Now that I am back from four weeks in Haiti, I’ve been asked by family and friends to talk about my trip. So I will attempt to give you some of my thoughts in the next few blogs. My blogs have been sparse while I was in Haiti because my schedule ran me from sunup to sundown. I rarely had energy after a full day except to eat and go to bed. (At 64, you can’t expect too much from me, though John put me to shame when it came to energy and he’s at least two decades older than me :-)
As we got into the truck that was to take us to the airport from the village, my last words to John were, “Let’s go home.” My all time favorite word aside from “Father” and “Jesus” is “Home”. “Home” conjures up within me so many emotions and feelings. The home God has given me is a place of refuge, of quiet rest. It is a place of warmth on a cold winter day, a place of family and fellowship with my favorite people. With God’s promised protection, it is a place of security where I can lay my head and sleep in comfort in spite of the storms that may rage outside. My favorite place to pray and study is in my home…My Home. I love saying to my wife after we’ve been out for the day, shopping or visiting family or friends, “Let’s go home.” It’s hard for me to express what those words kindle within me. These past four weeks our team – John, Ettienne, Kenny, Lussade and myself – have endeavored to build eight more places that the homeless can call “Home”…a place of refuge, warmth and security that they have not know for several years. What an honor it has been to be chosen by God to be his hand extended to the homeless of Haiti. We have only touched, up to now, sixty-four families in our village. There are thousands more that we ourselves will never be able to help. But He didn’t call us to help the thousands, only those He has put in our path. God promised John that He would provide the resources to help those He set before him. We only have eight more lots left to build houses on in Village de Merci a Dieu. With your help and prayers, at the end of our next trip to Haiti, there will be eight more families that will pack up their meager belongings from their tent and say, “Let’s go Home.”
