A Little Drop

Remerson, a ten year old who I have been accidentally calling Lameson for a year and a half, walked up to me the other day with shoes that were so torn that he was basically barefoot. He asked me for marbles, so I gave him marbles and a new pair of shoes (all thanks to our donors and mission groups).

Over a year ago, we were riding in the car with two of our teens who were both about twenty at the time. We drove to Miragoane, a town twenty minutes away, and got ice cream. They had their first bite of ice cream in their entire lives and loved it.

Around that same time, I was talking to one of our other teens, Taina, who told me that she usually sleeps on the floor. After going to her house one day, she showed me where the water can come in through the wall and wet the piece of floor that she sleeps on. Soon after, we were able to give her and several others a bed and a mattress.

Several of our teens have told us that they used to not go to church before we got here, or that they were involved in other things and sins that were contradictory to their faith. Now they have had a conversion, live it in their schools, and testify about it to others. They want to be priests, sisters, and missionaries. Most of the time, I feel like we didn't do much in coming here, besides fumble through the language and try to live our faith, but it seems as if that meant something to somebody, or even several somebodies.

I can't ever wrap my mind around our mission here. I feel like my head is constantly exploding.
A girl who came with a mission group recently, as she was leaving, said something like this: "How will I ever be able to live a country club kind of life and un-see all that I have seen here?"

I don't know the answer to that question but I have thought about it too. How will I ever leave here and lead a somewhat normal life? Do I even want to? Is it even morally right? What is the next step after living here? Or maybe the real question is, "Is it really about me?" After all of this, am I really still thinking about me?

Either way, I am very thankful for the teens and the people here who constantly teach me how to love, how to laugh, and how to trust in the Lord with all my strength. God is helping us to change one another, so that is beautiful.

I was reminded of this quote by Mother Teresa yesterday as we were visiting the Missionaries of Charity: "We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less without that one drop." I figure if Mother Teresa felt like what she was doing was small, it is okay for me to feel that way too, and trust that God will take my little drop and use it for His glory.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Does it Mean to Give?

There’s something I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around lately.   I live in a country where people don’t have a lot of material possessions. They also don’t have a lot of food, and the food that they do have is not the most nutritious or balanced type of diet. Their houses are not great; they don’t have cars; many don’t have jobs. The question: What is my response? Many times, people here ask me for things. It seems that I can’t leave our mission base without someone asking me for my water bottle, my sweater, my shoes, some money. I’m pretty sure they see me as a rich white person. What I’ve realized recently is that in many ways, this is actually true. If you look at the big picture of the whole world and all of the people in it, I am rich, even though I am a missionary and I have to ask for money for everything that I have. I am rich, even though I buy almost all of my clothes on sale, and have many that were given to me. I am rich, even though my laptop is five years o
Read more

From Naivete to Growth

Image
I remember sitting caffeinated, late at night, in the library with a friend in college, talking about foreign mission. One day, we could live in Africa, we said over our lattes and laptops. It seemed a glorious thing to me, this missionary life in a foreign country. At the time, I wanted to travel. I did have a true and real desire to love and live among the poor, but the rest of it was a dream, built on nothing – I had barely left the country then. In fact, I don’t think I had ever met a real live missionary. I had heard about mission trips, but never been on a foreign one. My imaginary life was just that, imaginary. A little more than a few years later, I was moving to Haiti to start a mission there with a few other people from an organization that I loved. I don’t think I could have admitted it then, but it definitely felt glorious. I had read a few books about missionaries, met some missionaries, been on mission trips, been inspired by the passion, zeal, and sacrifice of others
Read more

Under the Shade of the Almond Tree

The air is fresh and clean up here.  Can you hear that? The sound of silence. The breeze moving through the trees. No traffic, no big trucks or motorcycles. Peace and stillness. Sitting outside under the shade of an almond tree. She has AIDS, we are told. She is frail, we can see. A man disappears to get us food from the garden. Bananas, sugar cane. A gift for our visit. A gift for the priest. We sit on chairs. She sits on the floor, in the doorway. The air is fresh and clean up here.  The silent mountain where death is coming but has not yet taken the one we came to see. So we sing and we pray and we talk under the shade of the almond tree, up in the clear, cool mountain air. The place that feels like Heaven, though Heaven is not yet here. Months later, we hear news of her death.
Read more