From Tarps to Tin

If you want something to start at 3:00, you had better tell people to show up at 2:00.  Why?  Because people here run on Haitian Time.  This means that no one has a watch, so they show up whenever they want.

Thus is my thinking as I talk to Jackinson, back in St. Louis, on the phone... again... with a another new change in plans for our little lean-to church:

"The new tarp you bought for the roof is too small.  Can we get three more to sew together?"
"Actually, can you just by one bigger one?"
"On second thought, how much does tin roofing cost?"
"Wait!  Not 45 sheets, just 40!"
"Don't leave the shop yet!  Did you get nails?"

All of this back and forth calling happened within the hour, and before lunchtime, there are the tin roofing sheets and nails dropped off and ready to go.  Wow.  Everything we need is here before lunch?  Well, don't get your hopes up, Melissa.  We got lucky this once.  But how long before they even start the actual construction?

The answer came soon after lunchtime when three Haitian men were hired and started a roof.  Long story short, within 24 hours, the church in Berger had a new tin roof over it.  No more muddy church services!  That was the fastest moving Haitian project I've ever seen.

Man plans.  God laughs.  It was frustrating to find out that the tarp we bought was not going to work.  But God had other, better plans and now we have a real roof!  Just as God turned water into wine, He turned tarps into tin.  Here are some other "Tarp to Tin" moments from the past few days:

T2T
My group started off by just wanting to do a program for the kids, but soon discovered that ther are so many forgotten "genres" of people, if you will.  (Excuse the book lingo...)  So we made a list of the types of people that we wanted to focus on this week.

Friday, while the roof drama was going on, we worked with the teenagers.  Before lunch we hung out with the guys, and let me tell you--the Human Knot game with Haitian teenagers is pretty dang hilarious.  (They cheated a little bit, but we let it slide... We were pretty tangled up--literally.)  After that, we talked about working together and how a rope of three cords isn't easily broken.  It was like Haitian youth group!  (Made me miss COEO just a bit... PS Heard you had fun at camp!  Love you guys!)

Anyway, after lunch we hung with the girl teenagers.  We played a yarn game where one person starts with a ball of yarn and says something about themselves.  I said, "My favorite color is green."  Then I had to pass the ball, while holding onto the string, to someone else that had that in common with me--someone else who likes green.  It continues until you have made a web of connections between everyone in the group.  It was pretty cool to see everything that we had in common with them.


On Saturday, we focused on women.  It was originally single mothers, but we ended up inviting a couple more in because not many came.  Not surprisingly, a lot of the women said that they get lonely a lot, so we encouraged them to continue to come together like this and keep each other company and grow.  Maybe they can even start their own Bible study... one of the women was the pastor's wife, after all!

Today our goal was to focus on couples, married or not.  We chose today for that group because another group was doing a marriage seminar at 4.  So we brought the pastor and his wife and some other Berger folks along for the ride.

We planned a small little children's program, and God expanded it to reach so many more people!

T2T
Earlier in the week, as we walked around Berger, we found several different medical needs within the community.  Not having anyone medical on our team, we began to just write down problems we saw and names.  "Maybe we can grab a couple of medical people and have a clinic?"

Well, this idea turned our 8 person group into a 20 person group!  Doctors, nurses, and medical students came to help, along with some extra people who just wanted to help run the clinic, pray, or even just paint the nails of the ladies who were waiting.  It was quite the shindig.  We gave out 98 numbers and took shifts for lunch to see them all, plus some extra people that we let in without numbers (especially those whose names we had already written down earlier in the week).  That number also doesn't include mothers with four kids that went in together with one number.  Let's just say, lots of people were seen!

T2T
My group brought several buckets and filters to give to families in Berger.  You put the water in the bucket and pour it out through the filter... pretty cool.  Anyway, our translator, Ulrick, really wanted one for the family that he is staying with.  So we went to the pastor to ask him how many families we were giving buckets to.  He had a list of 12 names.  We had 13 buckets.


Needless to say, we got to visit Ulrick's friends and bring them a filter bucket.


T2T
Instead of a 10 minute call home, I got a hour long Skype call.  Love you, Mommy and Papa and Nick!


Prie
Gilbert is a boy who lives in the Miriam Center, although he is not mentally disabled at all.  In fact, he
s super smart.  He can understand and speak both English and Creole and is learning to write French.  He is 12-years-old and comes up to about my waist, walking awkwardly on club feet.


A couple of days ago, I found out that he couldn't read in Creole, so I asked him if he would like me to teach him.  So the other day, I went down to find him and saw that he had been crying, but he wouldn't tell me why.  Eventually I found out that he had been able to call his mother and found out that she was sick.  We're currently trying to plan out a day for him to go see his mother, but in the mean time, please be praying for him and his mother.


(PS The next day, he was up for reading lessons.  Boy catches on fast, let me tell you!)


Loue:
Whoop whoop!  Roof for church!


Creole:
Okay, so when was the last time you were reading your Bible and something you read totally blew your mind?  It had been awhile for me... so let me share with you my new favorite verse:

Romans 6:17-18

"17 In the past you were slaves of sin--sin controlled you.  But thank God, you fully obeyed the things that you were taught.  18 You were made free from sin, and now you are slaves to goodness."

Whoa!  Slaves of goodness!?  Does that not blow your mind?!  What does that even mean?  What do you think, audience?

Anyway, I was supposed to do devos the next morning.  For devos we are supposed to pick a Haitian proverb to share and a Bible verse to go with it.  Well, I was so excited about this verse that I did the opposite: I picked a verse and found a proverb to go with it.  I searched the entire proverb book until I found this:

"Chanje met chanje metye."
"Change masters; change trades."

Sin isn't our master anymore, so neither is sin what we do.  Change trades!  Goodness is your master.  Go do good.

Have you had any Tarp to Tin moments this week?  I'd love to hear about them!
-Melissa