more of Him

This my friends, is a short story about a bull.

This (was) a bull that wasn’t very happy to get shocked by an electric fence as soon as it arrived last week. And this (was) a bull who, because of that electric shock, ran around the seminary campus chasing a few guys with the intent to get some payback with his horns. [[Luckily he wasn’t successful!]]

This (was) a bull who I’m sure didn’t know that he only had a few short days left of life after his arrival…

This (was) a bull who was slaughtered with a machete under a shady tree right 50 feet from our apartment.

And, lastly, this (was) a bull that served as a not-so-gentle reminder that we don’t have the ability to hop in a car and drive to the closest butcher (or Sam’s Club) to buy beef in bulk.

Nope, both the bull and butchers come to us, at the cost of a pretty penny. However, the butchers don’t have guns or electrical prongs – they come to do their job simply with machetes and hammers (and wheelbarrows?), which makes the process seem even more ugly than it already is.

This bull was a not-so-gentle reminder that:

• Ø  one cup of butter costs $4
• Ø  one tub of Crisco costs $10
• Ø  one small bottle of parmesan cheese costs $7
• Ø  one dinky roll of paper towels costs $4
• Ø  one box of noodles costs $6
• Ø  one large box of crummy toilet paper costs $75
• Ø  one large can of powdered milk costs $30
• Ø  one gallons of gas costs $5
• Ø  the list goes on for outrageously priced conveniences…

Buying things here take effort and they are definitely not cheap! Items have to get shipped here which results in an enormous mark up on the price.

I haven’t been here for long but there are already a lot of new (old) ways of doing things that I am getting used to. (I’m sure some of these might make some people laugh… especially those of you who grew up doing these things!)

Things like:

• Ø  drinking powdered milk
• Ø  making everything from scratch - my own bread and cereal and sauces and… well, basically everything
• Ø  starting dinner hours before you hope for it to be ready
• Ø  defrosting a 50-pound chunk of icy chicken legs (which thankfully will last us a long time!)
• Ø  trying to do laundry on a cloudy day, resulting in still-damp, soggy clothes
• Ø  going into the street markets, hunting for what you need and then bargaining for the right price (Pure craziness! It’s going to take a while to get used to that one!)

I must admit there are moments where I wonder how it can possibly feel like I’m going so far back in time when it is the year 2014!

And then I quickly remember that a large proportion of the beautiful people living in this country don’t even have clean water. They don’t have sewer systems. They don’t have trashcans and special trash days where guys in big fancy dump trucks drive around and pick up their trash along the curb of a smooth, paved, pothole free road. Some might not have enough food to feed their entire family for the day. Many are living in huts or crumbling buildings without roofs. My heart aches for those people, in particular, when a big storm hits. Where do they go to hide from the rain? Where do they find shelter?

And yet in the midst of what looks to me (visually) like there is so much that is lacking here, when I look around I see friendly faces with happy smiles. I see moms and dads who are trying to provide for their families. I see brothers and sisters and school friends who are joyfully playing together without the need for a Nintendo DS or iPhone to keep them entertained.

I see people worshiping the same God of our bible and praising Him for the little things in life. Things that I take for granted or things that (let’s be honest) I don’t even appreciate.

I see people edifying one another and praying for each other, that God would give them each the ability to carry out His mission. That He would fill them with the Holy Spirit and guide them and be with them as they share the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout Haiti.

What fills me up even more is that I see people not only praying for these things… I see them DOING these things! I see this especially in the students here at Emmaus!

When they hear the good news, believe and repent from their old ways, they are ready to LIVE the Christian life, and a huge part of that is simply sharing about who Christ is. That is a simple (yet very important) commandment that so many people have a hard time doing (the Lord knows that I am included in this generalization!). So many come to Christ and then want to keep Him to themselves or are just too nervous to tell others about him. But we aren’t commanded to keep Him to ourselves – we are commanded to spread the good news! And part of that good news for us is that Christ is there in our hearts and beside us, helping us calm our nerves. And we are also called to live in community with other Christians so that we can build one another up and keep one another accountable.

These are all things that I see in the body of Christ here in Haiti.

These are beautiful things.

So seeing a bull slaughtered right outside of my door was not the best way to start out my morning. It was rather “inconvenient.” I would prefer to go to a store and pick up a prepackaged case of meat that doesn’t resemble a cow anymore. But while I’m here, I don’t have the luxury of doing that. And that’s okay.

Things like the bull (or a $7 block of butter) make me realize that even though the people of Haiti might not have the materialistic things [or even simple conveniences] I tend to think of as normal, those who follow Christ do not seem to be lacking spiritually.

I am thankful for my ability to see how greatly God is working in the lives of his followers here; without it, I think my ability to live here would diminish. Even though Haiti isn’t a developed country, if the followers of Christ continue to multiply, Haiti would have something that other developed countries don’t: fullness. Haiti would have fullness of the Holy Spirit, unclouded by the seemingly omnipresent materialism of our so-called ways of American life.

And that, my friends, is [one of the many] things that I think we could take away from the Haitian culture and integrate into our own. We could use a little less convenience and a little more a lot more of Him.