The roller coaster of emotional highs and lows keeps trucking on. Many days find me somewhat in disbelief that this is the path God has chosen for us. I feel totally and utterly not good enough. I find it very easy to focus on my faults, on my weaknesses, and on the talents that I simply lack. I feel like God picked the wrong person, because I'm pretty inadequate. Through this whole process of preparing to move to Haiti, there has been so many encouraging gifts from God to remind us that He remembers us, He remembers
me. I don't want to keep these things to myself, but sometimes I forget how amazing God is, and I take for granted the gifts of encouragement He sends my way, just when I need it most.
One such situation has been trying to find a connection to someone in Haiti. This may sound relatively easy, given there are so many ministries going on in Haiti right now, but it feels like the biggest need, and also the area where we were hitting the most dead ends. We reached out to many people, missionaries, living in Haiti right now, only to be left without any real connection. It felt personal, like they were rejecting us. In truth, there's probably a logical explanation for each person failing to respond to our emails, but it felt frustrating and personal. I prayed that someone would respond. And we waited. And waited. And continued to reach out to anyone we could find. God answered this prayer in a bigger and more complete way than we initially hoped He might. Through a series of bizarre coincidences, although I do not believe it was coincidence, I believe God timed it just so it would work out, we met a couple, Seth and Charity, who just days before had moved to Arizona from Haiti. And not just anywhere in Haiti, but a mere miles from where we hope to live. They are not from Arizona, but are here for about a year so the husband, Seth, can complete training for his pilots' license to fly helicopters for Samaritan's Purse in Liberia. We have spent some time getting to know them, and they have just been a wealth of information for us. They shared with us their contact list in Haiti. We are talking about two year's worth of getting to know people in all sorts of positions in Haiti, including but not limited to, someone who has a house for rent, doctors, nurses, veterinarians, and connected Haitians. This has been an amazing resource for us.
Another encouragement was a visit from one of my favorite friends. My friend Sheila is a friend who I consider one of my "wise counsel" type of friends. She is giving and wise, and a visit with her was just what I needed. Plus, she flew all the way here from Michigan for our big "Meet and Greet" at church. This meant so much to me that she would take the time and money to be here for us for an event that is pretty big in our move preparation. I feel refreshed after her visit, which will make the next couple of weeks much easier and more productive!
In my Bible study at church, we have been doing a study on Thankfulness, using the Bible as well as the book
One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Through this study, and by practicing the discipline of thankfulness, I can say that today, even in the midst of of quite a bit of chaos (more on that tomorrow!), I'm pretty excited to see how God is going to work this whole thing out.
Thank You God for moments of encouragement during an emotional and often stressful transition!
