Miranda

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' Matthew25:40

Never before did I feel God’s hand in my life stronger than that day in February 1996. This story is the heart of my book.

Three years earlier papa had passed away. One of the anchors in my life was gone! But I was not very sad. That may sound strange but the day before he died, he told me that he was so ready to go and I knew it was the truth. Hanging on longer would not have made any sense. We both knew where he was going and that was a great comfort. A year later my mother followed. Her life seemed so pointless without him. She was just waiting to go too. I travelled to Holland to visit her after she had a major stroke. She was completely out of touch with the world except for this little squeeze in my finger, just once, when I said goodbye to her. No last words, but I knew she wanted so much to be with papa.

A few months later, my only brother, Piet called me and told me this would be his last Christmas. He had had a bout with colon cancer and it seemed he got better but it came back with a vengeance. It was as if my heart froze in my chest. He had a family with four young children. Piet and I were so close. Would this dying streak ever end? God, why? Why? I prayed and prayed and I trusted He would heal him. I went up to the altar in a healing service on behalf of him and then I prayed more but just a year later Piet lost his fight too and left us. This time I did not see God’s wisdom, I was disillusioned and full of doubt. I didn’t get it.

Then came the day we buried him. The day that we found ourselves walking behind the hearse from the church to the cemetery, holding the hands of his little ones together with what seemed the entire village. This made no sense.

In the evening we gathered at my sister’s restaurant. Life goes on. Over a meal we talked about our lives that we were living so far apart from each other, on different sides of the ocean. My sister, Sient, asked me about the children in Haiti. She loved children so much and she always supported our work. We, my wife, two of our daughters and I had just come back from a visit to Haiti. While there I had been faced with a difficult question to do something for the orphans in the area. At the time I had not been able to give an answer and now I shared this with my sister and said it would be nice if one day we could build an orphanage. But even though she nodded in agreement I knew it was not likely to ever happen.

When I was leaving my sister’s place, she walked me to the door. It was past closing time and there were no guests left. We said our goodbyes and I noticed that she fumbled an envelope in my coat pocket. When I asked her what it was she just said “It’s ok, that’s for your work in Haiti”. That was just like her, few words but all deeds.

Sitting on the edge of my bed that night, I remembered and pulled the envelope out of my pocket. A little yellow note stuck to it read “For the orphanage, I think it’s a good idea, you should do it!” Inside there was a wad of Dutch guilder bills, the equivalent of thirty-two hundred dollars.  My head was spinning. This was incredible. From what I knew, this might suffice to buy a piece of land large enough for an orphanage and gardens. My mind was reeling. Although I did not realize it yet on that sad day, God had put a new purpose, a new thing to live for, in my life. But at the time that was not so clear.

As soon as I got back home I called my friend Mark to tell him what had happened.  We started to make plans. A good friend was a full-time missionary in Haiti and I wrote him to ask if he knew of any suitable land for an orphanage that was for sale. Within weeks I received a wonderful response.  Charlie had wanted to start a farm for orphan boys in Haiti to teach them better ways to do agriculture. For this purpose he had purchased a very nice piece of land covered with fruit trees. I read on and it got even better; there were several small buildings on the land that could be of use to start the orphanage. Sadly enough he was not able to carry out his plans because he was to be transferred to Kenya, but my letter had been a godsend. Charlie had already made some payments and now he was offering us to take over the land if we were willing to pay off the remainder he owed on it. It was almost too good to be true. I hastened to write him that we were interested and to ask how much was still owed to the seller. A little over a week later he gave me a call. He said “Hein I need an answer because I need to leave to Kenya”. What he said after that stunned me. He still owed thirty-two hundred dollars and if we paid it the land was ours.  Wow! God had to be in this, what could stop us now! The path became visible!

One a Tuesday in February, Mark, Robert our pastor, and I got on a DC-3. We flew to Cap Haitien the second largest city of Haiti. From there it would take a rough, four hour long road trip in the back of a dump truck to cover the forty-nine miles to Bohoc, a small village in the Central Plateau. The next day we were scheduled to sign the contract and transfer the title of the land. I hoped for a chance to talk things over with some of our missionary friends before all that would take place. When we exited the airplane, I was glad to spot them on the outside of the chain link fence that surrounded the airport.  Quickly I walked up to them much to the dismay of an official who started yelling at me. We talked briefly but I found out that we would not see them until Saturday night as they were on the way to the capitol for important business. They had to go now and there was no more time to talk.

We made the exhausting trip without problems. The next day we travelled back almost halfway along the same road to meet with the attorney. We signed the papers, and now were the proud owners of the land for the future orphanage. My excitement knew no bounds.  What a privilege to be able to do something so great for these poor children of Haiti. I was elated. That night sleep did not come easy because of all the plans racing through my mind.

Early on Thursday we joined the work crew that we hired to widen the path that ran from the property to the main road. In awe I watched a bare foot Haitian cut down a sizeable tree with a razor sharp axe. He didn’t miss a lick and soon the tree fell to the ground. Haitians are such strong and skilled workers and it is a delight to work alongside of them. By Friday others had finished digging the trenches for the kitchen and storage room foundations. More footings would follow soon for the dorms. This was so awesome, no red tape!  Things were moving right along and my enthusiasm grew by the hour. I pushed away the thought that we had to leave in four days. I wanted to stay so bad to see all of the construction being finished. That was however not an option and besides there were still many other things to be done before the place was ready for the first orphans. We had arranged to leave all this in the hands of our Haitian friends under the leadership of Paulius Lucien who we hired for this job.  This is how we wanted it to be, Haitians working on their own problems with a little help from us.

