And I Cried

I just returned from my very first trip to Haiti.  I had all those who had gone before me try to tell me what it would be like.  I thought I was prepared.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We drove up to the orphanage on Sunday morning for worship.  I walked into that church, took my place in my pew, and I cried.  Knowing what this small island has been through, the poverty, the hunger, the danger, I was astounded by the way they worshipped.  They truly worship – with their whole heart, their whole body, their whole soul.  To see the Glory of God radiating from their faces as they held up their hands was simply beautiful, and I cried.

I was asked to give my testimony that night.  What could I possibly say?  They were the testimony.  I stood up on that platform, I looked out over the congregation, and I cried.

The last day as I sat on the steps surrounded by children clinging to every appendage I had, I cried.  As the bus drove away, and their sweet faces looked up at me and made me promise to come back, I cried.

Then I got home.  As I reflected over the week, one thing stood out.  Our sweet pastor, Jeff Armstrong, who led the trip took every single opportunity to ask every one he met if they knew Jesus.  He asked the children, he asked the guys standing around the airport, the guy who came to get his wound dressed, the young men at church.  Every day, I saw him sitting with Dou Dou asking them how their spiritual life was.

I thought back to what I was concerned with that week.  Yes I wanted to see people come to Jesus, but I spent my time worried that the kids didn’t have shoes, they didn’t have a sheet, they didn’t have a pillow.  I totally forgot that beautiful scripture where Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 6:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

As this realization hit me, I hung my head, and I cried.