Sometimes people ask me if I am starting to feel like Haiti is home...hmmm
doesn't sound like a tough question, but I always think before blurting out an answer based upon my feelings of things here for the day. Sometimes Haiti feels like home. Sometimes Haiti feels foreign. Sometimes Pennsylvania feels like home. Sometimes Pennsylvania feels foreign. On days I am feeling "uncomfortable" nothing feels like home. It has taken a while to sort of get used to the idea of saying "I am home at both places, yet I'm not at home either place".
Yesterday we took our August team to do a kids program at a kindergarten school in Delmas 33 for those of you who know a bit about what's what here. This school is run by friends of ours and was opened a year ago. Earlier in the summer they mentioned they would like to do an outreach for their community this summer and when I spoke with them 2 weeks ago, they still didn't have funding to do it. The team already prepared a program so we thought it vital to help them reach out to their community. Many of these children live in surrrounding tent cities.
Lots of fun. Good teaching. The team did a great job! The kids did a great job! We took 5 of the girls connected to our girls orphanage and they joined us in ministering to these kids and that was beautiful! But something in me was missing.
I couldn't put my finger on it until last night as I was looking through the pictures of the day. This wasn't home to me. These weren't the kids I've come to know and love on. I missed Canaan. It had been only a week and a half since being there so it wasn't the time away necessarily. Not to take away from the kids we ministered to yesterday, but those weren't the kids I've come to know and love. I'm not sure I can even put into words the strangeness of this feeling. I was having trouble understanding how I could miss a place that to many seems to have been forgotten.
Truth is...it hasn't been forgotten. God is there. His presence. He has not forgotten this place or these people. Everytime we go we feel him there with us. Hope is there. Everytime we go. We have not forgotten this place. We have not forgotten these people. AWAKENHAITI has not forgotten this place or these people. Many of you have not forgotten.
The only thing understandable in it is when we enter the territory of the community we are working in, peace falls. Hope falls. It's not when we enter Canaan. It's entering the community to Bethanie Church of Canaan. It's become home. Not home in the sense of where I sleep at night or where my kids go to school. Home in the sense of where my heart is. I can picture a little plaque hanging in a living room "home is where the heart is". I never really appreciated that little thing growing up, actually thought it was pretty tacky. But now I'm living it.
I belong three places, yet I don't belong anywhere. Now I'm realizing though that belonging 3 places on earth means I have a lot of security here, right? Yet not belonging anywhere here on earth means I have no security here, right? This is what God wants. He doesn't want us to become too comfortable, too at home. While these 3 places make me feel like home, it's temporary and HOME is yet to come. I'm pretty sure there will be no confusion there, no feelings of we don't fit in, we don't belong. Just HOME.
Hebrews 13:14
"For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come."
Hello Denlingers, I'm one of the mom's whose daughter spent a week with you last month. I still try and keep up on what's going on with Awaken Haiti. Somehow you and the many that have become your extended family have deeply touched my heart. Being a military family, we've looked into the eyes of those less fortunate than we are, yet they seem to be richer than we are in spirit, patience and understanding. When we lived in S.Korea we experienced a country go through a military coup yet even though we were anxious, we were never afraid. We could almost physically see the hands of God over all of us as well as feel His presence. We knew without a doubt that He was in control, much like we know that God is in control of Haiti and the world and always will be. Thank you for being the head, heart, hands, knees and feet of Christ. Our prayers are with you and the Haitian people. May God protect and bless you all.
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