Reflections from Haiti: Part 3

I've been back for almost exactly one and a half months, and I'm just now at a point where I can talk about the trip without having to fight back tears, where I can walk into a grocery store without feeling like I just got punched in the stomach, and where I can actually interact with humanity in a semi-normal manner. 

But I am not over this trip.  I can not get over this trip.  I don't know that I ever will. 

Days 2.5, 3, 4, and 5 were all spent at the orphanage and in the community, painting and loving on the children, enjoying one anothers company, growing and learning together, and sharing the gospel. It was these days that touched my heart so profoundly.  The country and the people and the love and joy and the fellowship with my brothers and sisters - all of these things resonated with me. 

This mission trip was a new one for me.  Not in the sense that I'd never been on a mission trip before - I've been on a few - but in the way it was run, in the way we approached it.  Every other trip I've been on was goal-oriented.  Not to say this one wasn't but it was in a very different way.  Other trips have been oriented around accomplishing some sort of building task.  This one was people-oriented, not task-oriented.  The goal was to love, and share the Gospel. 

This was the first trip for me where there was a significant language barrier.  I've been to Mexico, but I spoke Spanish pretty well at the time, so it wasn't a big deal. Similarly, on the Native American reservations I've been to, one family spoke English, and the other family we never even met, much less communicated with.  And those parts were so isolated that we never saw or interacted with the neighbors.   This trip, however, required a huge learning curve.  I went in not knowing Kreyol at all.  I can't say I know much now, but I'm at least working on it.  I can say basic things like "Hello", "What is your name?", "Praise Jesus!", "I don't speak Kreyol", and "Don't touch that."

This trip (this year - well, let's be honest, this new life) has completely changed the way I think about almost everything.   I still don't have words.  I still feel like I can't articulate this trip to anyone who asks.  My heart is still there, with those children and those people.  I look through my pictures almost every day.  I ache to be back in that place. 

I have never begged God in the way I did in Haiti.  I have never been reduced to tears because I wanted something so badly, not for myself, but for others.  I have never seen people move the way they do in Haiti - with weight and joy and hunger and brokenness and wisdom all in one step, in one being. 

God is still teaching me - and I am still (sometimes less than enthusiastically) learning lessons, both hard and fun.  We mostly just spent time distributing clothes, supplies, carrying children, teaching English, playing games, sharing the Gospel and the Love of God.  But it was so much more than just that list.  God is continuing to show me new ways to love, to work, to share His glory, and to be refined.