A Wonderful Day

Stuck deep in the mud! No way to get it out by itself. I was eying a couple of oxen that squeezed by the truck but was told it they would not be of any help without having their yoke. The owner was just moving them and disappeared as quickly as he came. A few onlookers fast became a crowd and as always there were more opinions than people. We tried a few suggestions but the truck stayed stuck. We always carry some straps with us and I asked all to line up and pull together as in tug of war. It took some convincing but a bunch of them finally grabbed the strap which we attached to the truck. Slowly and with a lot of moaning the truck moved forward and out of the deep rut. A shout of victory erupted! We had beaten the mud and confirmed that Haitians can do great things together! On we went.

Just a few minutes further, the road became too steep to drive. Now an exhausting hike in the hot sun followed and before long the Haitian women in our group decided to stay back in the shade of a tree. Half an hour later I had to give up as well. I was sweating up a storm and it was just too hot for me to continue. Mark, Jeff and Fonbwen, the leader of the feeding center, went on. The destination: a plot of land with a hundred bananas trees we donated and that had been planted in an effort to encourage the local families. We needed to see how things were taking shape.  Since last November we had been talking with the leaders and made plans to join forces to see if we could improve the food situation around the centers. Parents would participate by bringing in water for the banana trees whenever they brought in their kids for a meal. The leaders would provide the land and work it. Finally the day had come to see how it was taking form. Earlier that morning we had paid a visit to another feeding center. Their bananas looked wonderful! The 78 year old man who was working the garden had shared his joy over this new idea! He just loved it. But now I would not be able to see this garden.

Disappointed I started following a local man who walked to his nearby house and began a conversation with him. He opened the gate to his yard and invited me to come in. A nice big mango tree offered some shade. Although I was just trying to cool off a bit by standing under the tree, a woman quickly came out the house with a chair and urged me to sit down. The customary greeting took place and several persons popped out of the house to see the stranger. Soon we were involved in a lively conversation about the challenges of living in their area! A tall man, dressed in a ball cap and a nylon jacket, entered the yard. He carried a large machete, looked upset in my direction and was quick to share with those present that he did not like white people. What was I doing here?  My new friends took up for me. It was okay they said, I was a good “blan”, the term used all over Haiti for white people. When I asked him how he was doing his attitude slowly began to change and he calmed down. Looking around me I had noticed that the people were as poor as everyone else. Just a simple stick and mud house, no more than 15 by 12 feet, and it probably was home to at least seven or eight people. A large wooden mortar and pestle to pound corn and a few rickety homemade chairs of which she had given me the best one with the least holes. That was the extent of their possessions. The conversation went on and soon it became clear to me that they would like to see a mission doctor come to their community. They could not afford to go to the hospital in the nearest city, something I had been painfully aware of for many years. Knowing that a medical team was about to come with me in October, I promised that we would come to the feeding center so they would have a chance to see a doctor. Smiles came all over their faces even the big guy cracked a grin! It felt so comfortable with them.

Right at that time, a girl maybe 18 years old, came through the gate and without hesitating walked up to me. With a bright smile, she stuck out her hand and greeted me. Then she bowed down and kissed me on the cheek. I was completely surprised. What a welcome to a total stranger! These people may have been very poor but oh, how rich in love they were. I started to realize that ending up in that yard was maybe not a coincidence. What a joy it would be to come back in a few weeks and take care of their sick. What an example of love I had run into, a treasure hidden deep in the mountains of rural Haiti. What a wonderful day!

 

 

 

Chloe

The garage door opened. A somewhat hunched over woman, pushing herself forward in a wheelchair came out and rolled towards me on the driveway. “Chloe”, I asked and with a smile on her face she acknowledged. She appeared way into her 70’s and was missing one leg. A cigarette was clenched between two fingers. Somewhat puzzled I looked around to the possible location of the wheelchair ramp she had requested over the phone that morning. The two story house was standing on a perfectly flat lot in a neighborhood that looked flat as a pancake, something that had made me doubt the address before I met her. Not exactly the place I had in mind.

It was supposed to be the place where my first ever mission work team was to spent a whole week working on my first project! My boss would have a field day! He had reluctantly agreed that I would organize this new program which I expected to become a major new activity at our camp, that a few years before almost went belly up. My dreams had been big but now that finding a suitable work site became a large obstacle, I was afraid that his hesitation would prove to be justified. We had one more week before this team of 20 young people and their leaders would be upon me and I dreaded not having meaningful work for them.

