Bondye Pi Gran

If someone would sit and listen for 100 consecutive hours, or more realistically probably 4 hours, I think I could talk the entire time about how awesome my trip to Haiti was and how much I miss it.  This morning, in particular, I miss the sweet sound of 360 Haitian children praising God each morning before camp started.  It’s the kind of missing that makes your heart hurt a little.  

I have a lot of Haiti stories that make your heart hurt, but in a good way that shows that it’s growing, and I am still trying to figure out how to actually share them.  It is rather difficult to process all of the great things that happened, though I’ve been home for a couple of weeks now.  

The first story I think I’ll share isn’t even about my third graders.  It happened on one of the final days of camp, when our student-translator, Kendy, took my co-leader and I on a tour of the town.  One of the final stops we made was at a state-funded nursing home.  If we are going to get real-- we are-- I probably would have been perfectly content just smiling, waving and saying a simple hello (bon swai) to the dozen or so elderly folks that lived there before heading out of the compound.  That wasn’t what Kendy had in mind for us...

First we walked up to a man sitting in a rocking chair, reading the Bible.  I asked Bible man, through Kendy, what God was teaching him that morning, and he read aloud the passage he had been reading from either Colossians or Galatians that could be summarized with “God is greater,” which happened to be the theme of the Bible camp we were teaching that week.  With that, I slipped him the rubber bracelet I was wearing that said “Bondye pi gran” (“God is greater” in Creole).  In all of the big book, what are the odds, right?

We left Bible man and started speaking with a thin blind lady who said she was very sick and needed food and/or money.  I gave her the granola bar that I had, and said “silver or gold I do not have, but I would love to share God’s word with you in prayer.”  She said that she was a believer, but she did not want prayer from me, she wanted food.

I offered her everything I had-- a granola bar and prayer, a glimpse of truth from our great God-- and I still have never felt so inadequate or humbled.

Enter Bible man.  “Don’t you know that what she is offering you is more valuable than food?”

She said that she didn’t believe that.  And if we are going to be honest, I have never had to really know that.  I have said it, but I’ve never had to live it.  Before I went to Haiti, I had honestly never really even thought about how some people had.

Bible man said that there was another woman who wanted our prayer, so we followed him to her and then prayed over her.  Then he got down on his knees and said he was ready for his prayer.  He wanted little, small inadequate me to pray affirmations over him.

Bible man looked completely surrendered, the kind of surrender I can talk about wanting all day long but still feel so far from often.  Everything about his posture said, “bring it on, I’m waiting, God.  Rain on me.”  I hope to remember that image in my heart always.  Right next to it is the way that the kids pray there… closed eyes, clasped hands hitting their cute noses, as though they were desperately pleading for something.

In his book. Blue Like Jazz, author Donald Miller says, “Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.  It is as if they are showing you the way.”  I was very much in love with Jesus before I went to Haiti, but 10 days watching Haitians love the Lord helped show me how much bigger and better he is than I could have thought before.  

I don’t know how you pray, if you pray.  I don’t know what blanks you use to fill:

God is greater than _____________.

I do know that if you decide to leave your comfort zone and go on a service trip, God will give you new answers.  

You might learn that God is greater than the price of a plane ticket to Haiti and all of your vacation days and then some.

God is greater than an inadequate 25 year-old American girl.

God is greater than your small view of your small part of his big world.

God is greater than the language barriers created after the Fall.

God is even greater than food.  

Tomorrow as I try my first attempts at fasting for a family member’s medical procedure and get down on my knees to pray, I’ll think of Bible man as I wait for God to show up.  

Bondye pi gran.

God is greater.