2014 Year in Review

This year was such a whirlwind so my blogs have been few and far between, but I have put together some photos to walk you through some highlights.  There have been many ups and downs, but I have felt the presence of God so very near through them all.  Thank you to all who have supported me with prayers, encouraging words and financial support. 

First of all....everyday life :)

Mangos for sale

Walking in the neighborhood visiting with friends

What our kitchen table looks like most days as we help with homework

My roommate Sharon during recreation....we are always surrounded by kids at school!

Looking down my street

January

With Richcarde (left) before we knew he was sick

Kokoye Beach....all creation declares His glory :)

Kokoye beach again.....reminds me of one of my favorite stories (here if you've never read it) about the boy throwing the starfish back into the ocean and saying "but it matters to this one".  Something I have to be reminded of often when the needs are so great and it's impossible to help everyone.

February

Valentine's Day - we got to show these guys how much we love them

Valentine's Day spaghetti - and yes as a matter of fact, that is ketchup & mayo on top of that spaghetti...disgusting but the kids love it :)

We got to go visit Sarah and she was doing great!

March

Saturday reading program was full!

Happy Birthday performed by Sonson :)

April

I spent all of April stateside so it meant lots of facetime calls with my friends

Quality time with my sissy and little brother

And seeing Terra off as she moved to Tahoe

May

Lots of library time

We go to soccer games at the stadium every chance we get.  This is what it looks like when the game has to be decided by a shootout :)

June, aka the hardest & craziest month of my life

Miracle after miracle occurred, God moved major mountains and Richcarde got his passport and Dominican visa in one day!!

Hanging out with all his buddies on the last night before we headed to DR for surgery

I got up the next morning after he got his passport and thought I had a day to prepare to go to DR, but God had other plans and we ended up on a plane that afternoon to the Dominican border

On our way!

The welcoming crew after we landed on a dirt and grass runway!  We took motorcycles from here to cross the border and get on a bus.

Right before surgery for mitral valve replacement

A few days after being in step down ICU.  I was on the 24 hour shift for several days and nights in a row

Showing off his battle wounds

Sweet reunion.  After about a month in and out of the hospital we finally decided Richcarde would not get better without his momma.  We found a way to get her there and the whole crew was very happy that momma had arrived!!

June also brought the beginning of our microfinance program!  We now have 15 clients that have loans and meet with us monthly to update us on their progress

July

Summer school!

Meg received the draft copy of the book, so we did a lot of editing!  Book will be released January 13th!

Richcarde returned home!

I got the joy of celebrating "mama" Tati's 60th birthday with her and her daughter

A much needed relaxing weekend was spent at The Rustic in Kenscoff....it was SO cold! 

And had amazing views and hiking!

August

Spent time in Philly with Caila who had just had scoliosis surgery

Made it to Oklahoma and had an awesome reunion with a group of friends that hadn't been all together in years

Also got to be there for my sister's baby shower!

September

I made an unexpected trip home to say "see you later" to my Grandpa.  He had 95 wonderful years of life and someday we'll polka dance in heaven :)

Universole came to Haiti to train girls to make leather sandals

So I now spend 3 afternoons a week making sandals with these girls!

October

School started October 1st and we have 500 students this year!

I do library time every day at school

I also coordinate all of our student sponsorship so I get the joy of passing out letters to students when their sponsors write them!

The best joy of all arrived in October....my very first nephew!! Taison Jace Rapihana was born October 30th.

November

Most of my time in November was spent stateside with this precious guy :)

December

Caila returned to Haiti for a couple of months before she will go back to Philly for therapy

Christmas was spent with great family and friends

And with these characters :)

And 2015........

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:21-23

That He May Be Glorified

Di mwen kisa pou'm fe
M' pa ka viv san ou

As we sang this chorus in church last night I couldn't help but be amazed by the transformation that has taken place over the past year.  These words literally mean "Tell me what to do, I can't live without you" and as I watched each of the Freedom House girls singing this to the Lord I couldn't help but have tears in my eyes.  They have all come from such difficult situations in their past, but they are all able to sing this with such faith and trust now.  I know that they all still have a lot of healing to do, but Jesus is being glorified as restoration is taking place in their lives.

Mark 5:34And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

There was a team of young ladies here last week that did a Bible study with the Freedom girls over Mark 5.  As we were talking one of the team members pointed out verse 34 and how Jesus doesn't just say "your faith has made you well", instead he says "Daughter, your faith has made you well".  He doesn't just heal us, He makes us his daughters.  What a sweet and powerful truth.  We are daughters of the Most High King and He loves us no matter how broken we are.  He will turn ashes into beauty every single time.........that He may be glorified.                

