Best Bits: Come To The River

We love working with teams - short-term visiting mission teams. From the planning stages to (especially) being on Haitian soil doing and seeing and feeling and witnessing all that we've been trying to tell them about (and failing...) in the months before their trip.

This post is part of our Best Bits series - Best Bits from our summer 2013 in Haiti. Check out other Best Bits here.

And this one is a Best Bit from our 'home team', from Columbus (for the first time, a joint team from Community Church of Columbus and Free Methodist Church) led by our good friends Ken & Kellie who'd been on their first mission trip to Haiti with me in 2011.

We had not planned to go there.

But Joli Trou - Pretty Hole (yes, that's the name of the village, seriously) - is where we ended up. At least some of us.

The team from Columbus are all loaded into our airy transportation, along with local translators Regie, Leonie, Orinel, missionary Erica, evangelism workers Wawa and a couple of others I can't quite identify now.

Eighty-year-old Medson, (yes, he's 80!) who leads our evangelism and radio distribution outreach, gets to enjoy the relative comfort of sitting in the front of the truck.

Lots of smiles early on in our journey, heading east from Cap-Haitien to Capotille, right on the border with the Dominican Republic. The church there is waiting for our arrival, all trained up and ready for a day of fruitful Gospel sharing and giving out radios.

Some people (ok, one person...) decide to take a nap.

Route looks good until we hit a roadblock.

Turns out, the road was blocked by some people who were on strike. All the vehicles were turning around.
So we did too. After figuring out where to go now.

We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps.

Proverbs 16:9, NLT

Some strategy talks between Medson and Storly, prayers being lifted up, and a couple of phone calls later, and we're going back the way we came (for about an hour) and then we turned south, towards Grande Rivière-du-Nord. The church leaders in Capotille had been informed we wouldn't be coming. Church leaders in Grande Rivière, on learning we're on our way to them, start making arrangements for their people to be ready to go with us to an area they identified as in need of hearing the Gospel that day.

Yep, we're definitely heading towards Grande-Rivière-du-Nord (Great North River).

Still smiling...

So our plan was to split into two groups. We dropped off the first group at the prison in the town of Grande-Rivière-du-Nord (which incidentally is the birthplace of Haiti's founding father, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a leader of the Haitian revolution and first ruler of an independent Haiti in 1804). Medson led the way, with John, Rob and Elijah (who were with us from CCC for 3 weeks, a great help!) and others.

And the other group ended up here, at a little church in the village of Joli Trou...after a parking incident in which the driver of our truck, not me or Storly thankfully, managed to take a tight curve and run over some pineapples, mangoes and other fruits that some ladies were selling on the roadside. Right outside the church. Oh boy, not happy market-sellers. The sweet smell of crushed pineapples and mangoes. And now a bunch of blans (white visitors) need to get out of the truck and spread good news in the community! Argh, not exactly ideal conditions...

Thankfully, after payment for the crushed fruit, we made our way into the little church. And found our brothers and sisters in Christ there were desperately excited that we had come, to join arms with them and help tell their community about the love of Jesus. They were desperately excited. Not inconvenienced because we'd given them an hour's notice of our arrival and we needed to be looked after.

So, we took a few minutes of introduction, refilled water bottles (from the coolers we'd brought with us.....no drinking water fountains here), prayed, got into groups to head out in different directions and plant seeds of hope.

And as Mommy heads out to take pictures and accompany the groups, someone's not happy that she needs to stay with Papa.

Several little hamlets that are part of this area can only be accessed by walking through a river.

So through the streams and rivers we went.

At one of the first homes, this lady was in the middle of doing her hair..quite a long process. She said her husband was not at home, and wanted to wait for him to come back before talking with our team.

Joan spots a old lady washing clothes in the stream, and heads over to her.

A conversation followed, as our team asked the old lady and her husband if they knew Jesus.

Great smile, huh?

Todd demonstrates how the solar radio works.

And after Joan, Todd and team pray with this couple, the lady continues on with washing the family's clothes, and the man holds their new radio, listening to the Gospel of Matthew (read by Storly). What a great soundtrack for life.

A little ways up the hill from the river, and we came to the yard where this man (bare-chested) is living. He quite freely starts sharing about difficulties he's facing right now - because he recently came out of prison.
If you read a previous blog post Power of A Testimony: Martin, you may already know what's coming next. As the man's story is translated for our team, Todd knows he's here today to speak with this man because of his own story, his own experience of prison and life after. Of a transformed life in Christ. Yet again, I am blown away to see God at work in and through the lives of these people who come on a mission trip.

Notice the man's put on a shirt before praying.

Todd leads this man to the Lord. Awesome!

And shows him how he can listen to Radio 4VEH, and the New Testament, on the radio we're leaving for him and the others in this home.

He may not look happy, but he was!

Back out onto the street, and there's another group who have gathered, this time a couple of ladies who asked for prayer.

By the time this team were on their way back, the lady who was doing her hair was able to talk (her husband was home now). And Joan prayed for her and her family.

And in between taking all these pictures, helping with conversations and translations between villagers and visitors, I'm called to help Esther with a call of nature. Which she refused to attend to by crouching behind a bush. Or anywhere else that wasn't a 'real' toilet. So she had to wait.

With the teams gathered together again at the church, we shared reports of what we'd just experienced, and how people responded to the message of hope that is the Gospel. We prayed, for those we'd spoken with, for others in the area, for members of this little church, in this little village of Pretty Hole.

And we headed back home. Grateful for the opportunity to visit this place, to encourage the believers here. Thankful for the opportunity to see the beauty, the lushness of this Pretty Hole. Thankful that we can make our plans but God directs our steps.