finally another post

this is a post that i wrote the day before the bondye-beni-ou-sade. i'll write about it all when i have the time and energy, hope this will do for now!

It’s been a while again since I’ve updated but I have excuses again! I have been unreal busy with building the church out in the 5th Section, and preparing for the Bondye-beni-ou-sade (a big worship and evangelism event out in the 5th Section with music dramas, preaching, prayer, worship, anything you can imagine. But anyway I’m up and blogging again.

I am very happy and I have God and the 5th Section to thank for it. For a lot of different reasons I have been very stressed out, very discouraged, and even moody at times to people I would never be moody with. On top of that I have not been able to sleep well at nights, and there has been a huge surge in mosquitoes and the bites that accompany them.
God has made it so clear to me that I am exactly where I belong, do exactly what I should be doing. I have been praying for renewal and rejuvenation. Each day I go out to the 5th Section groggy, tired, not enough breakfast in my stomach, and sunburnt from the hours I spend unprotected from the 90 degree Haitian sun. The beautiful thing about it is the second I get to Lubin (the village we’ve been building the church) I am re-energized almost instantly. I don’t know how well of a job I can do at describing it, but I’ve had dehydration and exertion headaches vanish instantly, I’ve had just as much energy as the little naked Haitian children, and I have a joy that makes hours out there melt butter in the Haitian sun. This joy is truly transcendent, and when I say it feels like Heaven, I really mean for me, I’m surely getting glimpses of Heaven on Earth (you can talk about that with me theologically later sometime if you desire).

The children. Oooooooh the beautiful children. They stare at you for minutes at a time, starved for an attention that I’m so willing to give but unfortunately insufficient for the amount of struggle they’ve had in their lives. The kids who love to learn absolutely any words in English so they can ask you to give that to them later. The kids who have done more of the manual labor than anybody by shoveling sand and rock, moving concrete blocks, moving materials, and by keeping an indescribable jovial atmosphere during the hard work in the Haitian sun.
The men. Many fit the Haitian stereotype of being lazy, but others, and a large number blow the stereotype away. They are willing to follow any command you give them, which is hard for any men’s ego to cope with. Many of them like to call me Bill Clinton because it’s easy to pronounce Clayton like Clinton. One in particular, the leader of the village, Maxico will always stand out to me. Father of 10 children, I can see the pride in his eyes when he talks about them. He is the example of a servant-hearted leader. He offers his help more than any other in the village, he has opened his house for us to store supplies, and he is always around the worksite ready for any sort of assistance.

The women. Hahahahaha I can’t help but laugh before I even talk about them. Women in Haitian culture truly keep society running. They take care of the gardens, the children, the cooking, the cleaning, and the sense of humor. They joke around more than anybody else. There have been more than one instance where I’d be having so much fun with my favorite women (trust me there are a lot of them), and I will make a joke and they will laugh so hard that they have to grab my waste and hug me just to keep from falling over. They have such ornery smiles (that’s right I said ornery, easily one of my own grandmother’s favorite adjectives), when they know they’re being ridiculous. There’s this one women, Roselyn (I’m not exactly sure on the spelling, but that’s how it’s pronounced), and she is a straight up workaholic. She is always around us helping us, or helping somebody else in the community. She, like Maxico, also opened her house for us to use for supplies and people to sleep in when the evangelism teams come in. For all the work she has done she has just asked me for one thing. Not money, not nice clothes or shoes like a lot of people, but a box of Cornflakes for her children to eat. I’m definitely going to try to find some, I think the supermarket has them, so if any of you talk to me on Facebook make sure you remind me to pick those up for her if I haven’t!

We start the heavy building tomorrow. I’m excited to complete this for them. I think of Pella, a town of 12,000 or something like that I once heard. I think we have 40 some churches, I don’t remember, and one of the best education communities in the nation. This village has never had either a school or a church. Wow, that is so crazy to me. I can’t wait to finish it and then come back to visit in a year or two, and visit a service for it!

I love the 5th Section. I have known for some time now that a place like this is exactly where God wants me to help. I haven’t known however, how much of an impact being able to spend tangible amounts of time and outreach in a place like this would do to me. I love it. I love it so much. I’m ready to be home with all of the people I love, but I know it’s going to be a rare day when I don’t think about this place and these people. I hope everybody finds a place like that. I’d be ignorant to think everybody’s “place” is a third world country, but please search for a place for you to serve and after a day where you’ve given all of yourself you felt like you just spend a day working in Heaven. How bout it eh?