Isaiah 61:3

 to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

P.S.  I know I still owe everyone an update on Richcarde....it's coming soon....well, as soon as I have time to type it all into a blog :)

Update on Richcarde

He is scheduled for surgery on June 2nd!! His surgery will be in the Dominican Republic  through the Chadasha Foundation.  We still need prayers for his passport and visa to come through in time and without issue.  Thank you so much to all of you who have been praying for him and please continue to do so!  God is so good!

You keep him in perfect peace whose minds stayed on you, because he trusts in you.  Trust in the Lord forever for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.  Isaiah 26:3-4

Urgent Prayer Request

I have an urgent prayer request I would like to share. One of my sweet friends, Richcarde, has not been feeling well lately.  It turns out that he has a really bad heart murmur and after a long search and answered prayers he was seen by a visiting cardiologist yesterday.  He has a mitral valve prolapse and needs a valve replacement within 6 months.  As there is no easy way to get Haitian children out of the country for necessary surgeries we have a interesting road ahead. 
Please pray for his health, visa process, and a doctor/hospital willing to do the surgery.  Please feel free to spread the word, the more prayers the better :)  And if you happen to know a generous heart surgeon please send them my way!

P.S.  I'm stateside for a little while, so if I haven't seen you yet and you want to hang out let me know :)

Thankful.

As I sit in my room and listen to the rain I am just so thankful. Thankful for much needed rain finally falling. Thankful for wonderful friends here that are always encouraging. Thankful that I get to serve in this place.  Thankful that God is faithful. Thankful that His perfect love casts out fear. Thankful for my family and that I will get to spend time with them soon.  Thankful that I get to be a mentor and friend to some precious teenage boys.  Thankful that we were able to worship with our community this week. Thankful that God understands all languages. Thankful for opportunities to pray with our students who don't know the freedom of the gospel.  Thankful for joy. Thankful for hope. Thankful for Jesus.

JUST THANKFUL.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.  For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18

Today was one of those days.  You know the kind where nothing really seems to go right and you cry at the drop of a hat.....yeah, that kind.

First, some history:
I have basically become a mom to several boys who live in our neighborhood.  They come over every day after school to do their homework, eat lunch, and just hang out.    

As I'm sure you can imagine from the photo they are a bit of a rowdy bunch.  The one on the far right (Kitson) is my buddy, or my "shadow" as some call him because he literally goes everywhere with me.  Well, last week he got in a fight at school....with a girl no less.  So after school we sat down to talk about it.  He told me that she hit him first and the he had to hit her back because otherwise everyone would just hit him because they thought they could.  I told him that he didn't need to do that and that he should just walk away, just because someone hits you doesn't mean you should hit them back.  I told him how I knew he was a better person than that and how we want to be more like Jesus, and Jesus wouldn't hit somebody back.  

Fast forward to today...

Kitson, Richcarde and I are sitting waiting for English class to start and one of the boys that is in our secondary school said something to me in Creole that I didn't understand, so he starts laughing at me and talking about how I can't understand Creole.  So (in a voice that was probably not as nice as it should have been) I told him that he shouldn't laugh at me that at least I'm trying and that if he tried to speak English I wouldn't laugh at him if he didn't understand something.

A little later Kitson said he was going to leave, but really he just went outside of the school gate and was hiding behind the wall just trying to be funny.  I went over to tell him to come work on his homework and as I was looking over the wall a boy said something that wasn't nice about me in Creole because he thought that I couldn't understand.  I didn't say anything mean to him but just told him (again in a voice that was probably not as nice as it should have been since I was already frustrated by being laughed at) that I could understand what he was saying and that it was rude.  I was so frustrated that it made me cry.  This obviously bothered Kitson because he waited quietly (super unusual for him) for me to get out of class.  

As soon as I walk out of class he starts questioning me about what happened.  I tell him what happened and then he starts telling me that I shouldn't pay attention to people who say things like that and reminding me of all the things that I told him last week.  Wow.  Eyes and ears always watching and listening to what you say and do.  I didn't do what I had told him to do and he let me know it.  As we continued to talk about it I told him that I should have just walked away and I didn't, I made a mistake and I'm sorry.  That seemed to settle it for him, but I continued to think about and process it.  Only by the grace of God will I be able to react to situations as I should.  I need to be very intentional in praying about this because no matter how much I want to just set my mind to it and be able to do it I know that I can't, only He can.  

I think the hardest thing is that when I really stop to think about it I realize that this teenage boy most likely isn't saying rude things just because he's a punk kid, but there is something much deeper going on.  This place is so full of darkness and despair.  And in that moment when someone really needs to see Jesus I pray that my reaction would be one that would show them His grace and mercy and not my frustration.

Bon Ane!

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality.  At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need.  Then there will be equality, as it is written:  "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little."