Late that Saturday evening our friends arrived after an all day truck ride from Port au Prince. They were worn out but nevertheless asked us to come over for a short while to share our plans. We headed to their house and told them all that we had been doing that week and all the plans we had for the orphanage construction. I had expected them to be exited for us but in the middle of my story things suddenly turned sour. Barbara got a worried look on her face and asked me straight forward with whom we had been working on this project. When I mentioned that it was the magistrate, a sort of mayor, she did not seem to like that answer. Her response made me upset as she went on to say that there was a big problem. I asked her why but she did not answer me. She told us she had promised to keep certain things confidential and was not at freedom to share any more with us. We had come to a dead end. Our conversation was finished. If we were going to be left in the dark I had no desire to stay in their house anymore and I got up and left with Mark and Robert following. My excitement was gone and a dark cloud positioned itself in my mind. Was I waking from a dream? Had reality caught up with me? There was apparently a big thing that I had overlooked and that was about to cause trouble. I felt guilty that I dragged Mark into this and even more that I had all the locals so worked up over the prospect of an orphanage. It was maddening not to know what was going on and I felt stupid. Why had I jumped the gun on this project? Should I have spent more time planning? I didn’t know and I felt sick to my stomach. I looked in despair to my friends for answers. They had none. A long sleepless night followed and things got from bad to worse in my mind. The darkness from my brother’s death was back.

Sunday morning brought no new insights. More than the night before it felt that I had been wasting my time and my sister’s money. I wanted to get out of Haiti and get this nightmare behind me but I knew that was not possible at least not until Tuesday. But was that really an option? Turmoil ruled my heart to the point of making me physically sick.

We had been invited to have breakfast with another missionary couple who had just finished their first year in Haiti. It had been a difficult year and both of them had been plagued with disease and discouraging events. Our conversation over breakfast was not very uplifting and fueled my negative feelings even more and I lost whatever motivation I had left.

It was time for church but I really had no desire going there this morning. Mark and Robert started to walk along the dusty road and reluctantly and more out of habit, I was following at a distance.  Loneliness and sadness filled my heart and if it had been possible I would have flown back home to never return. Consumed by such thoughts I walked by myself, far behind Mark and Robert.

 Although it was nothing special, my attention was drawn to something that happened on the road before me. A little girl came from one of the little houses along the road. She was dressed in a torn up, stained dress and walked up alongside Mark while taking his hand. She walked a few steps beside with him but then let go. Now she moved to the other side where Robert was walking. She took his hand and walked a few steps with him. Something seemed different however. It was as if she was looking for someone. She let go of Robert’s hand and then waited in the middle of the road until I had caught up with her. What happened next left my heart forever in Haiti. I reached out my hand expecting that she would walk with me too but instead she blocked my way and wrapped both of her arms around my legs. She turned her little face up and I looked down into a pair of dark eyes I will never be able to describe other than the eyes of Jesus, and then I broke down in tears. All of my pain and frustration came out and I stood there crying. The embrace of the little arms became stronger trying to comfort me and my tears now flowed freely. I don’t know how long we stood there but I noticed that some people had stopped to watch us and somewhat embarrassed I carefully loosened her grip on me and took her hand. I did not want her to go away as strangely I felt so comforted by her and asked her if she would like to come to church with me. For just a fleeting moment I thought about first asking her mother who would not know where she had gone but decided that in Haiti this was no big deal and turned onto the path leading to the church entrance.

The church was packed with singing people and there was only one small spot left on the bench closest to the door. As soon as I sat down the little girl climbed in my lap and rested her head against my chest. My tears were back and I was relieved that I sat in the back where no one would see me cry. The little girl wiped the tears from my face only to make room for new ones. I felt so sad and she did not know what was in my heart. Or did she? I noticed Mark and Robert look at me and then I realized that Barbara, the friend who had made me so upset the night before, was sitting three rows in front of  me. Just at that moment she turned around and smiled at me. She was saying something but the singing was too loud to hear. However the words forming on her lips I will never forget.   “She’s one of your children”.

The eyes of my heart were opened.

Sitting in my lap was a little orphan girl that God had sent to me.  He did not want me to give up and He knew the only thing that could stop me was a little child.

Oh, the emotions of that moment…

Before I totally realized what had happened, the child slid of my lap and dashed to Barbara to give her a big hug. My anger towards Barb melted away. Next a deacon shoed the little girl out of the aisle and she slipped out of the church in the back.

 I do not remember anything other than that I cried during most of the service. After church we got together and I asked everyone if they had understood what happened there this morning and all of them were speechless and in awe. Barbara’s words were “Hein, that was the Lord God speaking to you”

I asked Pauluis to go look for Miranda, as I found out that that was her name. Everyone knew her. She was a homeless orphan staying here, then there just for a day or for a little bit of food. I wanted her to be our first orphan and asked Pauluis to arrange for her care while the construction was underway which he gladly promised to do.

In the afternoon, Barbara, who now had asked permission to speak about the problem told us that there was another initiative to build an orphanage with money they had donated. She thought that would create a conflict of interests. We did not see one. A real issue never existed, but it surely put me to the test and shook me to the core.

And what happened with Miranda?   People were sent out to search for her but no one could ever find her. She was no longer around. In Hinche , the provincial capital they found out that she had died some time before!

 

I struggled with this for many years and recently when I told this story in church to our orphans, I again shared my confusion with Pauluis. He was very clear about it. Miranda had died before I saw her on the road…

One day I will know for sure but it will not change the miracle of meeting her and the change it made in my heart. Now, eighteen years later, I realize that God gave me a new life that same day I said goodbye to my only brother. His ways are wonderful and amazing!

 

 

Copyright © 2014 by Hein Vingerling