Happy Fourth of July! We celebrated the day by hiring a tap-tap, driving up into the mountains as high as we could go, and looking down at the two million people who live in the capitol of Haiti. It was gorgeous. We saw goats, brown-eyed cows, wild horses that weren't really wild, and little naked children yelling, "Blanc! Blanc!" at us from the side of the road. We sang songs from "The Lion King" and "Aladdin." We got rained on - poured on, dead drenched - and were actually cold.
This week is our week off. We've got one team here that is being led by Steve and Jordan, the newest member of our team. So, the rest of us our here at the staff house, planning day trips, playing guitar, meeting on the rooftop, and eating Ramen noodles. We're getting to know each other and learning what it looks like to live in intentional community, to be brothers and sisters, to love like Jesus.
We've been sharing stories. Between the six of us - and the translators - we've got lots of stories. It has been inspiring to see how God has taken our separate selves - where He took us from - and brought us all here together to build up the Body of Christ.
I would like to share my teammates with you. I want to share their testimonies so you can begin to be amazed, as I have been amazed, at what God has done, what He is doing. I'll start with Josh.
Sunday I sat down with Josh, and he shared his testimony with me. For about an hour. God has called him mightily. Before Josh was born, his father had another son named Craig who died of leukemia at the age of thirteen. But God promised him another son, and when Josh was born, his father lifted him up to Heaven and gave his son over to the Lord. Josh grew up in a Christian home but a divided home. His parents were divorced. He lived with his mom and grandmother, both of whom had survived abuse in the past. They lived as African-Americans close to poverty in racially-divided Mississippi. When Josh was in kindergarten, his school teachers taught the children how to zigzag to dodge bullets. That's the kind of world it was.
But God protected Josh and brought him up through high school and to a prestigious college. And there Josh forgot the Lord. It started with a relationship with an unsaved girlfriend, and slid from there into alcohol, abuse, and secret societies seeped in demonic practices. To all outward appearances, Josh had it all: a shiny car, lots of friends, money, girls, everything. Inside, he hated it. He hated life. He hated himself.
One night, his mother called - in tears - and said to her son, "I know you're hurting right now and going through a lot of pain. I just pray that you don't give your soul away." And something in Josh broke. Because he knew he had given his soul away. He knew he had seen the truth of the Gospel and then spit in the face of Christ and walked away.
Paul says, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on Him and receive eternal life." In Josh, God is raising up another Paul, to make plain the light and grace of the Gospel to a world chained in darkness.
Josh is now a man filled with the Spirit, strong in the Word, intent on following his Lord and Savior. He quotes Scripture almost as much as my dad. His gift is the gift of prophesy and discernment, and we have seen God use those gifts mightily here in Haiti. Back in the States, Josh is a part of an intentional Christian community in the slums of Baltimore, working to love the least of these, to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to show them the face of Christ. It is a privilege to serve with Josh in Haiti.
