trip I was blessed to once again minister along side Gerald.

It had become kind of a joke between the team that I could ask Gerald to translate “good morning, my name is Gena” which took a few seconds for me to say and the translation seemed to go on for so much longer. I wondered, what is he saying?

The thing is I never knew exactly what Gerald was saying and this is where God shook things up for me.

Through a chain of events that can only be orchestrated by God Himself we met a sweet Haitian couple, St. Mark and Bridget, from Atlanta that just “happened” to be staying at our hotel.

Bridget decided to join us at Vacation Bible school and we were excited to have another translator on board. Me again, being the paper person, was thinking about her translating English to Creole.

As Gerald got up to give the greeting I laughed to myself thinking how long “good morning” was going to take to say. As Gerald began to speak I leaned over to Bridget and asked her what he was saying.

And so it began.... Every time Gerald would speak I actually got to hear what he was saying. His words were beautiful and so full of love and excitement for the children. I had a whole new appreciation for this man of God. 
It didn't stop there, I would also ask her what the children were saying. I was blown away by what I was hearing, we came there to share Jesus with these children but they had a deeper knowledge and love for our sweet Jesus than we realized. It was humbling to say the least.

I realized that we had an agenda based on our experience with Western children that needed constant stimulation. We had games and videos, crafts and skits, snacks and music. Not that any of these things are wrong but how we used them may have been.

For example it goes without saying it is HOT in Haiti! When we were all packed in a small area and WE were sweating to the point of feeling sick it didn't mean the kids were. They were used to the heat and having children sitting so close they were touching. They were OK.

We are all about our space but they are not offended by not having “acceptable personal space.” You know how we are, if there's a row of seats there is usually an empty seat between people and an unspoken rule that you only sit there if there is NOTHING else available. Even if it means separating you from your friend.

We have to be told to move over even in church services to make room for late comers.

I want you to get a mental picture of the scene. At our last school we showed up expecting maybe 70 to 80 kids and ended up with at least 200 children!!! 

Just children not counting parents and older kids. Getting 200 kids all seated is a task on it's own Western or Haitian.

We give out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches after we get the kids seated,for many of the children it may be the only meal they get that day. (we make an assembly line and make hundreds of sandwiches each morning)

My paper person wants to get all the sandwiches to the kids then immediately do something while they are eating. A song a video, start speaking, but the Holy Spirit kept reminding me, ask Gerald what we should do next which I did, and he would look at me confused and say we will eat. Should we sing? Yes after we eat.

For these children if we started another activity while they were eating they would think they needed to be finished eating and start cramming the sandwiches into their mouths. They were OK with just eating without being entertained, enjoying the blessing we had just thanked our Lord for.

Just eat. What a concept.

Later we were teaching the children a Bible verse in English. They love learning English and learn so quickly. They wanted to say it over and over but again we were applying our western thinking and trying to push them onto the next activity assuming they were bored, they weren't. Gerald had to remind us again that the children weren't done. I'm sure that God Himself was so enjoying hearing the sweet voices of his little children speaking His word in two different languages. I bet if He had a refrigerator in Heaven each one of their pictures were on it from this very day.

With the go ahead from Gerald our team got busy figuring out the next activity with the understandable chaos all around us. While the children waited Gerald was letting them come up to the microphone and speak into it, something most of them had never done before. Bridget pulled me over and once again translated what they were saying and I was again blown away. A little boy, could not have been more than 8 years old, was praying the most powerful prayer I had heard since I arrived. He was speaking a revival for Haiti! That Jesus would bless Haiti and his people. That they would live for God and be Holy. 
Here we were trying to entertain them with a silly video and they were praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit!

Gems I'm not telling you this to say we did everything wrong. I'm sharing this because God was trying to teach us something so we could be more effective with our time there. There is nothing wrong with having fun and sharing “Western” things with the Haitian children. Honestly seeing their faces when they saw a video for the first time, even if it was on a cement wall and poor quality, was awesome. I felt so blessed to be a part of that. The excitement was contagious.

But these kids could definitely share some things with us. It was a great reminder that we had to meet in the middle and really listen to what the need was for the Haitian children not our well meaning Western agenda. We, I, needed to slow down and listen.

The memory verse God gave us for the children was

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come

which we shortened for learning sake to

I am a new creation in Jesus

The Lord reminded me that speaking His word over His children would have an eternal impact. His word was more important than a new song a snack or playing soccer.

One of the many things I love about Schools for Haiti is their love and dedication to children. They make it possible for children to go to school. In case you didn't know school is not free in Haiti as it is here in the United States.

Not only do they build schools they sponsor children to attend for free and PAY teachers a salary to teach.

They put love in action by providing uniforms, books and food. They incorporate the love of God to the children and remind them they are not forgotten. Schools for Haiti is Jeremiah 29:11 in action.

Gems I guess the moral of this story is whether God sends you on a mission to another country, another state, another neighborhood, or your own family, leave room in you your agenda to hear the Holy Spirit. 

gil@schoolsforhaiti.com
We limit our trips to 15 people so if you are interested in joining us on one of our trips, please contact us at gbailie66@gmail.com. If you can not join us please consider making a donation to help support someone who is going.
Gil & Bonnie Bailie