Discipling from the foundations up.

Our first week in the refugee camp proved to be everything we expected and more. The tent camp was about a ten minute walk from the base and centered around a clinic that YWAM maintains. The community of around 40 adults and about 60 children welcomed us in the typical  fashion, with the kids approaching us first to pat down our pockets while the adults watch from a distance. Since the earth quake there have been countless missionary teams to meet this community and most have not stayed longer than a week, so their skepticism and distance was understandable. When we arrived that first morning we were shown around the clinic by our translator, Emanuel. Emanuel is very soft spoken and engaged to the petite and pretty Haitian woman who cleans the clinic. It was around nine o’clock and we had planned to start our VBS program at one pm so a nurse led us into the back room of the clinic where open boxes stacked high as the ceiling were bursting with random medical supplies.

“Here is the supply room.” She said in an exhale as she placed her hands on her hips.

We had a good look around in an inhale. This room was terribly amiss.

“We could use your help to organize it…” She began.

I swallowed. The prospect of organizing THIS was a bit daunting. She began to explain that after the earth quake many medical personnel in the states had taken empty boxes into their supply closets and filled them with a little of everything.

“Which is good,” She said, “But, we don’t know what is in each box so when we go to find something….”

I tuned her out again. Now I knew why the room was in this condition. In the Chaos of post-disaster, this clinic had run 24 hrs a day for the first month, meanwhile boxes of miscellaneous medical supplies showed up and were hastily torn through to look for whatever was needed at each urgent moment.

As Andrea and I began to make a boxes just for needles, just for bandages, etc, I realized that my hands were touching what many hands had touched back in the states in a scurry to send Haiti aid. The aid had gotten here sure enough but it has actually made it harder on the people who distribute the aid to have hundreds of boxes labeled ‘stuff’ rather than boxes from a manufacturer that come organized already.

It wasn’t long until the first member of this community for us to meet wheeled his way down the hall way. Twelve year old Gilous, the clinic’s only in-patient was eager to meet us. He greeted us from his wheel chair with a large smile and some impressive English phrases. His legs were laid straight out and his knees were wrapped in gauss.The nurse explained that some a mobile clinic had discovered him a few months ago and had diagnosed him with TB, which was treatable but had caused damage to his spine, causing paralysis in his legs. “You guys should pray for him...Jesus is his only hope now.” she finished.“We’d love to pray!” We said. After all, we are ‘Fire and Fragrance’ aren’t we?We circled around him and started to speak in tongues and lay our hands on him gently.

We probably prayed for five minutes when someone said, “Let's release The Sound.”
“The Sound” is very significant to our DTS. It was something God revealed to our leaders before Fire and Fragrance even started, and it had to do with the sound of a generation that lived intimately in his presence. It wasn’t until about two weeks before outreach that an actual sound manifested from our school. For months we were told about “the sound,"  "the sound that God was releasing from heaven,"and  "the sound that we would release into the nations". And  in one night “The sound” turned from a prophetic concept into an actual melody. I will never forget that night. There was so much heaven in the room you could tangibly feel it when you walked out and came back in. This melody that came was ochre Pella, spontaneous and corporately simultaneous. We have found that this sound, when we sing it, it releases (intensely) the tangible presence of God.

So we released it. We sang over him as a group, still laying on hands. I could tell by the way Gilious basked in His presence that he already loved Jesus. It was strange to stop praying, we weren't sure if we should go back to organizing medical supplies or keep ministering. The presence of God was thick, yet he did not look healed (on the outside). Another nurse casually came our way and then abruptly stopped and said,"Something changed. Right here."
We laughed and said "We know." The spiritual atmosphere had shifted significantly. Gilious wasn't speaking in tongues or walking, yet Holy spirit was up to something. later I realized the gift of faith had been released in the clinic.

