Provision: A birds of the air kind of thing.

Disclosure: So I know that when we give to others our left hand shouldn’t know what our right hand is doing and all, but in light of finding perspective in all sorts of ways this week, this one is worth sharing.

As the year is coming to an end my mind has been dwelling – knowing that God is faithful and my provider and that He will provide ALL my needs in abundance – on raising money for support next year and how it will all work out and just concerned with having enough.

Oh, God’s reassurance is always on time.

So, I was exercising outside, listening to a podcast, and you know, just dying in general. When I say exercising I mean going for an hour in circles around the perimeter of the 6-foot wall that outlines my house. The community isn’t the safest for an American girl who sticks out like a sore thumb to be running around all alone (not that walking to the bank or the store all alone is any different, but that not the topic here, all you safety police out there) so I stick to my little hamster on a wheel routine while my Rottweiler waits until I get around the corner and then tries to race me down the alley/knock me over/run between my legs, or some variety of that sort.

Anywho, as I made my way around I saw Watson, a street kid in my neighborhood, standing at my front gate. Watson is a Haitian kid who now lives in Dajabon after his mother died, leaving him orphaned. I’m not sure a lot about his life, where he sleeps or even how I came to know this kid, but I see him each day in town, buy him food every now and then, a haircut, let him help me walk home with my groceries, talk with him, pray with him or just slap him a high five on my way past his “post” aka begging corner.

I stopped, trying to catch my breath, while Watson became embarrassed, probably wondering why I was running, or really probably more like who I was running from, and in Creole said,

“Hi, Mami. I needed to talk to you and knew I could find you here.”

Okay, so real talk. I’m not gonna lie – in the moment I was thinking how it really wasn’t a great time due to the massive amounts of sweat and dehydration that were taking place, but I pulled my headphones down and walked over.

“Alright, Watson. Why did you need to talk with me?”

And then, almost simultaneously, as I was thinking all of my selfish thoughts about how I couldn’t breathe, I knew I was about to get a heart check:

“Well…. because I’m hungry.”

The thought alone of how many long it has been since his last meal is enough, but not to mention that he came to find me – knowing there was hope if he was successful.

I brought him back $5 USD and told him to get dinner and then save the rest for food the next day, and that before he eats he needs to thank Jesus for this money because He is the one who gave it to him.

It made me wonder how long he had been concerned, in the same way that I have been, about where he would find provision – the amount is irrelevant – and our Father knew all along.

^{Matthew 6:26 “}Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

Watson looked at me with an unexplainable expression that I know will hold in my heart forever, knowing that he will not go to sleep hungry tonight, and immediately all of my concerns turned into overwhelming, tear filled, gratitude as I watched Watson walk around the corner with $5 in his hand, he and I feeling the exact same way in that moment – completely provided for.

Just another one of those reminders that I am taken care of by my Father and confident that there is always enough to share with someone else.

Honorary Texan.

“Most peole say that Texans are prideful. I just call it good common sense.” – Myself

One of our girls spent a couple of days in the hospital in the Dominican Republic. We were told she had Malaria, but it turns out that it was a kidney infection or something. The day that she was discharged the border was already closed so she was able to spend the night in Dajabon at the mission house.

She was just happy as a clam and got some hardcore attention for the night. When you live in a house with so many girls any one-on-one time is just the bees knees. Although we have one of the best southern mothers here visiting us whose ministry is to cook us delicious meals each night, Midaline ultimately opted for the good Haitian traditional – beans and rice. However, her life was a little brighter when she was introduced to fresh brewed sweet tea. The real deal – none of that, just add some sugar to it as you want it mumbo jumbo.

I painted her nails, had great food and sweets and even got to sleep in my bed for the night.

We had some Disney DVDs and things, but they weren’t up to our little girl’s desires. When asked what it is that the sweet Haitian girl wanted she boldly declared, “Walker!”

I mean can you blame the girl. The action. The intensity. Chuck Norris for goodness sake. She can’t speak a lick of English. Can barely speak Creole, actually, but ole girl knew about some Walker Texas Ranger.

She knew every character on the show and names them whenever they come on the screen: “Look, there’s Alex, there’s Trivette, there’s Walker, there’s CD.”

