If You Build It, They Will Come...

I remember the scene well: Spring of 2006, walking into a delightfully cheery little preschool in Morocco, and peeking my head into each classroom as we were given the tour down the hall. The children were eagerly writing, singing, learning, creating. Filling their classroom walls with typical preschool "art". Enter the "orphan class". All the way at end of the hall, 15 little boys, all dressed in ratty white shirts because they didn't have uniforms like the rest of the students, crowded around 3 round tables in a room so small they barely had space to stand up and walk around the tables. Nothing on the walls, no books, no chalk boards, no singing, no art. I remember how it broke my heart. I remember that was the beginning of the dream to provide a place where the most vulnerably children could learn and grow TOGETHER, with equal opportunities and resources: Children with and without families, with and without disabilities, with and without socio-economic challenges. I didn't know how long it would take, or where I would even start, but I could see the vision.

When I think of the earthquake 2 years ago, building is the last thing that comes to mind. But in this story that's exactly what was going on, behind the scenes of destruction, heart-break, and collapse.

"If you build it, they will come..."

It started with relationships. A 10 yr old Haitian orphan living on the streets of Carrefour. A group of Haitian pastors who thought of rebuilding the church first before their own collapsed houses. A Haitian teacher with a kindred spirit... Little by little, the foundation was laid and the dream began to take shape. My five months at the Hands and Feet Project was a bit of an experiment for everyone involved. And although it was shorter than anticipated, I count it as a success for everyone. The toddler house grew from 4 to 9 kids while I was there, and 3 of them had developmental delays in various areas. I didn't go looking for them, they just showed up. And we had all kinds of fun learning, reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?, playing dress-up, and building things.

Even after I left Haiti and returned to Nashville for a few months, the building continued behind the scenes. When I returned to Haiti, I found myself in a new place, with new people, but the dream was still there. I tried hard to envision 20 preschoolers in a room that held little more than a cafeteria lunch table and another table full of computer equipment. Where would they sit? What would they play with? What would they look at on the walls? How would they learn? God had that covered. One of the many wonderful relationships I've built in Port au Prince over the past few months is with David Sandler, the director of Child Hope's transition program, Lighthouse Designs, who along with the young men he is training, built shelves, tables, chairs, cabinets, and a door, to make both classrooms as child-friendly as possible. The team from Greater Works Outreach brought loads of materials donated by friends and family, to stock the cabinets and fill the shelves with developmentally appropriate toys and books.


Level 1 - Before



Level 1 - After

And then the registration list kept getting longer and the questions changed. Where am I going to put all these children? Do we have enough staff? Will the classrooms be ready in time? Have I lost my mind???

"If you build it, they will come..."




Level 2 - Before

Level 2 - After

After many a late night, the rooms were put together. The lesson plans were made. (more or less) The teachers were trained. On October 1st, 2012, six and a half years later, the dream became a reality. In God's infinite wisdom, creativity and timing, HE built it, and they came...the orphans, the ones with families, the one who lost his leg in the earthquake as an infant and now walks with a prosthetic leg, the ones who cry all day long because they've never been away from home, the one who doesn't speak or respond to environmental cues, the one with autistic behaviors, who comes to school with marks on her face from an incident the parents can't identify because they weren't home to see it happen. They come, ready or not, to learn, to be loved, and to build the foundation for their own dreams.

Early Literacy

Creative expression during morning praise & worship

Confessions Of A Coffee Loving Missionary

If you are a coffee drinker, like me, you know coffee is an essential part of daily life. I can function without it, just not very well. I cannot tell you how many things I forget or get utterly confused about between the hours of 6:30am-8am, pre-coffee. (mostly because as I write this I haven't finished my morning cup of joe, and therefore can't even attempt to do mental math!)

In the US, we will go to great lengths for our daily coffee fix, even planning our timing and route to work to include a stop at the nearest Starbucks along the way. (or for my non-Starbucks Nashville peeps, Fido's or Frothy Monkey)

There is no Starbucks in Haiti. I make my coffee at home...if the coffee maker works...if we have power. Here is my typical morning coffee routine, as it happened on this Saturday morning: EDH (city power) was actually on this morning, which is a first for this week, so I went to retrieve the coffee maker and all necessary ingredients from the preschool room, where it has been plugged in since Monday. I set it up on the newly cleaned kitchen counter and plugged it in. Two seconds later, EDH cut off. So, I gathered up everything and took it upstairs to my bedroom, where I have an extension cord connected to the inverter, and plugged it in there. Thirty seconds later, THAT power cut off. So I gathered up everything again and went BACK downstairs to the preschool room to plug it in where it had been to begin with. Finally, I have my coffee and I can start the caffeine-assisted, fully-mentally-functional part of my day! Yeah, I know, 1st world problem in a 3rd world country... Just keepin' it real.