- 2 Corinthians 8:13-15

Last Saturday we went hiking in the mountains.  We set out at 9 AM with a few of our Haitian friends. Our friend Donald has been hiking quite a bit, so he was leading us.  He told us our destination was about 2 hours away.  After 2 1/2 hours of walking (mostly uphill) we started questioning him about the time it would take to reach our destination....."only 30 more minutes" he would say.  Sometimes Haitian time and American time are two totally different things :) .....so when we had been hiking for 4 hours we decided we better head home or we weren't going to make it back before dark.  We actually continued on in a loop so we got to see even more of the beautiful countryside.  After a full 7 hours of strenuous hiking we arrived back home, grateful and tired.  

The hiking crew :)

Beautiful mountains

More beautiful mountains

A school along the way

The whole time we were hiking I just kept thinking about how this was something we were doing for recreation and how it was an everyday life reality for so many people.  Walking uphill, and not only walking, but carrying water or various other things....for miles.  Just simply having enough water or food in a remote location like that is a very difficult task.  Children have little or no access to education.  Preventable diseases run rampant because there is no access to medical care.  Floods or droughts ruin crops that are a family's only source of food.  

I went to bed early that night because I was so tired by the time we got home.  I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep.  I decided I would read a couple of chapters in the book I'm reading and part of what I read I would like to share with you here.  

     Whenever a major jetliner crashes anywhere in the world, it inevitably sets off a worldwide media frenzy covering every aspect of the tragedy.  I want you to imagine for a moment that you woke up this morning to the following headline:  "One Hundred Jetliners Crash, Killing 26,500."  Think of the pandemonium this would create across the world as heads of states, parliaments, and congresses convened to grapple with the nature and causes of this tragedy.  Think about the avalanche of media coverage that it would ignite around the globe as reporters shared the shocking news and tried to communicate its implications for the world.  Air travel would no doubt grind to a halt as governments shut down the airlines and panicked air travelers canceled their trips.  The National Transportation Safety Board and perhaps the FBI, CIA, and local law enforcement agencies and their international equivalents would mobilize investigations and dedicate whatever manpower was required to understand what happened and to prevent it from happening again.

     Now imagine that the very next day, one hundred more planes crashed--and one hundred more the next, and the next, and the next.  It is unimaginable that something this terrible could ever happen.

     But it did--and it does.

     It happened today, and it happened yesterday.  It wil happen again tomorrow.  But there was no media coverage.  No heads of state, parliaments, or congresses stopped what they were doing to address the crisis and no investigations were launched.  Yet more than 26,500 children died yesterday of preventable causes related to their poverty, and it will happen again today and tomorrow and the day after that.  Almost 10 million children will be dead in the course of a year.  So why does the crash of a single plane dominate the front pages of newspapers across the world while the equivalent of one hundred planes filled with children crashing daily never reaches our ears?  And even though we now have awareness, the access, and the ability to stop it, why have we chosen not to?  Perhaps one reason is that these kids who are dying are not our kids; they're somebody else's. 

--From "The Hole in Our Gospel" by Richard Stearns

It's so easy to push these children out of our minds because we don't personally know them.  I think that it is so easy to live in our comfort zones and in our little bubbles......where all is right with the world and my life is all about me.  But what if you were the mother who couldn't feed your children because you couldn't get a job....there are no jobs to get, but even if there were you have to carry water all day which leaves no time for anything else.  Wouldn't you want someone to help you?  This part of the book really challenged me....it really made me think about the way I spent my money when I had a paying job, about the way I use my resources now, and honestly about the way that it is sometimes easy to become immune to this pain even when living in a 3rd world country.  Things that should never be normal or acceptable sometimes become so commonplace that it is hard to see them for what they truly are.  I think the prayer "break my heart for what breaks yours, Lord" is so important and necessary not only in America but also in the developing world.  It is only by His grace that we can be compassionate for others.  God didn't put us on this earth to live life for ourselves.  He blessed us so that we might bless others.  

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will about in every good work.

-2 Corinthians 9:8        

John Piper puts it this way in "Desiring God":

Why does God bless us with abundance?  So we can have enough to live on, and then use the rest for all manner of good works that alleviate spiritual  and physical misery.  Enough for us; abundance for others.  The issue is not how much a person makes.  Big industry and big salaries are a fact of our times, and they are not necessarily evil.  The evil is in being deceived into thinking that a six-digit salary must be accompanied by a six-digit lifestyle.  God has made us to be conduits of his grace.  The danger is in thinking the conduit should be lined with gold.  It shouldn't.  Copper will do.  Copper can carry unbelievable riches to others.

As I look back on 2013 I am so grateful for the many things God has taught me this year, but I know that I still have a lot to learn, and for that I am also grateful.  I am looking forward to what He has in store for 2014 and am challenged to live my life more for Him and less for me. 

Break my heart for the things that break yours, Lord.