a little booya action

I have had one of the worst headaches of my life all day today, and I know I have never been more exhausted in all of my existence—and it’s been a great day. I’ll explain why in a bit, but before I do I want to express that I am completely re-inspired to keep up with my journaling and bloggification. In the past couple weeks I have heard from so many people who I would not expect in a million years to read my blog, and have gotten so many compliments that I have been really blown away, and want to give more accounts of what’s going on!

I’ll give you the overview of what I’ve been working toward. The focus has been in the 5th Section, a region outside of the city of Saint Marc where a few thousands of people live in poverty you can only grasp when you see it yourself. We have been working on preparing for two things: a school/church in a village called Lubin (which has never had a school or a church before), and we’re preparing for a four day “Crusade”. On a side note, it makes me feel very uncomfortable calling it a Crusade considering all the corruption, and death, and shenanigans that happened during those middle ages. During this—we’ll call it a Bondye-beni-ou-sade (Creole for Godbless you-sade, its all I could come up with)—during this Bondye-beni-ou-sade we will be evangelizing, and preaching, and putting on skits and dances, and giving gifts, and my favorite aspect of it all- staying out there under the stars all four nights! I have spent many moments here daydreaming of staying out in the 5th Section for longer than just an afternoon. I wish I could express better how beautiful this place is, and how much I love these people. siiiiighhhh. I forgot to mention that this Bondye-beni-ou-sade is happening April 5-9 and my flight is scheduled for April 4. BUT… I’m one step ahead of you, I change my flight so I Claiti will be extended till April 17. Booya!

Back to my day today. It started off so awful. I woke up and was ready for work at 8 and right away we were gearing all our trucks and vehicles to go out to the 5th Section. We were bringing out cement and supplies to pour the supports for the church. Unfortunately, the truck pulling the trailer with the skid loader and concrete mixer had a crack in the frame on the bottom. So I went with Terry to go get that welded. Right when he gets there he drops the truck off and leaves to go to the bank and tells me to watch over the stuff in the bank. No problem right? It wouldn’t be a problem if he returned promptly, but you learn that nothing happens promptly in Haiti. He didn’t come back until an hour and a half later, I had nobody to talk to, nothing to do, and no shade in sight on a 90 degree day. He finally came back and we set off for the 5th Section… for two minutes and we got a flat tire. Luckily we were still in town when it happened so we could get it fixed at the local tire shop. Again I had to wait out in the sun, and we had to set off at least three hours later than we wanted to.

I then was lucky enough to have more heavy dosage of the sun! I had to stand on the back of the flatbed truck to make sure that the shovels, concrete, gasoline, and water pump all stayed on. This is no easy task when the roads are worse than any B level road you could possibly find in the Iowa countryside. The drive out to Lubin takes about a half hour on motorcycles, but with carrying 30 bags of concrete, a skid loader, and concrete mixer it takes an hour and a half… under the sun (hahaha I sound like Solomon writing Ecclesiastes—please tell me somebody understands that lame bible joke).

We finally got there, but by this time my small pint water bottle was baron two hours ago, I had developed a debilitating headache, and I had sunburns on top of sunburns. I swear though, if each person has a Heaven on Earth I know that mine is Lubin. Right before I got there I prayed that God would somehow rejuvenate me so I could give my all in the ministry to the beautiful people of Lubin. Within five minutes of getting there the leader of the village could tell I was not doing so well and insisted on bringing me not one but three liters full of filtered water. In addition to the water they later gave me milk (which I have missed soooo much), a mango, and more water. Thanks leader of Lubin, but thanks more God!

Have I mentioned I have an extreme fondness of Lubin? The instant I ever enter the village any villager child or adult while yell “Clay-tone!” My friend Jude and I have gone there enough times that they have picked up on my name, Jude says they’ll remember it forever, and whenever he goes out there without me they always ask about me. Can I be honest and vulnerable for a minute? I may not always outwardly show it, but I struggle with being overly prideful. Let me tell you, when you are greeted like a returning king anytime you are seen even near certain villages then it is an instant shot into the ego-veins. I really can’t describe the feeling and how amazing it is. I truly know though that I don’t find all of this joy in coming here for the adoration I feel. As much pride as I have I promise that’s not why I love it. I am filled with joy for Lubin because the adoration is met with full reciprocity from me. I love them so much, I want to live among them and pull together any resource I could possibly muster in order to make life easier for them. I’m not going to try to describe why I love them so much, give some time and energy to people who make the projects of New York look like the Hamptoms sometime, and I have no doubt you’ll know exactly how I feel.

I have a bad habit of abandoning work to love on people. I blame my college chaplain Joe Brummel for this. On all mission trips he always talks about people before projects. I’ve taken that to heart and I always spend my time with the children, or hilarious mothers of the village. Today was no different and I can say in all honesty that I didn’t poor a single bucket of cement today. Luckily there was an abundance of help! It was great though, I am so pleased with how my Creole is coming along. Children find the funniest things to talk about. Today I talked about why my armpit hair is longer than theirs, why I want to wait a few years before I have children, and how to say fingernail-clipper in English. That’s not even close to all we talked about though! My favorite part was when I taught them the two songs I know in Creole and they sang some different songs in Creole for me. I think tomorrow I’ll ask them to teach me them.

Am I painting an even somewhat clear picture? When I reflect back on my times in places like this I really feel like I’m in Heaven. I think it might be true. These people who have “nothing” materially have so much in their community, have such an unhindered pathway to God, and a more acute sense of true happiness and true pain. I’m sorry for the cheesy paradoxical phraseology, but these people seem so “real” in that they make their survival happen themselves, that it is “surreal”. Does that make any sense? Ask me sometime to explain it to ya if you want. I can’t wait to come back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and then the Bondye-beni-ou-sade. Please pray for these people, pray that people will be placed in their lives to disciple them, pray that the canal will be completed so their rice patties won’t look like the Serengeti, pray that the fear of Voodoo will leave the land, pray for anything for the 5th Section or any place you know of like it. The Bible makes it clear the poor are so very close to His heart, what kind of Christians are we if they’re not close to ours as well?