One House, One Dream

Ternicille is our laundry lady.

Monday through Saturday she makes her way from the outskirts of Cap Haitian and comes at 8:30 AM, rain or shine, to gather our dirty clothes and linens, and anything else we want washed.  She sets up her work area on the concrete steps of the volunteer house at Manna, by getting a garden hose and filling kivets (large tubs) with soap and water and rinse water.  She can remove nearly any stain and has a way with whites that makes them practically shine as they bleach in the bright sunlight that falls upon our back porch in the afternoon.  When the clothes have dried she folds them and places them in a clean kivet and sets them by the front door with our clean laundry hamper.  It is the same most every day.

She is fiercely protective of what is entrusted to her and does not tolerate theft.  Ternicille says, "Rad pa kapab mache"(clothes can't walk) if something goes missing.  Sometimes this ethic has gotten her in trouble with those less scrupulous.

She is quick and diligent in her work.  If she finishes early she looks for more to do until her normal work day is over and does not leave early if her responsibilities run long.  She does not believe in waste, and would rather clean something well and use it again, than throw it away; she can clean practically anything.  Sometimes I have wondered what a marvel her home must be.

Last month the northern part of Haiti was inundated by rain that poured hour after hour through the night and then continued  the next day, too.  Low lying area were quickly saturated and then flooded with dirty, sewage-filled water, as drainage ditches and latrines spilled over their swollen banks.

Ternicille's house was in an area that was badly flooded.  She was late for work that day, but she came nonetheless.  She told me her house had flooded with a couple of feet of water during the night.  In the morning she had gotten her kids into a part of Cap Haitian that was not under water so they could be safe with her extended family.  She told me her house was a mess and the water had reached up to her beds which already stood on cinder blocks.

She washed my clothes the day her house stood in deep water.

A couple of days later she invited me to go to her home to see the flood damage.  I took the boys along, too.  Rikerns drove us in our biggest vehicle to make it through water and deep mud holes that remained on the roadway.  When we could drive no further, we walked on foot through mud-filled paths and up along a cement cannel wall for about a quarter of mile, then wove our way through some tin clad shacks with stick walls, through a narrow alley, on a mud path, to Ternicille's house.

Ternicille in front of her house.

The side of her house with water near the base.

The view from the front door looking into the first "bedroom".
The water stains can be seen 1/3 of the way up the wall.

Mud remaining on her dirt floor under the bed.  Algae has started to grow in the damp dirt.

Looking in the back door into the second room
of the house -- an old microwave is used as a stand
for her suitcase "dresser".

Ternicille has hopes for a better home and has been building a new house next door.  It's cement foundation is 4 feet higher than the house she lives in and has cinder block walls.  It only needs a roof for her to be able to move into it and have a safer, dryer place for herself and her children.  There will be no running water or indoor toilet, but she would be proud of her improved living situation.

Ternicille standing by the "front door" of her new house.

Looking from the first room into the second.
Although this house would still be just a
two room home, it would be dry and more sanitary
for her family.

I tell you Ternicille's story to let you know of one individual life in a personal way.  Her life interacts with mine on a daily basis, and she blesses me.

Would you pray for me as I face the daily challenge of how to serve and bless those God has placed around me?

Wall of Shame

After many months of waiting for our shipping container to arrive we received word that a truck carrying our beloved cargo had left Port au Prince and would be arriving Wednesday morning.

I remembered back to the stressful feelings of packing to move to Haiti.  It happened in two shifts, first to gather items we wanted to ship down to Haiti and after that was done, the remaining items for storage and/or giveaway.  I brought load after load to the thrift store,  had a huge garage sale, gave away items to friends and family, and finally pared down to what could fit in the boxes for Haiti and what could fit in a storage trailer to leave sitting until we return stateside.  What seemed like such difficult choices then, such as whether to pack the food processor or blender, feels a bit ridiculous now.

I remember the feeling of mental exhaustion as I itemized every item for each numbered box, 40 in all.  Forty boxes of important things to make it tolerable to live in Haiti for 2 years, or so I thought.

The first few weeks of living here "the container" came up quite a bit.  Someone would say something like, I wish I had a ruler, or bread maker, or soup ladle and Erin or I would undoubtedly say, "Oh we have one of those on the container".  "The container" could very well have been filled with milk and honey for how I glorified it's contents in my mind.  When the container comes I will have __________- fill in the blank with any treasures you can imagine!