This morning the phone on my desk had rung and Chloe's first words had given me new hope, “Hello, do you guys build wheelchair ramps”? I had jumped on the occasion and into my truck to check out this welcome project. On the way I had been saying a funny little prayer. “Lord enlarge my territory for you”. Not that I had such a lofty goal but just two weeks ago at a bible study at church, a friend had discussed this little book called the Prayer of Jabez, based on a tiny little verse in I Chronicles 4:10. It was the section of the bible my father would always skip while reading at the dinner table because it was so boring. Page after page just names,nothing more. I guess I was not cut out for biblical family trees. Now someone had not only taken time to read it but he wrote a book about it as well. His advice in short was to pray just as Jabez did and to see what blessings would come. Now that is stuff I do not care for much and I had only slightly nodded when the friend who was teaching had asked all those present, to do this. Honestly I was not planning on it but during the week I thought of it a few times and made my own little prayer out of it. So also this morning on the way to Chloe, we needed a project and I was running out of time.

Her sweet smile with her nicotine stained teeth took me by surprise. She had to know something I did not  and I was a little anxious to find out why I had made this actually way too long trip to get to her house. It‘d better be good. She greeted me like I was an old friend and soon she was sharing all her problems with me. They ranged from a husband who died ten years ago, to loneliness and to physical problems causing her to have surgery the coming week to improve the circulation in her remaining leg. Happily she showed me her foot which was already turning black. I pushed the wheelchair inside and she gave directions to the kitchen where the project was needed. But a quick glance through the sliding door leading to the backyard patio was enough to know that I still had a problem. This job was at best five minutes work for one person. All she needed was a new piece of plywood to help her bridge the slight gap between the patio and the kitchen floor, just too much to cross with the wheelchair without getting stuck. This was not a project and I had to find something else. Chloe asked if we could repair this and I quickly promised to fix the problem for her. She wanted to unlock the door for me so I could go outside and see what was needed but I was suddenly in a hurry to get out of there. Measuring the plywood was not necessary. But she insisted and I’m so glad she did, because I was on the verge of walking away from one of the most awesome experiences in my life.

 So I pushed her unto the patio which was covered with a little porch that limited the view of the back yard. She told me to turn around on the little path in the yard and so I did. At that moment when I caught my first glimpse of the back of the house, it was like Beethoven’s Fifth started playing in my head. The house was sided with “Georgia Pacific” siding. A recall on that product had been around for years as it was literally falling apart and Chloe’s house here was a good example of that. In my excitement I walked up to the wall and triumphantly stuck my fingers through the wall! “Chloe, your house is all rotted” was all I could bring out. Here was the project enough to keep an army of kids busy for a week. What a gold mine!

Poor Chloe burst out in tears. She was sitting slumped over in her chair, sobbing. What an insensitive remark I had just made. I had broken her heart. She did not know what my plan was and I should have been much more careful in bringing this news to her. We were going to fix her house but she did not understand that yet. Through her tears she said “I know, but I have no money! Can you give me a loan?” I cringed, she had been thinking all that time we would ask money for our work. She did not understand the reason why we were doing this. I felt so bad and explained to her why and how this was going to work, that a team would come and pay for all of this and do the work for free, just out of love. Chloe started to get it and stopped crying just long enough, to start all over again. This time it seemed she was crying about something else and I tried in vain to calm her down. She sobbed “You don’t understand why I cry” and I begged her to stop and explain it to me. It was not a good thing for me to leave an old woman totally upset after my visit plus at this time I was getting pretty sad myself from her crying.

Through her tears she started talking. She explained how lonely she had been for years. Her only contact in this world was the mail lady who checked on her from time to time. She had only one sister but they had not talked in twenty years. After she got into the wheelchair, she had not been able to drive to church anymore and the people there rarely picked her up. It was so heartbreaking to hear. “And now” she said “you are coming with this news and it is just too much for me”. Saying that she broke out in tears again and she was shaking her head in disbelieve. “You won’t understand it“ she kept saying and I pleaded for her to try me. “Just this last week” she said “They picked me up for church and we were early so I got to go into the bible study and they were talking about something, I have to show you, inside”. When she continued to speak, my knees were turning into rubber and my face flushed. “It is a little book, called the Prayer of Jabez, they told me to pray it and see what would happen, you just don’t understand!”

