thats haiti.

Oh this country... sometimes Haiti reminds me of that man from a country song thats not good for anybody but everybody loves him too much to leave him. Okay, maybe thats a little strange. But you know what I'm saying... the whole "can't live with it, can't live without it" thing? Thats Haiti. The longer I'm here the more aware I become of the Haitian way compared to the American way. There really isn't a good way to explain it... but I'll give you the best simile I can muster:

If you were hanging out and lunch time rolled around and you were hungry but you had no food, what would you do? Lets say you decided you want a sandwich, so you need to go to the store and get some bread and meat. In America, you would get in the car, drive to the store, buy some bread and meat, go home, and eat your sandwich. In Haiti, you would get in the car and it wouldn't crank. So you would have to get someone to help you crank it. Then you would get halfway to the store and there would be a traffic jam, so you would have to turn around and take a "short cut" to the store. Then when you finally got to the store, there would be 3 choices of bread. You would choose one, get to the checkout, and they would tell you you can't buy that one, for no reason. So back to the shelf to choose another, get to the front, and a different cashier says "oh no, you could have bought the first one" So back to the shelf, you pick up the first loaf. Back to the counter "nevermind, you can't." Finally, you choose the right bread, get some meat, leave the store, and another traffic jam and on the way back. Then you get stopped by the police for no apparent reason and they demand half your groceries. After 5x the amount of time it should have taken, you get home and finally eat your sandwich, which is no good anymore because the meat and bread are half melted from being in the Haitian sun.

Okay, so maybe this is extreme. Something this trivial isn't THIS big of a process, but it's close haha. So you can imagine what it's like to get something important done. The last 4 days have consisted of driving around Port au Prince in circles, jumping through hoops and doing all kinds of tricks, trying to get Melissa cremated so her mommy could take her back to the States. Finally, she boarded the plane with her daughter this morning. Not exactly how she thought she would take her home for the first time, but home nonetheless.

melissa right after she went to sleep for the last time... so peaceful!

I have now been in Haiti for a month and 2 days. In this short time, I have experienced many things that I may never experience again, and many things that I'm praying I don't have to experience again. I was cleaning off my camera card yesterday and I thought to myself "I've never been to a small child's funeral before this month, and now I have pictures from 2 separate funerals on my camera at the same time." Something about that just doesn't taste right.

A lot of people want to know if Haiti is what I thought it would be. And I can honestly say it is. A little bit different at times, but the same in that I am still confident that this is where the Lord wants me for this season of my life. I have no idea how long this season will last. The best I can do is hold on tight to my Father and trust Him to keep carrying me and watching us here. At the end of Melissa's funeral yesterday we played the song "How Great is Our God" by Chris Tomlin. Sometimes the work here is hard, and it is seems futile and hopeless. But at the end of celebrating the life of her baby girl, I watched Dr. Jenny Chapman raise her hands in praise and sing "Sing with my how great is Our God, and all will see how great, how great, is Our God." How could someone possibly sing praise after the storm she has been through without the grace and understanding of Jesus? It reminded me, yet again, that He is still here. And that He is still sovereign, and that He knows what He's doing.. He knows the plan He has for us and one day we will see His Glory proclaimed in this nation and across the world.

So we, and you, must choose every morning to trade the immediate for the eternal, choose an eternity with God over a short earthly life of comfort. We must, as they say so gently where I'm from... "Put on our big girl panties" and keep trekking. Because if Our God is for us, then who could ever stop us? And if Our God is with us, then what could stand against?