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.