Adventures in Haiti- My Journal (Thursday)

This is a series detailing our recent trip to Haiti and a lot has happened already! Near bus collisions, sleeping outside bathrooms, hydroponic fish ponds...if you haven't been keeping up you better read back or you'll miss some good stuff!

Have I mentioned before that I am not a morning person? Kyle is. So back home the deal is: I won't make him stay up late to talk to me (I generally need someone to 'talk' me to sleep if I have to go to bed earlier than 11pm) if he does morning duty with the girls (up at 5:30am to make them breakfast and play until I get up at like 7:30.) So getting up at 5:30am each day was a stretch and I must have been feeling it because the first words out of my mouth this morning were, "Lord, give me energy." I have prayed this many times before (remember I have two feisty little girls under the age of 3?) Not knowing what was on the agenda for today, I just know this was God's grace that prompted me to pray this. 

Our job today was to make desks. We were to paint the freshly welded frames, and draw, cut, sand and paint the backs, seats and tops for the desks. In my devos that morning:

The Lord will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land

and will strengthen your frame.

You will be like a well watered garden,

like a spring whose waters never fail. 

Isaiah 58:11

I have history with this verse too, on a another mission trip to Matamoros, Mexico as a teenager. A woman in my church in Pennsylvania, who I affectionately call my Aunt Cindi, jotted that verse down and handed it to me in an envelope. I had a dream on the trip one night about running. I have been running for exercise for a while. I don't consider myself a 'runner' because I am downright pokey and just plain lacking in stamina. But in my dream I wasn't lacking anything. I ran and ran and ran without resistence, feeling light and like I could on forever with gusto! I finished my run at my home where I grew up in Pennsylvania and encountered a tiger. And that was my dream. I woke up with the sense that God was going to give me energy for the day, that He would strengthen my body in what was quite a sun scorched land (it was Mexico after all). And I just attributed the tiger to eating something funny before bed (maybe too much Joya soda?) 

That day in Mexico, our team helped pour a concrete roof in the hot sun. We had to mix the concrete by hand, shovel it into 5 gallon buckets and then hoist the buckets by handing them up a line of us standing on the stairs, until they poured it onto the roof. The lye in the concrete gave some of us mild chemical burns on our skin. It was back breaking work, but I felt that energry and strength reminiscent of my dream. I was standing out on the road, taking a sip of water, when I looked down the street of the colonia. A vehicle was driving away not too far from where I was standing. I blinked and blinked again. Could it really be? No way. There was a tiger in a cage in the back of a truck bed! You can call me crazy, cause there was no one else looking that way. No one else saw it. But I know what I saw.

There were no tigers in Haiti, but I drew from that strength as we spent a very hot day painting 22 desks frames. First though we had to get the paint. So while we waited for it, Galynn, Turner and I inventoried and put away all the medicines we brought with us to donate. What a good feeling to stock up the clinic's shelves with tylenol, and cough medicine and everything else! 

             Putting the medicine away.

The paint arrived. It was bad paint, so it had to go back for different paint. In the meantime, we jumped in with the crew cutting out the pieces for the desks and began to sand the ones that were already cut out. Many of the students joined to help too, which was awesome! I loved too how each of the team members used their unique talents to accomplish this task. Dave wielded the power saw and cut large strips of wood. Tiffany is quite an artist, so she traced all of the pieces. Kyle and Chad deftly cut out each piece and Ron sanded, sanded, sanded! And so did we for a bit...

                        Our handiwork.

...until the paint arrived again. It was good, and we got to work! The paint we used was oil based and so thick it had to be cut with gasoline. And if you have ever seen me paint you know I get it ALL OVER ME when I do so. The only way to get it off was to use gasoline. At the end of the day after sweating profusely, getting sunburned, having my clothing stained with paint and washing most of my skin with gasoline, I felt miserably disgusting. But amazingly, for a day where I woke up praying for energy, my stamina kept up.

Oh, and Jan hung out with the kids all day, dancing and singing, and teaching them yoga. So cute!

When we stepped off the bus at the mission base and the breeze hit us, I was so very thankful again for the haven it truly was. Then I showered, and showered and showered some more (which was like 5 minutes actually because we were supposed to conserve water.) Too bad we didn't finish today. I would have to be covered in gasoline again tomorrow. Nobody light a match!