Awakenings: Team January 2012

Team January, thank you for giving of yourselves this week for the children at Good Samaritan Orphanage and the families in the Bethanie Community in Canaan. You've made an impact and left your print here. People were blessed because of you. Even though you blessed many, we know Haiti gave you experiences and lessons you will never forget.

Jon Hand's accounts posted on the Engage Community Blog...

Yesterday we woke up, readied ourselves for the day and then gathered for morning devotions. Jeff did something different this morning. The day before we saw Port-Au-Prince. On Sunday night several of us ended up staying up late talking about the big WHY? questions. Where’s God? How can these slums exist? How can there be such slumlord slavery, corruption, and injustice? There are no quick fix answers. Jeff played a podcast sermon by his friend Don Logan. I know Don. Don is a missionary in Guatemala and has seen suffering firsthand. Don’s message was powerful. He didn’t answer the question, rather he referred to Moses and the burning bush. Moses asks whose talking? God defines his own name and says I AM. When it comes to suffering and evil and ‘how can a loving God?’ we simply don’t understand and won’t! Our modern tendency is to simply shut down if we can’t understand something or find meaning in it. But God is full of unresolvable tensions. He’s loving and personal and He’s transcendent and powerful. We can relate to Him and yet we know nothing about Him. The tension that make God, well um, God…go on and on. Don talked about how we all wear glasses. We all see and hear and interpret the world through a certain lens. When suffering strikes. When the reality of evil and injustice appears before our eyes in a new way. When the things we relied on for security and identity begin to crumble…these are moments that shatter the glasses we are wearing. They give us moments of unforeseen clarity. These are the moments when everything changes! These are burning bush moments.

This trip for many of us was a burning bush moment. It’s funny! I believe there are burning bushes all around us but sometimes you have to go away outside your country, culture, and safety to come back and actually see the burning bushes in our back yard. Then, what do you do with that? How do we stay awake at home to the burning bushes that God puts in our path? How do we revel in the unresolvable mystery of God and not try to define Him by what we want Him to be or think He should be?

On Monday we went back to Canaan. This time the school kids were singing and laughing and learning in their school that meets in the church that Awaken Haiti built. We painted and nailed and held little girls and teased little boys (See my FB for some pictures of the kids at school) and Tom taught a dental clinic. It was a good day-a fast day. Last night we showered off the dust (everything is covered in dust in Haiti), filled ourselves with some great Haitian food, and gathered on the outside porch to debrief the events of this past 5 days. I feel like we crammed 3 weeks worth of sights, sounds, emotions, and work into, really, 4 days. We shared for two hours as thoughts or memories or still small voices were brought to our minds, drawn up from the deep well of our hearts.

For most of us Haiti was was we expected but so much more. For most of us we came knowing how it would go and we leave humbled and surprised at the complexities, nuances, tensions, and hidden surprises that make Haiti the ugly beautiful place that it is!

We leave this morning for the airport! We touch down in DC at 5:00 P.M. We’ve backed our bags that we will lug through the airport. We bring our bodies home to our family and friends but for all of us we will leave a part of our hearts in Haiti. May we not forget!