A Fruitful Home Visit - No, Really, There was Fruit.

A few weeks ago, we planned to go on a home visit. We went to see Mari-Carmel who lives about a mile away. She was supposed to have twins soon and we heard that one of the babies was turned the wrong way, so she would have to have a c-section but didn't have the money. As I am typing this right now, she is in labor at the hospital. Thankfully, the baby has turned back around.

When we got to Mari-Carmel's house, she wasn't home. So we went across the street to one of our teens house's named Lourdy. She also wasn't home. By this time, I was really beginning to ask the Lord what He had in store for us. His plans that day were obviously very different than our own.

We started to walk down the street again to visit a woman that Amy, one of the other missionaries, had met before. On the way, we met Pierre, a woman who has three kids that she often can't feed. She has come to us before to get some rice and beans for them. Amanda, Paul, and I are going to be the godparents for two of her children who are getting baptized. When we ran into Pierre that day, she was carrying a huge sack of mangoes on her head. She stopped us, brought us to her house, and emptied out half of the sack of mangoes to give to us as a gift. I was floored, but knew to accept it and receive her kindness.

Soon afterwards, we ended up at the woman's house that we were going to see. Some of her other family members were there, but she wasn't. A neighbor came over who brought us to her house and gave us a papaya and some other fruit. Then someone else brought us five eggs, wrapped up.
As we walked back into the mission base that day, Franso, a teen who we are helping go to school for the first time this year, had about twenty mangoes that he had brought over in his backpack as a gift for us.

People bring gifts for us often, but in the two and a half years that I have lived in Haiti, I have never received so many gifts in one hour.

I was touched, but deeply ashamed. We had given Pierre some rice and beans that had been donated to us by Food for the Poor, but these rice and beans were our excess while these Haitians gave to us from their poverty.

I will never be able to give the same way that they gave to us that day. I couldn't help but be filled with a loathing of my own selfishness, and all of the “stuff” that fills my life. But I am thankful to the Lord for all that He gives me to share with others. I am thankful to Him for showing me gratitude through the Haitian people that we serve. I am thankful that He teaches me to receive in the midst of giving. I am praying for my own and all of our conversions – that we learn to give from the midst of our poverty the same way that Pierre, Franso, and some of our other neighbors gave to us that day.

Thank you Jesus for the generous, sacrificial witness of your own gift to us on the cross. Help me to live it.

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