The Body of Christ

Anyone who knows me knows how much I adore my family.  God has truly surrounded me with a loyal and loving family, and they have been such a huge blessing in my life.  God has shown me, especially over this past summer, that my family extends far past my family tree, and He reminded me of this truth this weekend.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is told his mother and brothers are waiting to speak to Him and he replies with a question: "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?" (Matthew 12:48)  He then points to His disciples saying: "For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." (Matthew 12:50)  This establishes a different kind of family- one perhaps not recognized by the world but clearly recognized by Christ.

This weekend, I had the pleasure of spending time with my Christian brothers and sisters in the Chicago area whom I had met in Haiti and spent a week serving and praying and spending time with.  As I sat at my friend Deedee's kitchen table, I marveled at the fact that I had only known the people around me for a week, but I felt like I was home, and I knew they were my family.  This truth can only lead me to praise Jesus Christ as we are all one in His body and also to worship the Holy Spirit for dwelling within us and bringing us together in unity.  As I realize how much love fills my heart for these people, I know that this is only another small part of God's great love story.

A Thousand Dark Faces

Wednesday night I was afraid to go to sleep.  Afraid that I would wake up and realize it had all been a dream.  A dream of a thousand dark faces with a thousand white smiles.  A dream of small hands slipping into mine- black in white, white in black.  A dream of low, fast drumbeats and melodic voices.  A dream of layers of mountains and turquoise blue water and red flowers sprayed across tree tops.  A dream of blinking in bright sunlight and dancing in downpours.

But I woke up and realized it was not a dream, but that it was more real than anything I have ever known- a place where joy and faith and sorrow and hope exist in raw form, all at once, in tension and communion with one another.  No escape or sedation.  Just pure hunger- for food and for love and for God and for justice.  And I pray that I will never forget.

Last Night of the Best Summer

I have not written anything in awhile because I have been too busy living and loving and praying with the beautiful people of Haiti.  Tonight is my last night in Haiti.  I went to church tonight despite the tropical downpour with hopes of seeing the friends who said they would meet me there.  Some came despite the rain, and Gismene and Kelidha showed up with T-shirts on which they had written in marker "I love Erica for every day."  We couldn't stop laughing and exchanging bits of Kreyol and English and singing songs to the God who brought us together.  This is what life is about- loving, laughing, crying, praising God, and above all, yearning for Jesus to return and make heaven and earth new.  This week, God revealed to me once again how raw and heartbreaking poverty is, and in those moments, I wanted Jesus to come more than I had ever wanted before.  It was a glimpse of what is in the cries and faces of the people praying all around me, and I realized we can never grow close to God if we are content with the world.  When we are not hoping for Christ to transform this earth and end its suffering, then we are not serving in love those people who are suffering.

In the Shelter of Eachother

A Jars of Clay song declares that "In the shelter of each other, we will live."  It is easy to think about the idea of shelter in a third world country.  Haiti is still full of tent cities, with displaced families living under tarps and makeshift shelters for over a year and a half.  But I can't help but think about the lyrics of the song, thinking of ourselves as the shelter for one another.  One lesson that Haiti is teaching me is the lesson of community, the idea of people providing support, protection, and love for one another.  In villages where the physical shelter may be lacking, people spend the majority of time outside their homes with each other.  The village becomes a tight-knit community, one that protects its own, looks out for one another, like an extended family.  This community has learned what it means to be a shelter.  As Christians, the idea of shelter extends past the borders of a village.  We are all part of the body of Christ, and the world will know Christ through our unity and through our love.  If we are a shelter for one another, uniting and building each other up with love, the world will come to know Jesus in us and know the transformation that comes through Christ.

Last week I traveled with a team from Hill Country Bible Church of Austin Texas to a village called Zoranje. There is a small church in the village with a few classrooms attached to it. This church and school, under the leadership of Pastor Andre, partner with Mission of Hope and are part of the Haiti One network. Haiti One is a program created by Mission of Hope to unite all organizations that seek the transformation of lives in Haiti. The vision of Haiti One is recognizing that all of these organizations are working toward the same goal regardless of location or denomination, and we should all share information, resources, and strategies that will enable us to serve the people most effectively.

To reach the village of Zoranje, we must drive up a steep and winding dirt road over the mountain in a canter. As we made our way up the road, we passed by groups of women traveling to the market. Some traveled on foot, their fruit or vegetables in bundles on their heads. Others traveled on pack mules with basket saddlebags. They wore more traditional clothing that what we typically see in the villages along Route Nationale. Women covered their heads and wore long skirts and dresses. They seemed startled to see the group of “blan” (white people) traveling that road.

