Of An Unashamed Love

After a four month pause caused by my illness, I finally went back to Haiti last week. How exciting it was to see the orphans and all the Haitian people I love. The team I brought in this time, consisted of a family from our area in North Carolina as well as a relative of me from Holland who runs Matthew 28 over there. Jonathan Miller from Hayesville assisted us by working on our well system while his wife Kellly was teaching a class in small business development. Their two sons had a great time playing soccer and climbing trees with the orphans. Kids adjust so quickly! Jan, my relative from Holland helped out with the work and spent time finding opportunities for the Dutch supporters of Matthew 28 to help. He went back with a list of projects.

I will tell more about this trip on Facebook but there is one story that I like to share with you here in my blog.

On Thursday morning when Kelly was teaching her class to a group hungry for knowledge, one of the students, pastor Saint Lo, became ill. He walked out of the class and came to me to ask for some medication. I asked him what the problem was and he pointed to his abdomen on the right side and said that it hurt very much. Now when a Haitian tells you that you better take it serious. They are very tough people and will rarely show you the pains they suffer. I asked him to lay down and gently I checked out his abdomen. When I touched the area were, in my own experience just months ago, my appendix ruptured, he bounced of the table. He was sweating profusely and was running a fever. I knew the man had to go to the hospital. This was however easier thought than done because we had no vehicle at the time as one of our objectives for the week was to go buy a new truck. I jumped on a bike that I borrowed from one of the people in the courtyard. Soon I found out that it had no brakes when I tried to slow down for the entrance gate of the neighbors. The gate post was hard. Trying again, this time aware of  the brakes, I made it to the house of Greg Van Shoyck who turned out to be willing to bring us to the hospital. Shortly thereafter pastor Saint Lo was on his way to hopefully receive treatment for his pain. On the way we were sitting in the cab of the truck where Saint Lo moaned and groaned as we hit one pothole after another. I tried to hold on to his shaking body as much as I could. When arriving in the city of Pignon where the hospital is located, we had to stop along the road to ask a family member of the pastor to come with us to the hospital. In Haiti it is a must to have someone with you in the hospital to take care of you. We stopped in front of the house that he pointed out and a lady came out to talk with us. She agreed that she would come right away to meet us at the hospital. Another lady came, I thought from the same house, carrying half an avocado in her hand and asked the pastor for money to buy bread. Saint Lo stretched himself trembling with pain to reach in the pocket of his pants. He pulled out all he had, two coins worth about a quarter, and gave them to the lady. He indicated he was done and we rode on to the hospital. While trying to hold on to him to ease the pain I asked him if that was his daughter. With a face showing surprise and the pain he endured he looked at me and said: No, I have never seen her before but they are all God's children and need to eat. Greg and I were stunned after watching this display of love. Of an unashamed love! We dropped off one of God's warriors at the hospital, one who tries to be like Jesus! May he be healed completely.