Head Held High!

Part of my job as a missionary is to learn and experiment and to make mistakes which then leads me back to learning.  For those of you who are on my social media may wonder at times if I know what I'm doing and the reality is I don't most days.

Life in Haiti is the never the same. Like for the past few days all I felt I was seeing and hearing was pain and suffering.  It sometimes makes you wonder if anything will change. Then you have days like today where you see a breakthrough and know God is at work.

Today I saw a mom in our community walk with so much pride that I couldn't help but take a minute and smile. As some may know we provide meals for our tutoring kids and other kids in the community twice a week. Our goal is to move this up to 4 times a week but with that comes extra work. Up until last week we have been cooking the food from our house and driving it over. This was taking up time from our staff members when they could be better using it in other ways. We also knew that employment in our community is very low. We have been praying and looking for a mom in our community who we could employ to help us with meals.  We all agreed that Mrs.Charles would be a good choice. Mrs.Charles is a mom of 5 boys, 2 who are in our sponsorship program.  She has a husband who is involved in the kids life and they both love the Lord. There kids are polite, well behaved and work hard in school. We felt from the first time meeting her that this family could really help change their community.

For the past two weeks Mrs.Charles has cooked our kids meals and has worked so hard to provide a good meal for them. Today before leaving for the day I saw a mom walk with her head held high almost knowing that today was the day she had value and instead of taking a hand out she got provide for her family.

For many people,  they want to see change and see it now. But for me I know that change may take months or even years. If we want to help these families we have to start thinking long term. Yes,  sometimes a short term solution may work for that moment and yes at times they are absolutely needed. But after that, we need to start thinking how we can help so when we are gone that we haven't left them where they started.