Reality

Camping is one of my favorite "reality escapes" but I am always glad to get back home with all the ease my house offers. I saw the tent cities again. Reality is they have been living there for months now and when I saw the tens 6 weeks ago they still looked new but now the rains have come and pounded them day after day. The tents were made to be used a few weeks a year, by now some of the tents look like rags flapping in the wind. Reality is here. As we drove out of the city, I saw things being rebuilt and was so excited and grateful to God for the help that has come. Then I saw something that will replay in my mind over and over. We saw a tent village of two room pole houses covered with tarps. One was just over half way constructed and as the adults worked on finishing the last of the tarps the children danced around and clapped like they were getting a mansion built for them. Reality… again I am humbled by all that I have…

Seeing Haiti Again

We arrived in Port a Prince Monday afternoon and my brain recognized random verbs… lots of going, coming, needing, wanting, agreeing…and again I pray that God will touch my brain and help it absorb more of the language and not let it drift through to Robin's equivalent of cyber space (forever there but not able to be used) The thing with Haiti is the extreme emotions that I feel, they change so fast that I struggle to keep myself on level ground. Many buildings still left the way they fell after the earth quake begging me to remember the people who died there. Then the buildings in various stages of "rebuild", some are just being broken into pieces by men with hand tools so they can be loaded onto a truck and hauled away, others lots are leveled and signs of new structures can be seen. Next there are people...lots of people. I found myself praying first for the individuals that I saw and then my imagination started thinking of every other group of street kids begging, everyother young girl with no one to protect them and I prayed more, I saw a group young men cleaning their motorcycles, one man scooped water from the ditch with a cut off soda bottle and when finished launched the bottle and popped a friend on the head. The group broke into laugher and words were exchanged and I'm just guessing that one friend threatened the other because more laughter erupted. I prayed that they would know Jesus as Lord. People… People with emotions and thoughts and dreams and plans just like my neighbors at home. I saw street venders selling everything imaginable under umbrellas along the side walk, next to beautifully painted business', next to a charcoal cooker with roasted corn or some kind of meat for sale. There was garbage and animals and city taxis and UN trucks and donkeys all sharing the road. As I read back through what I just wrote and reflect the emotions, I asked myself what do I want people to do with all this information. I just want you to see Haiti through my eyes and remember it is not a "country" destroyed by an earthquake some 6 months ago but People who still need help and prayer and for us to do what we wanted to do when we first heard on Jan 12, 2010.