Freedom of Choice

For most Americans, the title of this post has a certain connotation that will most likely cause a spike in blood pressure when brought up, regardless of what "side of the fence" you are on. Rest assured, that is not what this post is about.

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1 (NIV)

Technically, Haiti has been been "free" for 209 years. But freedom looks and feels very different here, than it does in "the Land of the Free" that I am familiar with. The shape that freedom takes is largely dependent on one's own generational experiences, "pre-freedom". I recently read the book "Same Kind of Different As Me", which sheds great light on the complicated transition from slavery to freedom, both physically and psychologically, in the modern world.

When someone is born into slavery, and their parent, grandparents and everyone else in their family has only known being enslaved, what happens when they suddenly find themselves with the gift of freedom, either by someone else's hand or their own? The knee-jerk reaction is to completely reject anyone or anything that has potential to exert power OVER them and take exceptional pride in the choices that they are now free to make. This is the culture I find myself in currently. Haitian people are long-suffering, resilient, determined, passionate people who are proud to have the freedom to make their own choices about the lives that they live. They are sometimes reluctant to embrace change from an "outsider" because they perceive it as a threat to their freedom to choose how they live their lives.  It's hard to understand why they do the things they do the way they do them sometimes, until we see things from their perspective. Or better yet, God's perspective. Then we begin to see that, cultural differences aside, we are all struggling to understand and choose to live in true freedom, the kind that only comes from surrender to God.

I am a visual learner. I have to see things in action for them to really sink in. The longer I live in Haiti, the more I realize how much I still don't grasp the depth, and breadth, and width of Heavenly Father's love for me. I'm thankful for the "real-life" examples he shows me through everyday circumstances that literally makes the word come alive. There are so many examples in the new testament of Jesus teaching about choices: Mary & Martha, the prodigal son & his brother, the parable of the talents...Not every example has a clear "right" or "wrong" choice, but in every example, Jesus emphasizes the "better" choice.

Here is how this lesson played out in my world this week: I have had multiple conversations with the Haitian director and the the stateside coordinator of sponsorship for the girls here about state of their clothing and whether I had permission to take out the old, ratty stuff and replace it with the brand new, still-has-the-tags-on pile of clothes that sits out in the open for all to see, but it being "saved" for outings that never happen. I was given the green light, so I decided this weekend would be a good time to tackle the closets for the 16 little girls.

I measured each of the girls for new school uniforms and undergarments last month, so I set out to sort the clothes according to size for each closet (shared by 2 girls). It is impossible to do anything here without everybody being in your business (or at least observing it) and this was no exception. Anything with a tag size smaller than 2T, or a hole bigger than my thumb nail went in the "toss" pile. After a few hours of passive curiosity, the revolt started. The girls kept picking things out of the toss pile and trying to reclaim it, saying it was "bon pou mwen" (good for me), or grabbing shirts that were 4 sizes too small and insisting that it belonged to them. Many hours into the process of sorting/counting/folding/putting away, I took a 20 minute water break, only to come back and discover that the girls had mixed up all the remaining piles. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. My default choice was anger and frustration. It wasn't necessarily a bad choice, but love and a gentle answer would have been a better choice.

After day 2 of the tug-o-war in clothing choices, I began to ask myself the question,"Why would they CHOOSE to wear old, ratty, worn out stuff that clearly doesn't fit them anymore when there is brand new stuff waiting to be worn??" "Because they can." The answer that came back surprised me, and caused me to contemplate how it translates into my own life, both spiritually and physically. I can reorganize the closets all day long, but I can't force them to wear new clothes. They choose the old clothes because they are familiar, comfortable, stretched to give the illusion of actually fitting, safe. There's nothing inherently wrong with choosing to wear old clothes, there are no eternal implications. But from the perspective of the provider (in this case, me), there is a better choice. The better choice often comes with some degree of risk, and insecurities come to the surface: "If you throw away the old stuff, will you buy new clothes to replace them?" (ie. will I be left with nothing?) The better choice is not always (or ever, let's be honest) easy, but it is ours to choose. Therein lies the beauty of the the freedom we have in Christ. The challenge is allowing our freedom of choice to be influenced by the One who will always give us the BEST choice, if we will choose to accept it.