Occasionally when we have visitors or teams come to the Plateau, we ask them to write a post as a guest blogger. In December 2014, a group from Pine Grove church in Wisconsin came to do an English camp in the school. Two of the team members wrote blog posts. Unfortunately, I promptly misplaced the posts, and did not find them until months later!
Today, I would like to feature a portion of one of the posts….”Way Back Wednesday,” if you will. When I read it to Judy, we sat there laughing so hard we almost had tears running down our faces. Yet, the author wraps it up in such a beautiful way.
(Disclaimer: I suppose I hardly need point out that Katie creatively uses exaggeration to make her point. They didn’t actually run any vehicles off the road. Nor was the jolting and jarring of the second half of the trip the poor driver’s fault.)
Which leaves me, Katie, the reluctant wearer of skirts. I am a “her favorite dress is her faded blue jeans” kind of girl, so this was a stretch. I am also the songs and chants leader [in the English camp], which came as a surprise to me, because I am not known for my singing skills. But here, I somehow can sing and dance–a talent formerly denied me. Seriously, back in the States, people would beg me to have mercy on them and stop. “God’s calling is also His enabling.”
The drive here from Port-au-Prince was something else. The first half was fun and exciting with lots of horn honking and weaving in and out of traffic and running small vehicles off the road and being run off the road by larger vehicles. Oh, but the second half was never ending. We left the road–they claimed we were on a different road, but they lied…there was no road–and drove up and down and around the same mountain 100 times. And our driver hit every rock and hole and ditch in Haiti. I contemplated leaping from the window. I became a backseat driver instead and silently screamed directions and rude remarks at the back of our driver’s head. When we finally arrived–six years after we had left the airport–we arrived at a pardise. I wanted to kiss the ground. I didn’t, but I considered it. And now, after being here and meeting the kids and the staff and the people, I would make that drive every day of my life if it would bless them in any way. I think to myself that God has not called us to be comfortable; He has not called us to always be safe; He has not called us to take the easy roads. He has called us to hardship, to danger, to discomfort, but He has promised us that “in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” Sometimes we forget that the road is only temporary, but the destination is eternal.
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