The rest of the week was extreemly fufilling and exciting. We fell madly in love with the community we are in charge of discipling for the next 5 weeks and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Each day we got more and more kids in our program, and we got our pockets patted less and less. One girl imparticular named Maslile has grown very attached to me. It may have something to do with the fact that God wispered in my ear "Healing hands" the first time I touched her and that night God used her to heal four people with stomach pain right before my eyes. She's clung to my side ever since. I think she wants me to take her home with me. I am happy to have the opportunity to disciple her. The night of the healings I made sure to tell her (through the translator) "This is how we pray for the sick..." and I would teach her and then step back and watch her do it. We only prayed for five people, four of which got totally healed and three of which I didn't touch at all, but had Maslile put her hands on them along with the people that just got healed. After each time I made sure to bend down and say, "See? Do you see how God used you?" and she would shake her head egarly, never breaking my eye contact. Meanwhile the translator would have to take a bug-eyed moment and say, "That's a miracle, that's a miracle..." That night we saw more miracles with the children. One girl's spinal lump shrank a bit, or so I thought. Someone ran to fetch the girl's mother to check if it was our imagination or if the lump really had gotten smaller. When the mother came she was able to tell us that her daughter is being healed daily now and has started to do things she could never do before. I love the unchurched because their reactions to the supernatural are always so matter-of-fact (Meanwhile our mouths are hanging open).

Other significant things happened the morning of the healings. Our team had strategized to spend the morning interceeding for the tent camp before we did anything else so one morning we sponaniously start singing and releasing the sound again. This time three pastors showed up out of nowhere saying, "We heard the sound, and we came." (This is the kind of circumstance that makes me feel like I'm writting a YWAM book) They interceeded with us and then begged us to write down the melody we were singing so they could learn it. "Because," they said they could "feel the spirit's power on us." We did our best to impart it to them, and ended up getting words of knowledge for them and getting to prophesy and even deliver them from some stuff. It was so awsome.

When I came to Haiti I wanted to do something important. When they told us we would be discipling an entire community of fragile refugees ALONE, the task seemed too important not to mention impossible. A lot of things God wants us to do in life seems impossible, but that is before taking into account how much He loves us and wants to walk it out with us. I like how Jake Hamilton puts it when he says, "Here is the Bible in thirty seconds: God created the world and gave you all authority, you gave that authority to the devil so Jesus came and died and gave all authority back to you, and He's coming back to see how you did." Bringing the world back under God's will seems an impossibly large task, luckily it's His perfect pleasure to do everything with us, which is the reason He created us in the first place: To subdue the earth and bring it into edenic pleasure while walking in intimate partnership with Him.

First glance at abundance

We did our first VBS (Vacation Bible School) with the refugee kids today. I still don't know how we were able to maintain control of a group this large and have fun at the same time but God's grace probably had something to do with it:) Hope your proud of me on this one Mom, this is EXTREME sunday school. I was so intimidated before we started but it turned out so unbelievably well.

(The two girls being cut off on the left are Andria and Alyse, with Julio on the far right)

More pictures from the Fifth Section

(Brian painting the clinic)(This is the painted tree)(Wade with the kids)

April 8th

I met Jasminder's grandparents today, they live in a hoop home camp about 30 minutes from the base. We were there to lay concrete for a permanent building and I, being of no real capabilities in this area, was free to explore the tent community. It was there that I found Audrey, the foster Mom and future adoptive parent of little Jas. She was there to take his grandparents to the hospital that she assumed Jasminder was born at in order to retrieve his birth certificate, if it even existed that is. We prayed before she left, it would be a true miracle if she succeeded in finding the birth certificate at all, and past that getting the authorities to hand it over was going to take an act of God. I had one faithful companion while we were in that camp, a little boy named Jeutesse who saw the soccer ball I had brought and relentlessly asked, “Babon? Babon?” Terry Snow was also in the camp that morning and I got to witness first-hand why he’s known as the ‘Moses’ over the Haitians. In a matter of minutes he mobilized at least a hundred people to various tasks to help us with the concrete and to continue to develop the camp. Getting Haitians to work for a wage is not an easy task, but he yields so much respect from all he’s brought the people through that when he speaks, they listen. It turns out that it was inappropriate to bring out the ball on a ‘work day’ so instead I helped flatten a small field with Jasminder’s grandmother and even got invited inside a family’s tent to take a picture of their newborn baby. All the while my little friend was flashing his white teeth and insisting, “Balon, balon?” Cameras are extremely popular items and with each picture I took I had to show not only the individual how it looked, but all their friends as well. We left that camp about noon and I was told that we were going deep into the fifth section to paint something.

