So How Did You Decide To Move to Haiti?

That's a question we get pretty often.  I'd like to have our answer on record for when we're actually in Haiti and I haven't had a hot bath in two months or organic peanut butter ground right in front of my face while I wait at HEB.

After the earthquake our family became obsessed with Haiti.  Haiti has been called the world's best kept secret.  The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere sits an hour and a half away from Florida, and yet most of us had no idea what was going on in Haiti prior to the earthquake.  This was definitely true for us.  I'm not even sure if I could have quickly found Haiti on the globe that sat in our school room.  Until the earthquake we were completely ignorant about the suffering going on in the lives of some of our closest neighbors.

We watched the news (and I never watch the news).  We subscribed to news feeds for Haiti.  I've never done that in my life.  We watched documentaries with our children.  It was very weird.  There's no other way to describe this new fascination besides God opening up our eyes and hearts.  All things Haiti related were written on our chalkboard for us to pray over as a family.

During this time, many of you will remember that we thought we were going to have the opportunity to host a child from Haiti who needed to come to the US on a medical visa.  A group of our friends began preparing to host these kids.  Most would be amputees.  All would need medical attention.

Our family dove into learning Creole.  We wanted to be able to talk to this child we thought we'd be hosting.  Can you fall in love with a language?  We fell in love with Creole.  I love hearing it come out of my children's mouths.

As we waited for a child, we listened to the Radical Series.  As you all know it wrecked our lives and we started asking questions we've never asked before.

Questions about our spending....

24,000 kids will die today of preventable causes.  We didn't want to become legalistic, but we definitely wanted to consider facts like these before we made decisions about upgrading the counter tops to granite or we went out for ice cream for the third time in one month.

Questions about missions...

The statics are staggering.  So many people have never heard the gospel and have no access to the gospel.  Statistically the American church spends a small percentage of their budget on world missions.  Very little money goes to sending missionaries to unreached people groups.  We started asking ourselves how we as a family were living out the Great Commission, making disciples of the nations.  We asked God to help us be better "senders" and for the first time (huge gulp) we started asking God if He wanted us to "go."  To do that we had to quit thinking that just because God had us doing successful things here that this meant we were supposed to stay here and continue doing them.  Instead of listing all the 9,000 reasons why we shouldn't go, we shut up and started asking God what He thought.   That's where things got scary.

Questions about the poor and the orphan...

Are we oppressing the poor?  Are we caring for them?  What about the orphan?  How are we tangibly caring for the least of these and giving a voice to the voiceless?  How are we defending the people God commands us to defend?

Maybe I'll go back through and flesh out those areas where God was challenging us in another post.  As I'm typing this, I realize so much happened during this short time in our lives.

So...the possibility of getting a child from Haiti...and all these questions were in our minds.

The truth is, we never heard God say, "Go to Haiti."  We didn't have a weird dream.  We didn't hear an audible voice.  God never showed up in my cereal.  He could have done those things, and the last thing on earth I'm saying is that He doesn't do those things.  I'm just being honest.  No one walked up to me at Kroger and said, "God told me to tell you to go to Haiti."

Another strange, but much needed element in our story so far is that during all this spiritual craziness, our pastor handed Aaron the book, Just Do Something, a Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will.  On the cover this is what it says...


"How to make a decision without dreams, visions, fleeces, impressions, open doors, random Bible verses, casting lots, liver shivers, writing in the sky, etc."

I'll write more about this book later, but let's just say it was very impacting on us as we prayed about all of these new things God was having us consider.  The book makes a strong argument that a lot of our reasons for not doing big things for the Kingdom come down to an obsession with ourselves, with living out the American Dream, with wanting everything in our life to be perfect, problem free and comfy even though God never promises us those things.  A lot of times, God says to avoid the exact things we were busy as a family pursuing.  Although God can choose to speak to someone in whatever way He wants to, the truth is, most of us are selfish by nature and probably expect God to email us or come sit on the edge of our bed to get us to do anything that might be hard, weird or counter-cultural.  

The main question we wrestled with, sumo style was if God had to show us some sort of mystical thing to get us to "go" to another country for the sake of the gospel if He's already clearly said we should do so in scripture and we know He loves missions.  He loves "missions."  The entire gospel story would probably be filed away in the "missions" section at the library.  The story is about a God who sends his son to sinful man to bring them hope and reconciliation with Himself.

I'm not saying everyone should go.  Maybe everyone should go at some point in their lives, or be better senders.  The only thing from scripture we know for sure for all believers is that we should care about the nations, and we should be actively involved in world missions in some way.

After listening to the Radical Series, learning a lot of Creole, reading "Just Do Something" praying and reading the Bible a lot, we never heard God say, "Pack up the family and go to Haiti."

We didn't hear Him say anything new to us.  Instead, when we'd pray and read and listen and talk these things out in community all we heard was Jesus' words from the Bible, over and over and over...the words that have been there forever...old, powerful words.

We didn't hear God say, "Go to Haiti" but we could not find in scripture any reason why God was saying not to go.

I could make up a lot of reasons why we should not go, and I tried to every single day...but when we threw those reasons in a pot and boiled them down to their basic elements, what we were left with was fear, faithlessness, greed, and a love for things God says are dangerous.

He never said to "Go to Haiti" but He sure did not say for our family to stay here.  We wanted to live out the great commission in some way...a solid, strong way.  We wanted to care for the poor, the orphan, the helpless, the voiceless like Jesus commands.  God failed to show us that Haiti would not be the perfect place for our family to live out those convictions.  It was not the only place where we could live out those convictions, but Haiti was a great place to do so.

Part of me wishes our story were more magical or mystical.  That would be cool.  It would make for a better story, maybe.  I'd rather my testimony be that I dropped a tub of sour cream on the kitchen floor, looked down and saw the word, "Haiti" spelled in the sour mess.  That would have been neat-o.

Instead, God took simple people...disobedient, selfish people, who may always be disobedient and selfish, and had us ask hard questions about our life.  Hard questions of God.  He took away a lot of our fear, and was so kind to remind us of heaven, of how His kingdom works...of what is important to Him and what isn't.  He comforted us with His Spirit, reminding us time and time again that He is in control.  He loves us.  He cares for us and for our children.  While wanting a "sign" the Spirit reminded us that God has already spoken more words than we know what to do with in the Bible.  He's already answered a lot of our questions.  Would we trust Him?  Would we?

I would have liked a sign.

But all we have is Jesus.  His example.  His Word.  His Spirit.  Hopefully that's enough.