The very kind Neonatologist from IN that looked at Phoebe yesterday said that he thinks she hears, but that without tests we cannot know if she has some hearing loss. We are going to keep watching her and work on getting tests in the next few months if her responses do not improve and become more consistent. He said her ticker sounds great, she checked out fine in all other areas and he diagnosed her with "great hair." So, that was all good news to us. We can feel the bonding happening. Each day she is more responsive to us and she seems to have a preference for Tara and Isaac right now.There is craziness afoot around here. The teacher problem seems to be snowballing into a coup attempt by some of the folks in the village. There are a few who are now trying to get another employee fired. It is a long story and is filled with the usual Haiti drama so I will need to tell it when I have more time to explain it well.
The problem for us is that it is draining to be in the middle of this stuff ... and very time-consuming. On top of a work load that is fairly heavy it feels like too much to have these village uprisings and threats of court, etc. Please pray for us. We are tired and entering into a very busy period of teams for February and March. It is bad timing for silly drama things to be happening. Coup attempts are very Haitian and not a part of the culture that I particularly appreciate. Troy has to meet with a bunch of folks at 5pm today to hear their concerns. We happen to have a WONDERFUL mole who has already filled us in on what the meeting is about and what they are planning. At least Troy goes in with an idea of what he is up against.
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The following topic is met with raised eye-brows when we try to explain it, but we'll try anyway. It will be good to be understood a bit. Don't be offended if you've visited here or are visiting in the future. This is the "big picture" sort of venting, we really do enjoy meeting so many cool people from all over the USA and Canada. This is really more about our ability to cope with it than it is about anything else.
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Short-term Teams are important. Probably MORE important for the work God will do in their hearts than for the physical work they might accomplish while here. We do understand that mission teams benefit greatly from coming here and in the end the mission will often benefit too.
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The hard part is the stress it puts on family-relationships and family time. So as we enter into these next weeks of non-stop "host mode" please pray that we can all make time for each other and time for God.
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The best way to help you understand what it is like is to just imagine yourself in this scenario:
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You live in rural USA. You have a large family with many needs of their own and a job that requires you be available 24 hours a day. There are some kind people from a city with absolutely NO similarities to your home that want to come stay and maybe help out for a while. You've never met them before, you just know their names and that 16 of them would like to come stay with you. You prepare for them, get beds and bathrooms ready. You need to be prepared to feed them but your grocery store is two hours away so you need to not make a mistake in your menu plans for the 21 meals they need to eat while staying with you. You need to not burn anything or buy anything that won't stay fresh for their entire stay with you.
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Some of the people will love your home and understand that you live in a different reality and will be so kind and helpful. Others will hate your home and be very annoyed with bugs, dirt, heat and lack of conveniences. Some might even complain about the food or the living conditions. Some will cry at what they see. Some will be very quiet. Some will offend your neighbors, leaving you to patch it up. Some will understand why you have systems in place and some will think you are hard and uncaring for having systems in place. Everyone will have an opinion about how you do your job. Some will respect the rules, others will think you're being uptight for having rules.
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Some will pick up after themselves and take care of their own basic day-to-day needs. Some will need constant attention. Some nights you will feel bad because people want to stay up and talk and ask questions late into the night, but you know that you've got to get to bed to be rested enough to do it all over again the next day and be able to handle the next days challenges with grace and love and patience.
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All of that --- is what it is, and is not really anything unexpected or out of the ordinary ... and it is common for different people to respond differently to seeing a place like Haiti. EXCEPT that - while you are trying to meet the needs of the people who are staying with you, feed them, help them stay busy, answer their questions, get to know them, help them with both seeing some of Haiti and meeting and talking to the people of Haiti, and accomplishing some projects ... you also need to keep your family on track. You need to figure out a way to love on your children and make time for them while you have an extra 16 people to care for. You need to not bite your husbands head off when he needs your help because he is exhausted too.
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Think about how stressful preparing for a big family holiday meal can be. That is usually preparing for ONE meal for ONE day. That is for folks you know well. That is when you have a grocery store five minutes from you and your guests are in familiar territory.
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This is the hardest part of being "missionaries" -- we appreciate that we can explain this part of our job without anyone taking it personally.
The bottom line ... God called us to Haiti. He called us to *this* job specifically. He can equip us to pull it off, and even pull it off WELL - if we try not to do it without Him.
Pray to that end for us between now and March 22 when the long-run of host-mode ends.
T & T