(This is my persistant little friend Jeutesse)

The fifth section was something I had a dream about before I even knew what it was. In this dream someone was saying, “Oh, the fifth section…” and I was asking, “What is the fifth section?” But I woke up before I got the answer, a dream I was instantly reminded of when the announcement came that we were headed there. The fifth section sounds like an inner-city block of Saint Marc, but is actually the rural farming communities on the very outskirts of the city. I was extremely intrigued to see this ‘fifth section’ since apparently God wanted to tell me something about it. On the way I rode in the front seat of the truck with Kevin, our work leader for the day. We talked about the future of the nation and I had some questions for him since he has lived here for a few months, that he was able to answer. I learned that we were headed to a small village where a clinic was being built, that he himself had helped to build and that it was almost finished being painted. A doctor from Miami was funding it and planning on staffing it personally when it was completed. Our small talk had ended for about 20 minutes when he said, “The place where we are going, there’s a girl tied to a tree…”

I was shocked. “Tied to a tree?!” I said. Then there was a pause.

“Yah,” He said. “She is very well cared for, they feed her and stuff but I didn’t want you to be shocked.”

“WHY?” Was my immediate response.

He began to explain that this child has some mental handicaps that prevent her from living a normal life, and that the village keeps her tied up for her own protection, not to victimize her.

He told me that this girl will walk into the river, and into cactus bushes, however he didn’t think she was possessed, though her eyes did seem “weird”. He was very sensitive in the way he talked about her and her village, I could tell he had come to love these people and didn’t want me to get the wrong idea of them.

“It’s like she’s a one year old” He finished.

I was shocked. My eyes were wide and my breathing had slowed. “Thank you for warning me.” I somehow calmly got out.



The ride was about 10 minutes more. When we parked in the village we immediately went inside the clinic (which looked painted to me) and ate our MRE’s for lunch, while being stared at at close range by 20 plus villagers. The MRE’s were the best food I had had in a long time and were fun to make. I calmly ignored the faces staring at me while I ate. The girl who supposedly lives in this village had not left my mind, but I knew that I wasn’t afraid. After lunch we inspected the back of the clinic building to see what needed to be done. A small patch the size of a poster was still bare concrete and I hear someone say, “This will take only two of us 20 minutes.” With my services clearly not needed by my team of 5 able-bodied grown men, I took a few steps into the village. I looked around, but didn’t see much. I took a few more steps. I said good afternoon to an old man sitting in a chair out side the cinderblock hut where the paint was locked up. I took a few more steps and looked around for a tree…not seeing anything I casually looked down and to my right, reaching for my bag, and there she was. We were alone and it was quiet. She lay on the ground belly down, face in the dirt, looking at me, her arms spread out wide, as were her legs. She was naked but for a pair of underwear and her ankle was loosely tied with a worn piece of something that had about 4 feet of slack from the base of a very small pole-like tree, painted green. Her cheeks were white from the dust but her dark eyes looked up at me contently, the only body language that reacted to my approaching her. She had an empty green plastic bottle in her hands that she wiggled around here and there. She was the size of a skinny 7 year old, and very beautiful. I smiled at her, but no reaction was reciprocated. It was about this time the mother walked up, a woman about the age of 45, holding a smaller baby girl about two years old. She was able to communicate to me that she was the mother of both children. I desperately wanted to pray for this girl so I asked the mother and pointed, “Preye?” She nodded her head and handed the now crying toddler to another woman. Then she untied her daughter and picked her up, making her stand. Her legs were skinny and void of the muscle even the most undernourished Haitian children have. She was able to stand, but stared blankly at the ground, plastic bottle still in hand. I felt embarrassed that she had felt she had to move her for me so I took off my shoes and sat in the dirt next to her to pray.



