Denying Myself

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. ~Matthew 16:24

The Lord has been teaching me about denying myself. Sure, there's the aspect of me giving up the comforts of the US, giving up my career, being away from my family and loved ones, etc, but God has taught me about denying myself in a different aspect. Recently, I've been staying overnight at the orphanage a couple nights a week in order to give some of the staff a break. While staying overnight, I'm responsible for the care of the babies and little ones. This usually involves my sleep being interrupted several times during the night. There's one baby that especially gives me trouble. This little one came to us in Dec extremely malnourished, but after some love and care he has fattened up nicely and is doing very well. The problem is that in his mind he still thinks he's starving and any time his stomach isn't as full as it possibly can be, he thinks he needs to eat. This coupled with the fact that he's very strong willed makes it especially challenging to me. He usually wakes up a couple times during the night demanding a bottle and when he wakes up, he wakes up mad! I've taken it upon myself to try to break him of this bad habit. One night he woke up mad demanding a bottle, however I knew he didn't really need one since he just ate a couple hours earlier. To try to appease him, I held him and tried to soothe him and get him to go back to bed. When he realized I wasn't giving him a bottle, he only got mad and started screaming and throwing a temper tantrum. I was ready to battle it out with him that night, unfortunately we sleep in a room with 12 other people, and not only that, noise travels really easily in the house. I had to break down that night and give him a bottle and I felt anger welling up inside of me. I mean, really, why was a two year dictating to me what to do? As I laid in bed, trying not to be mad about the situation, God kept bringing to mind "he must deny himself" I realized that I had to deny my desire to win that battle and give in to him in order to protect the common good of the orphanage and allow the others to get a good nights sleep.

My First Battle

I've had my first battle against Haitan sickness. It honestly caught me off guard. What I thought was a little stomach bug turned into a fever and stomach cramps which left me pretty dehydrated. Praise God I live with a nurse practitioner! After some IV fluids, antibiotics, Tylenol, and a couple days rest, I am feeling much better. God used this a humbling experience for me. I've always been a really healthy person and rarely get sick. Before coming to Haiti I placed alot of security in my health and thought to myself that I would never get sick in Haiti. I learned for myself, that God truly is the giver and taker of health and I shouldn't boast in my good health or think that it's something I've done to make me healthy. It really is a gift from Him.

Narnia

A couple of weekends ago, we had the kids watch the 3rd Chronicles of Narnia movie. The Hope Haven kids are the best to watch movies with! They interact so much with the movie from applauding to laughing to cheering! The following evenings, we incorporated the movie into our nightly Bible lesson/devotions. The kids divided up into six groups and each group was responsible for one of the main characters and was assigned to come up with different lessons and applications from each of these characters. What a blessing it was as the kids came up with lessons like the importance of training and preparedness in order to victoriously walk their Christian life, how we should be desiring heaven, the power of what we allow into our minds, and the dangers of greed. Please continue to pray for these precious lives.

Photos

Over the past couple of weekends, we have taken almost all 56 of the children and young adults to get their photos taken! Now, this is a pretty big undertaking to get all the little ones ready, keep them clean long enough to get photographed, and do the hair of approximately 14 girls. We took each group of kids to lunch afterwards for hamburgers and ice cream. It was a fun time had by all!

Moses was all smiles AFTER
the pictures

Cutie!!

Davidson enjoying his ice cream

She's ready to eat!

Car Initiation

I can hardly believe I've been in Haiti for over a month!! Since I've been here, I feel like I have been sufficiently initiated into Haitian car troubles. I've been driving a 1989 Izusu Trooper complete with Tweety Bird decals on the rear window :). Within the first couple weeks I was here, the car began acting like it was going to stall on me, especially when I was driving up hills. My first thought was that it needed new spark plugs. Well it quickly worsened from acting like it was going to stall to actually stalling on me all the time! I was leaving the orphanage one day and as I was attempting to turn on the main road, I had to drive over a pretty big "curb". The car stalled on me and absolutely would not stay running long enough to get me over that curb. Thankfully I got stranded on the road from the orphanage and was able to get in touch with the male worker. What a comforting sight it was to see him along with 12 boys marching down the road to come to my rescue! God was so faithful in having me get stranded nearby the orphanage and made a provision for me to get home safely in the car. As a side note, it was indeed the spark plugs that needed changed! I felt pretty proud of myself for correctly diagnosing the problem :). Since that incident, I have had two flat tires and a tire that actually came off the car. Again, God allowed each of these incidences to happen while someone was with me who was able to change a tire, or on the road to the orphanage. I'm so thankful that He truly is my protector and provider!

Ear Pirecing!

Not having yet mastered the Creole language (or even come close!), I have found it much easier to connect and interact with the younger children. Afterall, you can just love on them, play with them, or read to them and they're perfectly. Now, the teenage girls have been alot more challenging to interact with. Well the Lord gave me the perfect opportunity! Several of them have never had their ears pierced and have been asking Cheron if they could have them pierced. So Cheron ordered an ear piercing gun that arrived when I did. This past Saturday I got to be the "ear piercing queen". It was such a fun time with the girls! Many of them helped get the "dots" in just the right spot where the earrings would go, laughed as the one getting her ears done winced in pain, and then admired the final product. It was a fun time for all!

Church

Church in Haiti has been such a blessing to me! While I can't understand what is being taught and preached, they always have an outline of the sermon for all the "blanchs". Last week, Pastor was preaching from 1 Corinthians 1 on the characteristics of human wisdom vs the characteristics of God's wisdom. In looking over the outline, I was really challenged by the different points he made about each of the two. Later on in the week, I was really struggling with something, and spent some time in prayer, asking the Lord for wisdom on how to respond to things. As I began praying, the Lord brought to mind the message that was preached just that Sunday. As I re read 1 Corinthians 1, I was so encouraged and was able to respond to the situation, using godly wisdom instead of my own human wisdom. It was encouraging to me how the Lord was able to transcend the language barrier, and still use the message that was preached to challenge me and encourage me. Praise God that He knows no language barriers!