I cry easy, even now when I am writing this,  but that time it was uncontrollable. We both cried in the backyard and then we prayed together.

What happened after that day is still very hard to understand to me. Chloe agreed to us doing the work even though she could only be there for a few days since she had to go to the hospital for her surgery. The love that the kids showed to her the first two days was heartwarming. Chloe herself loved them back as much and there was no sign of the bitterness that had controlled her life before we came. Her surgery went well and I called the hospital that night to make sure she was doing okay. The mail lady opened the house for us the rest of the week and the work was finished on time. Everyone was happy! Imagine how happy I was. The team went home and the next week I went back to my other responsibilities. The next Wednesday I was on my way to visit a lady from church who was dying from cancer and who was treated in a downtown Atlanta hospital. While passing by the road that led to the hospital where Chloe was staying, something in me said “Go see Chloe”. Over the years I have become sensitive to that kind of a thing and I decided that I might as well go see her since the visiting hours downtown were unrestricted, a little later would not matter.

I found Chloe sitting up in her bed, with the same broad smile as the first time I met her. She was sitting like a “Princess” , with a straight back and in good shape. We had a wonderful time. She told me she had called her sister and she asked me to read some from her bible. We read the 23^rd Psalm and also from John 15 about the House with the many rooms. She was so touched by that. It reminded me of my father who had passed away several years earlier. There was peace and serenity in the room and I was glad I had taken the detour. After half an hour or so I went on to my other visit and told Chloe I would be back soon.

The next Monday my phone rang on my desk and I was surprised it was the mail lady. She told me that I had forgotten a ladder in the back yard and asked me to come pick it up. I agreed to do that one day soon but she insisted I would do it the next day. Somewhat puzzled I asked why the hurry. She told me they wanted it gone so they could close on the house the day after. My mouth fell open. “Why” I asked, we just fixed up the house for Chloe and I did not expect her to sell it right after we did the work. “You don’t know?” she asked. “Know what” I said and her answer took my breath away. “Chloe died”.  In utter disbelief I asked her when that happened and when the funeral would be. “We buried her last week” was her response and told me that she had died on Wednesday night. “What time did she die” I could barely bring out. She answered”They don’t know for sure but when the nurse came in at nine that evening she was gone”. I’m pretty sure Iwas the last one to see her alive.

The next day I went to pick up the ladder and I asked the mail lady if I could have Chloe’s copy of the Prayer of Jabez, it was still laying where she showed it to me. I am keeping it to remind me of that wonderful encounter I had with one of God’s precious people and that I almost walked away from it.

Poor?

They pull on my shirt and one after the other reminds me quickly that I promised to read them another story from the new children’s bible. They love the pictures and then the stories. Their eyes sparkle when I do different voices or ask them silly questions to see if they understand what I’m reading. They do and what a great feeling it is to have six, seven or eight of these little faces poring over the pages with you, making sure they don’t miss an iota.

The story is about worrying or better how not to worry. The pictures show  flowers that have little pants on and little t-shirts as well. They have to laugh so hard, but they are getting the meaning. God is taking care of us.

Now that seems a little farfetched to us. We observe from our relative rich lives how little the kids in Haiti have. Those of you who have gone with me to mountain villages and feeding centers often come back with a lot of hurt in your heart. They seem so poor. And then the orphans, you see their dorm rooms and you see nothing! No piles of toys, no piles of clothes. They either wear their school uniforms or the one or two outfits they have, and I use that word liberally here, when the uniforms are being washed. That’s it! Maybe they are pulling and old Spam can turned into a car with wheels made of bottle caps on a string, or they might roll a wore out car tire through the yard, occasionally knocking over a small child, much more you will not find.

But no games now for the ones who sit and intently listen to the story. You see their little brains working overtime.

Now we are talking about people who are in need, the people who are poor, and I am bracing for what they will tell me. I ask them if they know any needy people, anyone who is poor. They glance at me with a puzzled face. Yes! They know some people outside, in the village, who are poor. Not a single one of them considers themselves as poor. I have to ask them. Their faces are so precious; am I kidding? They are not poor. We have clothes and a pair of shoes! We eat every day! We are not poor! But outside.. there are poor people!

After doing this work for 22 years I sometimes wonder if it really matters.

 I think it does!

 

Matthew 6:28-29