The possibility of demonic possession had been on my mind since the car ride. A demon would want to destroy her life, hence her nearly drowning herself and being unable to avoid hazards. I felt that someone with even a very severe mental illness would avoid pain, and posses the instinct for self-preservation. Not knowing much about the subject, nor having much experience with identifying either, I prayed for it all. Her eyes did not look at all different to me, though under her eyes looked a bit puffy. I started by inviting the holy spirit to increase and release and then commanding her body to come into alignment with the kingdom of God. I laid my hands on her, I walked around the tree, anointing the ground. I spoke to her chains and bound them in the name if Jesus. I interceded on behalf of her family and village, I rebuked every spiritual stronghold I could think of. I cried out for heaven to invade. Meanwhile I was rebuking the curses a woman was yelling at me from behind a curtain in the hut in front of me. I’ve never longed for a miracle like this before. At one point I turned my back to them to hide my heart broken tears, but I pressed on. By then all the children in the village appeared, I had a crowd of about 30. I kept praying, commanding alignment, declaring authority, prophesying life, etc. Next I had all the kids lay their hands on her and repeat , “Jezu, Jezu, Jezu…”



I did everything I knew how to do. I knew God wanted to heal this girl. I knew He wanted to do it in front of her whole village! I laid my hands on her chest again and spoke to her spirit. This was the first time she raised her head and looked up at me. I said, “I speak to your spirit right now, I say be healed in Jesus’ name and come into alignment with the God of heaven.” I said it twice and both times she looked right at me. She started opening her mouth and making a barking sound, I could see that she was much older than she looked from her teeth. I could tell from her sound that she could not speak, and possibly not even hear. I rebuked the spirit of deafness and muteness. This was the end of my prayer.

I had done everything I knew how to do, I said “Amen” and sat down. I knew my God had not forsaken me, even though I had observed no noticeable change in the girl’s body. Throughout my prayer I knew it was God’s will to heal her, and somehow I knew she would be healed. But when? I had been praying for 20 minutes and who knew how long we would be in this village. The phrase ‘God is good’ was ringing through my spirit even though I had just made my self look quite foolish in front of an entire Haitian village. I was inexplicitly overcome by the desire to praise God at that moment.



It wasn’t until later on in the day in the prayer room that God really took me deeper into his heart for the situation. I felt him tell me I had been laying the ‘prayer foundation’ for the miracles in that village, that someone else would pick up where I left off. I had prayed into the destiny, or the destination for that girl, and God was fully planning on arriving with her at that destination of miraculous healing and freedom. Sometimes we are tempted to ask, ‘why’ when things are not fixed when we pray, or when prayers seem “unanswered”. But what I’ve learned is that God is good and we can live our lives as if He is good. I have also learned that we cannot make theology based on what God appears to ’not’ do. His desire for his kingdom to invade the earth is clear, that is the destination. The journey getting to that destination, will always be the one that brings Him the most glory. I was honored to partner with God in what He’s doing in that village today, and to agree with His heart the ways He wants to reveal himself to them as a loving father very soon.

The rest of the day in that village was full of kids calling me “Blanc, blanc” and demanding I take their picture. I had a great time with them showing me around their village. There was about 40 or more kids in such a small village and a newborn in almost every hut. After about two hours of me teaching them to call me by my name, not just ‘white person’ and letting them take the pictures of their friends with my camera the novelty of being the only white woman in the village needed to wear off. I was exhausted. Up until the last minute they were crowding around me, asking for more pictures. They were all so beautiful. I tried to learn their names too, but I can only remember the girl who impacted me the most, the one they kept tied to a tree and her name was Megua.