But at the same time, other thoughts about the "stuff" were turning in my mind.  Within a couple of days of being here we had moved into our 600 square foot apartment and despite the tight quarters I began to realize how very blessed we were compared to so many around us.  Even though we had no couch or hot water and our home and school was happening on the end of the multi-leveled twin beds Kirk and I claimed as our sleeping space, we were safe and clean, well fed and disease free, comfortable and entertained in our little space -- far better than our best paid employees.

The woman we hire to wash our clothes (by hand) lives in small, paper thin (literally) shack with a patchwork tin roof and cardboard and newspaper filling the cracks in the sides of her stick walls.  Even when days of rain brought over a foot of water to her home and left her dirt floor pocked with mud, Ternicielle came in to work, to wash my sweaty clothes so I could neatly hang them back in tidy rows of skirts and coordinating tops.  Her children went to stay with family when the waters began to soak the bottom of their mattresses, while mine slept in bug-free comfort aside mechanical breezes, atop the crisp white sheets she had blued, and then bleached, on the roof with the hot Haitian sun.

I saw her home a couple of days after the rain had subsided.  The boys came with me.  Her living conditions deeply troubled Noah.  At first he was glib and made comments  about her "cute little house" and how much fun it would be to camp there like in a fort, but later that night he lay in bed with questions of a just God.  How could one person have so much another so little?  What is the cause of poverty?  It has been a good place from which to talk about what God wants of us as believers and fellow image-bearers, what the true cost of our comfortable wealth is, how to be grateful for what we have without always wanting more, and how to bless others who have so much less.

A lot has happened in our lives to change my perspective on "need" since I packed those forty boxes, so when the container arrived I felt less joy than I had hoped I would in that moment.  While I was deeply grateful to have my comfortable king size bed and to unpack linens that smelled of home, I also felt a sense of embarrassment as the 4 young men loaded box after box, all 40 of them, into my small space.  How foolish it must have seemed to them.  It did to me.  Sure, there are some things that are useful and good.  I  regret neither the boxes of toiletries with 2 years worth of deodorant nor the shelves of books to grow the minds of my kids, but I do regret the excess with which I packed.  I regret even more that I allowed myself to believe the mis-truth that my "paring down" for missions was of some marvelous sacrifice on my part.

My boxes stack around me in burden, like a wall of shame.  They show me how gluttonous I had become in my consumption of all things sparkly, shiny, and new.  I had laid prostrate before the American god of consumerism, even when in my self-righteousness I tried to think otherwise.  I tried to justify my consumption by "saving" money at garage sales and thrift stores.  Though my budget allowed primarily for second hand vehicles and used clothes, I wasted time on "important" decisions standing in an isle at Target deliberating between a plastic or stainless steel garbage can. I frittered away the money God entrusted to me that could have been used to grow and bless his kingdom and those he directly calls us to serve.  I was so immersed in my culture of consumption I could not even see the reality of my own addiction to self-serving, self-pleasuring life, and how that life disabled me from fully participating in God's kingdom work and the pleasure of deep relationship with him.  Lord forgive me!  I am stuck here!

I don't yet know what I will do with all of the stuff I don't need. Ternicielle is grateful to take the plastic I used to protect my mattress to fortify her roof against the next rains and the cardboard boxes to replace the damp ones that insulate her walls.  I don't need 12 coordinated bath towels and I might be able to go on quite happily without 6 mixing bowls.  I want to find some way to reverse my gluttony and bless others.  I want to take joy in my relationship with Christ and those he has planted around me, and not in the fluff that can momentarily seem so important.

Please pray for me and Kirk and the boys that we will remain content with little and discontent with a lot.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

The Birthday Girl!

Rose is 2!

Dear Rose,

Happy birthday little one!  It's hard to believe that we celebrate your second year of life today, and to think that only a year ago we did not yet know you'd be ours... what a journey we've been on.  