On the other side of the mountain, the road to the village was steeper and narrower. Children began to follow the canters. I noticed that the land here was beautiful and more lush, yielding crops for the farmers. Houses were almost exclusively made from stone and mud with thatch roofs rather than the corrugated tin and cinder block homes we are so accustomed to in the Titanyen area. Some of our group went into the school to paint the classrooms, while the rest of us walked in three smaller groups through the village. We met people along the way, spoke with families, played with children, and shared God's message and love.

When we passed by one house, a woman beckoned for us to come into her yard. She quickly began to arrange the handmade wooden chairs to face her front porch and sent her daughters to fetch a few more from neighbors until every American had a seat at her house. In the side yard, a pot boiled over a fire while chickens pecked at the ground. The woman's name is Marie, and she introduced us to her husband and eight children. She told us how much she loved God and proudly produced the family's Bible from inside her home. I told her that all of us were family because we all loved the same Jesus. This was not unusual, and we were received with similar joy and hospitality from others in the village.  Below is a photo of me with Marie and a few of her children.

We met an elderly woman along the road and gave her a bag of soap and shampoo. Before even accepting the gift, she began praising God and thanking Him for sending us. The leader of our group, who could not understand a bit of the woman's Creole, said, “Ask her if she knows Jesus.” I looked into the wrinkled face of the woman, which was now turned toward the heavens, and laughed, saying, “I would say so, she is praising Him right now.” She embraced us all, promising over and over again that she would pray for us.

I have been here long enough to almost forget that this sort of thing is not normal where I come from- to spend time just talking to strangers, to hug them, to share a genuine love with one another without being able to understand more than a few words. It is a reminder that indeed, relationships are more important than what we produce. In his ministry, Christ spent most of his time forming relationships with people, sharing his life with them. It is through these connections that we are able to truly share His love. Relationships, modeled on Christ's relationship with us, are what will shape us, what will change us, and what will challenge us.

Heaven Will Be a Dance Party

One of my favorite nights at Mission of Hope is Tuesday night because Tuesday night is the weekly worship service at the church. Okay, I know that might sound strange that of all the things I could love about Haiti that I would love going to church, especially if most of the service is in a language I barely understand. Most people I know at home think church is boring, and to be honest, a lot of times I think church is boring, but I recognize that is really our own fault. Especially if you are like me, and you sing at the top of your lungs at a concert or in your car- you sing songs about falling in love and about summer's freedom and about how Billie Jean is not your lover. Because if I can sing and dance with joy about things like that, and I am bored at church, well, I must be forgetting who God is and what He has done for me.

Haiti doesn't forget who God is. Haiti does not forget the houses that fell and the heaps of bodies that filled the mass grave in this very village. The survivors do not forget that God spared them, and they are grateful for their lives. A man named Rob came this week with his two daughters from Texas. He had not been to Mission of Hope since he came with a medical team two weeks after the earthquake, and he told us about how the patients begged to be taken on stretchers to church so that they could sing praises to God. People who were dying. People who were losing limbs. People who had lost everything. It's sad how we who have been given so much have a hard time praising the God who has blessed us. It's tragic really and almost too ridiculous- that we find it easier to sing about beer and kissing and ladies with fat butts than to sing about Jesus.

Back to my story about Tuesdays... Simply put, Tuesday night at church is a joyous dance party in the name of Jesus. There is singing and praying and crying and dancing, but all I know is: it is real. Real pain. Real joy. Real love. Real life. And there are few places where I have felt closer to heaven. Sometimes I look around and think about the lives of the people here- the poverty, the memories of last January, the illness, the death, and the filthy, hungry babies with bloated bellies, and I grieve for them. On August 17, I will board a plane and return to my comfortable life, but they will not. I can change the channel, they cannot. This is their life, and it is real. But I think about how their pain has brought them to the cross of Christ- closer than I might ever be. They know Jesus like I have never known Him. They sing His praises with a depth from which I have never sung praises. I think about how I will return to a world where people tense up a little when they hear someone say the name of Jesus and where people roll their eyes about going to church and where we surround ourselves with our comfortable things and our pleasure-filled lives and convince ourselves we do not need Him. And that is when I grieve for us.

In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller writes about overlooking Machu Pichu after climbing the intense Inca trail. He describes the elation of arriving: “The pain made the story more beautiful. The story made us different characters than if we'd showed up at the ending an easier way. It made me think about the hard lives so many people have had, the sacrifices they've endured, and how those people will see heaven differently from those of us who have had easier lives.”

So this is why I love Tuesday nights--- Because for a few hours I can see heaven more clearly through the eyes of those who have seen true suffering. I have caught a glimpse, and I can tell you it is beautiful.