(one of the kids took this one)

(These are the beautiful faces staring at me)

April 6th-surprize

I learned how to say,"my stomach is sick" in Creole today. Not a translation I would have normally pursued but I had to explain the look on my face to my new friend Nadeen. Nadeen is the second earthquake victim I've met, the first was an 18 month old orphan who lives on base who's name is Jasminer.
So after a night of my mouth becoming more familiar with it's distance from the toilet, I could not hide the obvious discomfort from my friend. Nadeen knows about as much english as I know Creole, which surprizingly makes very little difference when it comes to how much we've bonded. She had simpathy for me I could tell, and now I knew how she felt when I looked at her that way. Nadeen's leg is still in a brace from when her ankle was crushed in the earth quake. She can walk with crutches but isn't very mobile throughout the day. Each time I walk by the caffiteria, she is in the same chair, keepng busy. My heart is overcome with love for her because she is only five years older than me, and because she is the kindest most personalble haitian I've yet to meet.

So here I am, "out sick" for only the second day of work. What I got sick from, I don't know but working in the refuse-water canal to get it ready for the rainy season comes to mind-something I would have felt so good about myself for doing back when I was striving. Seeing myself, in a third world country, clearing the canal with a machetti while the orphans climb over the wall to rake the rubbish... yes that scene would have satisfied me once apon a time. But now that I go through life from a place of spiritual rest, (that is, not to impress God, but because He impressed me) and I know God thinks the same of me whether or not I clear the ditch, doing the dirty work looses it's romance.
Though some parts of missions have lost their luster, new things have been made beautiful. I attended my first Haitian church service on easter sunday night. The worship was first in english, and then it switched to creole. I discovered that I love creole worship. The singer shouts a lyric and then the croud shouts out the next one. There is so much power in declaring things over yourself and I love that the haitian christians are so plugged in to spiritual warfare. I was trying to harmonze with the shouting and jumping when all of a sudden I looked around me with new eyes. Here I was, apart of a scene I had witnessed on countless corny christian television stations: a rustinc building, in this case an open athlectic arena, with numerous black musicans on stage singing in a foreign lanuage, while the crowd of  one hundred or so worship. In this scene are always the few white missionaries in front, dressed in drab modest clothing clapping along. I had always thought of this type of life to be among the most borring and unappeiling. After all, who would want to live without media, makeup, jewlery, the latest fashions, a varied diet or consistant electricity? Who would volunteer to dress like a nun and give up a normal life? Now here I was, deffinitely dressed in formal modest "drab", surounded by Haitian worshipers, sitting on a pew made from cinderblocks and lumber and I could only conclude one thing:

I have found THE MOST SATISFYING way to live, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

April 1st-2nd

Perhaps I should introduce the characters in our story. By age there is Julio, an 18 year old mild tempered red head from Costa Rica who’s sarcasm is always well timed. Then there is Alyse, also 18 and from Vancouver, Canada, Ester, age 20 from Korea who’s Korean name is so pretty if only I could nail the pronunciation. Then we have Brian, husband extraordinaire at only 22, and Wade, 23 an eager college graduate who grew up in YWAM and is originally from New Zealand. Andrea is also 23 and from my neck of the woods, California, she spent the last 2 years of her life working in group homes for boys fresh out of Juvenile hall or rejected from foster care and her heart is big enough to do it for the rest of her life. Then there is Jon and Tami, both 29, they are from Canada as well. They are our outreach leaders, and have been married under two years. I am proud to say they are Brian and I’s best friends as of yet. Finally there is Phoebe, a dainty blonde at 31 who appears at least a decade younger, she is so moldable and very near to my heart.




After my second night of no sleep, the sun’s light entered the cabin window. I had PURPOSELY stayed up the night before in order to force myself asleep on the plains by pure exhaustion. If only I had known that the middle seat of the isle was mine all night from Los Angeles, California to Miami, Florida. I envied the woman next to me who appeared to sleep at ease, as well as my husband who occasionally leaned my direction only making it harder to find an ounce of comfort in this seat stuck in what felt like a 90 degree angle while my feet froze from the AC and were upright on top of my carry-on luggage that clearly was never going to fit under the chair in front of me.