In a place where babies sometimes die, every life is celebrated with joy, and children's birthdays are not taken for granted.  COTP has a tradition of birthday parties and so yours was no exception!  We gathered together on the gated patio with all of your roommates, siblings, and many staff, too.  You opened a present with Natalie's help, we sang happy birthday and English and Kreyol, and of course, shared cake with everyone!  Not a crumb went to waste!  And when the party was over, and the sticky fingers washed, Noah read you stories and Elijah made faces, Daddy held you close, and we played "Smooth Road" on my lap 'til you giggled!  It was a great party!

It's difficult to imagine what goes on in your little mind.  You are full of jabbering, though few distinguishable words yet.  You love to laugh and play, feel powerful when you shut Roxie out of the gate, you love good things to eat and quiet cuddles, you light up when we come into the gate and cry big tears when we walk away.  Oh the walking away... that part is SO hard, for both of us.  Soon there will be no more good-byes!

I don't yet know how many days we will live in the land of your birth, if it be months or years, or even a lifetime.  I don't know if your days will be filled under tropical skies or the changing seasons of northern climes.  I think about what I will want you to remember from this time of your life, long after your cells have failed to record these days in any kind of active memory. 

You have been in care of strong women, many of whom leave their babies behind to care for you and the others each day.  Women who greet you in song in the morning and sing you to sleep with hymns each night.  Women who know what your life might have been like outside the gate and who pride themselves in how plump and healthy you have become.  Oh the Nannies have been your collective Mama until I could be your only.

Do you know of the beauty of the land to which you were born?  A land where mountains rumble with afternoon thunder and the palms whisper in breeze beneath the bluest skies.  A land where goats and their kids are tethered in lush fields and long-horned cows turn curious heads when we pass, on the dry road.  A land where trees hang heavy with blushing mangoes ready to juice up lips and run off chins, where bananas spring out from the trunk with showy flowering ripeness, and breadfruit hang heavily on branches high above the waving canes.  

You come from a people with strength and grace!  Do you remember the men resting on rustic hoes and then returning with bent back to shape the land for planting, the school boys bringing the cattle home for the night, with tethers draping behind like a long dusty tail?  Can you recall the woman with proud necks carrying the laundry, the goods for sale, the purchases from market, the woven bundles on which to sleep, all atop their heads - what balance and grace as they walk in the hot sun, shaded only by their load!

There is much intensity to the land of your birth!  The sun filters though the moist air with unhindered power and the day is only cooled when it beds behind the mountains at dusk.  The rains do not waste time with drizzle but pour and pound and puddle before they abruptly cease.  Likewise, people do not dispute in polite tones, but raise loud voices to drench the matter, then quickly dry up the concern and go on their way.  The mountains rise abruptly from the plains and return in sharp lines to ground level again.

The quiet places lie in the darkness of the night, when breezes rustle the canopy of leaves around the house, tree frogs croak their love to one another, and the cows bawl in distant fields.  The stars twinkle with billions of bright spots in the infinite sky, and fat toads take their places on the doorstep.

Poverty, too,  is rooted in this Haitian soil.  People you might have known suffer without adequate food, shelter, and clothing.  Though we are safe and well within the walls of the compound, many shiver in small homes when the rains pour through shoddy roofs, some lie side by side without the comfort of beds, and too many go to bed tonight with empty, hungry stomachs.  Often a man must chose between buying the next cement block to continue building a house or choosing supper.  The stomach often wins.  People come to the gate desperate for medical help for conditions that have easy cures, but no money means no cure.  

Some day I will tell you how your mother brought you through the same gate, hoping for a life better than she could give, hoping your small, frail frame could be made full and well.  She knew all too well of others babies who die of simple things and wanted better for you.  She had a love I don't know about, sweet Rose, but I promise to love and care for you in the way she hoped for you and the way God chose for you, too.  I don't know why he puts families like ours together, only that he does.  We, dear child, are the lucky ones!  We get to participate in reflecting the aspect of God's nature that so longs for relationship with us, that He adopts all of us as His sons and daughters.  I covenant to be your Mom, like God covenants to be our God -- you are my child, and we are His.

Today we celebrate that you are alive and well and that your future is bright.  We celebrate that you will soon be a part of our family and part of God's covenant family, too. 

Happy Birthday, Rose.

Rose, Mommy, and Natalie

Natalie helping Rose open her birthday present.

Mmmm... birthday cake!