Life Lessons

Some of the most important things I learned in Haiti:

• Flushing toilets, hot water, and clothes dryers are all luxuries in life:  I will never take them for granted.
• Paved roads are also a luxury.
• You can live without electricity.
• Driving a car is a privilege that I truly enjoy, but never realized how much I enjoyed it until I couldn’t drive here.
• If I never own a microwave again in my life, I would be okay with that.
• Hurry up and wait tends to be the norm here, so never leave home without a good book.
• Swimming in the ocean is good therapy.
• Rainy, cold days in the mountains really make you appreciate the sunshine so much more!
• Compassion toward others is more clearly shown through actions, not words.  
• Malnutrition is one of the worse conditions a child can suffer from, yet sadly, it’s also one of the most preventable.
• Talk to people.  Everyone you meet has something to say.

And perhaps most importantly:

• Try new things.  It’s liberating and life is short.
• If you can, go somewhere, meet new people, learn a new language, it opens your mind to many things in the world.

The Ending of a Chapter

It’s hard to believe that this year of my life is almost over.  It seems like yesterday that I was packing my bags to move to Haiti for a year.  This chapter of my life is ending, and when I get back home, a new one will begin.  I’m still not too sure how I feel about that.  I know that it’s time for me to return, but a large part of me wishes that that I could stay.  I know now that Haiti will always be a part of me:  “lot peyi mwen”, my other country.  There’s a really good prayer that a friend of mine shared with me a couple months ago.  I just came across it again recently, and I think that it really describes my work here in Haiti, especially since it is drawing to an end.  It not only applies to missionary work, but it can also be applied to the work we do in our everyday lives.  It was written by Oscar Romero (1917-1980), the Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador:

Prayer of Ministry

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts;

it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction

of the magnificent enterprise that is the Lord’s work...

Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying

that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No sermon says all that should be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

That is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow,

We water seeds already planted

knowing they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that affects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation

in realizing that.

This enables us to do something,

and to do it very, very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,

a step along the way,

an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,

but that is the difference between the Master Builder

and the worker.

We are workers, but not master builders...

ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future that is not our own. Amen.