This week I am with Community of Faith in Haiti filming videos to update our church on our ministries in Haiti. We moved locations, and the internet is better, so I’ll try to add some photos to this tomorrow after sleep. 

Yesterday I had shot interviews with three different people, a little girl named Sabine and a father and daughter who both attend our school together (the father decided as an adult to return to school and humbly comes to class with children less than half his age and his daughter in the room next to him because all he wants to do is learn so he can help his family).

This morning, I woke up and in the first waking moment before my brain really even registers rational thought, I realized I hadn’t gotten enough of the little girl, Sabine’s, story. In rapid succession, 4 more questions I wanted to ask her popped into my head. I have learned in my life to never ignore those early morning ideas. More often than not, these moments are the Lord speaking to my heart.

Now you have to know, some of these children walk more than 2 hours to get to school. They had come in the day before, on a national holiday and what should have been their day off, to greet us. It was now Saturday, and of course school was not in session. There are 200 students in the school and out of that we had picked this one precious girl to focus on, and now I had lost my chance to film her entire story. I felt terrible, incompetent, guilty, and wasteful. I sat there in my bed, and I had myself a little pity/shame party. But then I thought about what we had been seeing and hearing from the Pastors in Haiti, and what I have learned since the day I first stepped foot into Community of Faith. I have had a Master’s course in the past 11 months of the real, tangible power of prayer, and now was my chance to put it into action.

I got my phone out and made a note of the 4 questions I knew I needed to ask, so I wouldn’t forget them, and then said a little prayer I would repeat through much of the morning. I asked the Lord to somehow deliver Sabine to me so I would have a chance to talk to her again. I knew we were going to see the land that Raymond, one of our Pastors, has purchased as the future location for the new school, we were going to work together with the teachers and administrators to clear a small plot of land for a tilapia pond, and we were going to meet Raymond’s family who live in the same valley. We would be in the area immediately surrounding the school, and I asked the Lord to give me another chance to talk to her.

To help the Lord out with the miracle (ha-ha), I tried to ask two of the teachers in the car on the way up to La Source if they knew where Sabine lived. Neither of them understood me, so I knew I needed to just pray. We arrive in La Source, unload from the car near the land they have purchased for the school, and as always, some neighborhood kids peek around bushes to greet the car full of strangers. I step out of the car and look behind me and someone smiles at me. I smile back, turn away, and then jump back around. SABINE! I run up to her, hug her, and excitedly in English tell this poor Haitian girl that I have been praying she would appear! One of our translators, Silvia, laughingly intervened and explained why I was so excited and asked her if she had a few minutes to speak to us again. She shyly agreed, as her siblings giggled around her. I got permission from our leader to stay behind and travel with Sabine to her home to meet her family and film the rest of her story, and we would meet up with the group later.

Silvie and I walked the short distance to Sabine’s home, gear in hand. Sabine is blessed to live so close to her school, as it is only a short 10-minute walk. Many students in this area travel hours to get to school. We hiked a small portion of the mountain behind the school today, and gasped for air when we were about a third of the way up it, and they told us that several students live on the other side of the mountain, and that it takes them more than 2 hours to get to school and get home each day. In urban areas, schools are often inaccessible for families because of cost. In rural areas like La Source, not only cost but simple access is a barrier to education. Even many of our professors travel an hour to come teach each morning on the back of motorbike taxis down dusty bumpy roads, but they come out to this rural area because they believe in the power of education and Christ to give children hope.

On the way to Sabine’s home I asked Silvie (my friend fluent in French who inspires me to learn another language) to tell Sabine that we don’t want to intrude on their lives, so she could go ahead and ask her parents for permission before we arrived and only if they invited us in would we come in. She smiled and told us it was not a problem, and we found out later that her parents are both farmers, and the 8 children in their family take care of each other during the days while their parents work. There is much more to Sabine’s story that I will soon share with the church via video, but for me, personally, to walk into her home was a really powerful moment.

The homes in this area are all on similar lots – and the lot size is similar to mine at home (I think I heard them say 100 x 200 but I have no idea what measurement that is – so I’ll let you imagine). They all have fences around them made of cactus to protect their gardens (the fences are beautiful). When we walked into Sabine’s yard I was amazed by how clean it was. The ground was swept dirt and was perfectly flat and even. It felt like walking across my carpet after I had vacuumed. I could tell her family had spent time getting it free of rocks or debris. Her little brothers and sisters ran around, smiling at us, and hiding behind older siblings. There was the main house, which was beautiful with cement front, a porch, decorative windows, and lace curtains in the doorways. There was another small house to the left where three girls were washing clothes in bowls on the porch, and on the back of the dirt lot there was a large building with no walls but just a roof. I asked one of Sabine’s sisters what it was, and she told me, but I have no idea what it means and can’t remember the word, so you can guess about that as well. The entire place was beautiful and we felt immediately at ease.

We filmed Sabine’s story, took some pictures of her siblings because they wanted in on the fun, and I got to again take a posed picture, and show it to precious kids as they giggled. Some of the sisters ran in front of a beautiful tree by the main porch and posed, and I went over to take their picture. After the picture in the bright sunlight, when I bent down to show them, I could feel little hands on my waist as they leaned in closely to see the dark screen in the bright sunlight. I loved it. It made me long to bring my girls here so they could play in this place with these children. We left, hugging children and saying our goodbyes, but we happily discovered that most of the children in her family were following us to meet up with our group. They showed us shortcut paths that weave between homes and gardens and we felt like a part of their community off the main roads walking through areas where normally only Haitians walk. We spent the rest of the morning with them, working and laughing together with the teachers as we cleaned out the pit for the tilapia pond, squealing when one of the teachers discovered a tiny snake, taking pictures together in various poses, and hiking up and back down the mountain (on the way back down one little girl in green ran fast and light, barefoot but somehow graceful on this dirt and rock trail, reminding me of Tinkerbell). It was a beautiful day with Sabine and her family. They welcomed us not only into their home, but into their family and neighborhood for the day, and I loved every moment of it.

Today 2 of the 200 students at the COF school came out to help us dig the pond and spend time with us, and one of those was Sabine. Our God is a genius at the 1% odds and always, always, always answers our prayers.