It’s been awhile again.
Mostly cause I haven’t known what to write.
Jamie and I spent 3 weeks in Finland with her family, and returned to Haiti 10 days ago.
God’s blessings for that trip were amazing. Just last February, when we all left each other after the wedding festivities, we had no idea when we would all be in one place again. But God changed our plans.
Jamie’s older sister and her family, were missionaries in an island nation in the Indian Ocean. That project came to a close, and they felt God calling them back to Finland, for now, with the intention of moving back into the international missions field in a year or so.
Jamie’s younger sister and her husband have also moved to Finland for university, which is a plan that had just shifted from the U.S. to Finland in the past couple months.
And her parents were on their biyearly furlough to Finland.
So, since all the family was there again, we went to visit.
Then, I found out two days before we left, that my in-laws had also set me up with an appointment for a Lasik Surgery consultation to try to get my eyes fixed. We had talked about this before, but I never expected it to work out.
As it turned out, the day after I got to Finland, I went for the appointment, my eyes were good for it, so the Dr. did the surgery right away. From what I am told, it would typically be about 3000 Euros for the surgery, and he charged me 150 Euros, or about $200. So, for the price of glasses, I got to get rid of my glasses. Jehovah-Jireh!
After that, we spent a lot of good quality time with our family, and caught up with some friends that I had never met before. It was great to have that chance.
Sadly, while we were gone, our house was broken into again. This marked the second robbery in about a month.
For the first, someone had climbed over our wall, and cut the lock off our front door. As a result, we put up extra razor wire, added a more secure door lock, and asked my friend Gayly to house-sit for us.
This time, they waited until Gayly was gone for a day, broke THROUGH the concrete block wall surrounding our property, and cut a hole in our metal door.
The first time, they only managed to steal Gayly’s laptop before he got home. Thankfully, I was able to replace his laptop for him. This time, they took our inverter. Apparently they learned their lesson last time and didn’t get greedy, so they left quickly with just that. Again, God has provided as a good friend of mine gave us a donation of $800 (the cost of an inverter) the same week ours was stolen.
So, I have to say we have been blessed to have had few possesions taken, and for it to have been when we weren’t home and to have been non-violent, since those are much more traumatic to the victims.
However, I can’t say it’s been easy. Between the robberies, and just other issues of life, I have been struggling getting back into the swing of things here. I found myself quite irritable, which has only been exacerbated by the extremely hot weather that is typical of this time of year.
It’s for that reason that I have found it hard to write anything on here.
Today, though, I find myself wanting to share again.
Jamie and I have been talking about a lot of things. (Can I just say my wife is an amazing blessing in my life. She’s awesome 🙂 But one thing in particular is that I’m starting to get an idea of purpose again. I feel like I’ve been continuing to do what I’ve always done, but it’s time for a shift.
This shift, I think, is to get more involved in teaching, discipling, and intentional relationship building, and it also involves more studying on my end.
From a work standpoint, it is a renewed realization that the idea of a workshop/training center is still in my mind. But for the more immediate time, it is a reminder to use work to build relationships with my friends even. To encourage the otehr missionaries here in Jacmel. I’ve gotten caught up in projects, and always seem to have more work away from home than around here. I haven’t done projects with other members of Church on the Beach recently, and I feel the need to change that around. So I will get more involved in these ministries again. Oddly, I had stopped working with them as they became self-sufficient, but now I realize that I won’t be helping them because they NEED me, but because I WANT to help them as a blessing to ease their burden.
Additionally, Jay and I have been talking much more about spiritiual matters, realizing how dark this place is, and how dark the world is spiritually. Realizing how unaware many people, even christians are, to the realities of the spiritual battles all around us. For me, I want to dive deeper into the word, studying with her. If we get the chance, we want to study with others in our community as well, so we’ll look for those opportunities.
For now though, pray for us as we continue to move ahead, seeking towards the goal, whatever taht may be.
Join us in prayer, asking that God would place his angels on guard in our house, that He would guard our hearts as we seek after Him. I’ll be honest, I am hesitant to re-open my eyes to the spiritual forces at work around us. I have seen demonic activity in the past, and it made me quite uncomfortable. In an odd way, even the knowledge that God is much more powerful had me terrified. When we realize how small and weak we are in this realm, it is a scry place to be. Pray that God would continue to strengthen me, to stand and fight exactly how and where HE calls.