Sigh… I guess there’s a little Texan in all of us.

Goodnight, folks! Were off to watch Season 5.

XOXO,

Hope

What Do You Mean You’re Gonna Shoot Us?!

O.M.G.

I’m usually not the kind to use such phrases to begin my tale, but man-o-man is this a doozie. In the words of Mami Mya, this is truly “the stuff of blogs”.

It won’t be long at all. I’m not gonna detail it out or give the meaning of it all. Just the story as it happened and the hilariousness of what turned into my Saturday night.

Once Upon a time, in a land far, far away (actually about 40 miles from Florida, but whatever) I was crossing the border from Haiti to the Dominican Republic about 5 minutes after the border was closing. As we pulled up to the guard, who fully knows who we are and what we do because we cross at least once each way every day, looks back at us, pushes about 10 or so Haitians from wiggling through he doors and snaps the lock closed. We all hustled to it and threw our stuff across the fence and climbed around the gated bridge, about 30 feet above a shallow, mucky, rushing border river.

Once stuck between two countries (literally) we sought out our plan. We couldn’t sweet talk our way over so we crossed back and decided to do it the truly Haitian way. We would cross the river through the water and be on our way to our home in Dajabon, Dominican Republic.

Or not.

I already felt bad because I have a guest with me and he has never been to a developing country – or any country other than the great ole US of A – and I wasn’t making the best first impression of how Americans should do things while traveling, but ‘When in Rome’, right? So we proceeded without shame and I just casually threw out there that he needed to experience some sort of sacrifice since he has had it pretty nice all week (all generators working, sleeping with air conditioning, 3 big meals each day INCLUDING COKE… you get the picture).

As we approach the river’s edge, where it’s common at this time for locals to be crossing, I was confused as to why, people who I thought were taxi drivers were trying to put me onto their shoulders to carry me across the Massacre River. Uhh, not. I grew up a camping girl so I am not afraid to get me TOMS wet in some waist deep water. But on my way down they were all pulling me and yelling and I finally just had to say (in English no less. They had no clue what the white girl was screaming, but they knew it was spicy… and not a compliment) “STOP. EVERYONE GET AWAY FROM ME.” As I put my bag over my head one of our staff called to me and said that there is a strong current and he had a friend who he trusted who would take me across. So yes, I hopped on the guys shoulders and away we went, illegally, across the Massacre River. I looked to my right and a mom of one of our kids was there doing her laundry under the bridge. She waved and laughed and I blew kisses, but all I could think was, ‘Is this real life?’ and I had to take a picture of what was surrounding me at that moment, on top of that man’s shoulders. True story.

On the other side we had a few things happen:

A million and a half Haitians all yelling and claiming that we needed to pay them for taking us across. There was only four of us so… a little confused.
Dominican UN soldiers threatening to shoot us if we crossed into the Dominican, even though we have all legal stamps and documents. They wouldn’t have – the UN definitely doesn’t want the headlines about the four American’s who were shot in International waters.
About 20 or so bystanders staring off the bridge at the funny Americans.

I was quickly over the intense and threatening attitudes that some of these men had. Trying to intimidate the white girl. Um, not. One thing he doesn’t know is that I may be white and I may have blonde hair, but I’m from Texas and I’m fiesty when needed, so he picked the wrong girl to try and force to give him $20. He was saying, “I’m hungry, give me $20.” I was like “HA! So am I, what does that have to do with anything?” So I went back to the photo that I snapped and could see the shirt that the man was wearing who carried me so I could identify who to pay. And not $20, are they kidding? Maybe like $3. I paid double what I was told to pay and he was happy, but the others wouldn’t leave and we had to sit under a bridge on laundry day and apparently bathing day since there were multiple men and women scrubbing it all down close by.

After a quick deliberation about what to do – do we make a run for it, do we go back, do we yell some more to try and get our way? We had an emergency on the property, as all this was happening, so the rest of our team needed to get across to get to a hospital – so we chose to not take the shoulder route and just wade across – to go back to watch the kids. God knew perfectly what was gonna happen and that we were needed in Haiti for the night. Needless to say, in waist deep water, He made his point.