I knew we had a 6 hour lay-over in Miami before we flew to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti and my first priority was to get SOME sleep. The terminal floor looked so inviting but before I sat down I was told we were leaving the airport and going to Wade’s aunt’s house for breakfast. I had heard of this plan before but I was so drowsy. ‘NOW?!’ I thought. I wanted to sleep on concrete but instead made my way to the bathroom and brushed my teeth.



A few minutes later Wade’s uncle arrived, clearly a new Zealander he was friendly and energetic. Being in the state that I was, I could barely manage a smile. All ten of us crammed into his car that sat seven. (Typical YWAM habit from base. Someone yells “Wal-mart” and people cram into cars like it’s the last helicopter out of Vietnam) When we arrived at the house five minutes later the smell of food eluded to the overwhelming hospitality that awaited us. I heard someone say in the back ground, “She makes everything from scratch”. ‘Who?’ I thought. Who was this angel-stranger making us breakfast?



We entered the house and before my eyes was something I thought only existed in fantasies. The inside was straight from heaven. The high ceilings let in the light of the early morning to reveal white washed walls and soft looking white sofas. There was a dark hard wood floor that led to the 60’s style checker board floored kitchen where the aromas of food I had only dreamed about was brewing. As my eyes adjusted I found vases and bowls of white shells, big and small on every surface. The living room was filling up with us YWAMers so I made my way to the dinning room where a large white table came into focus. Next to it was a white futon littered with inviting pillows. Since I had yet to meet my hostess, I made my way into the kitchen only to be met at the door by a lovely thirty-sh woman with long chocolate brown hair that curled just at the ends. She was wearing a gray floor-length beach dress and was just as perfectly kind as she was classically beautiful. She started to bring out large white dishes, one by one. My eyes could not believe themselves. Before me were fresh scrambled eggs, a heaping plate of bacon, a basket of homemade fresh bread, baked tomatoes in oil, and to top it all off cinnamon and raisin hot cross buns, made from scratch. Breakfast was served and I felt like Peter Pan when he and the Lost Boys pretend to feast on their favorite foods, except all the flavors were real. This degree of hospitality was so overcoming. This family’s history I learned in the car blew me away once I was here. Not only had they traveled a great deal doing missions, but had two blonde children named Sofia and Sebastian who were the most polite kids of ages eight and six that I have ever met. I was already in love with them, being so overcome by their love, but when their brindle colored bull mastiff entered the room and they announced his name was George, that’s when the full revelation hit me.



It wasn’t until this day I understood why hospitality was so important in Jesus’ time and well before him. I had never been a weary traveler before but now I fully understood how God’s love is shown through hospitality. This family had gotten up and picked us up at six in the morning and had breakfast waiting when we arrived. This was the kind of affection that feels embarrassing to receive but it feels so good that I never wanted it to stop. Just like God’s love. We were so undeserving, complete strangers in fact but yet these people lavished their love on us. The feeling of weeping that often visits when I get a deeper revelation of God’s love was inescapable in this house. How could I ever repay them? Or even thank them enough?

These questions rolled through my mind the way they did the first time I received revelation of God’s love. But the answer was the same as that first encounter. The answer is: I can’t. I can’t repay them, or take the time to express with words how much it meant to me. The only thing I can do is receive it and respond to it. So that’s what I did. Just like God’s love and salvation, their hospitality was a free gift, and we could either take it or not. Either way, they were going to get up at six and the food was going to be on the table. The work was going to be done out of love for us and no insisting would have stopped it because they loved us simply as fellow YWAMers and friends of their nephew. Just like God did all the work so we could take part in Edenic pleasure with Him because He loves us simply as His kids. The kingdom of heaven is like that home in Miami. There is pleasure and rest for the weary and wandering above and beyond what would meet needs. There is love that blows the mind and brings weeping (Being loved in the fullness of what love is always brings weeping ). There is love so overwhelming you are embarrassed to receive it because you think you have nothing to offer in return. But Christ died not for what we could do for Him, but what we can do with Him. Which means being with Him, in every day life.



I am so beyond blessed to have God with me in every day life, and to have witnessed this manifest love of God again towards me just before we go to pour it out in Haiti.