Contrast - Weeks 5-7

It has been a few weeks again and we want to let you all know what has been going on around the MH property.

Tim – He has been working steadily on plans for the block company.  Right now this involves sitting down with various people and making sure the land is dealt with properly.  The piece of land has needed to be surveyed, boundaries staked, neighbors talked to and former owners notified of any plantain trees that they might want to remove before construction begins.  The next steps will involve finalizing construction plans, which sometimes move quickly here and at other times not so much.  Otherwise Tim stays busy with keeping track of all financial aspects of the ministry, helping with various ministry decisions and co-lead teacher of our girls’ homeschool education.

Sara – I have been spending time figuring out ways to keep our homeschooling experience interesting.  I have come to love the flexibility it gives us but it takes diligence to keep from just trying to finish pages or concepts.  We need to make sure we are not just crossing off our lists, but also teaching for understanding and knowledge to sink in.  Before we moved, it was my concern that Aubrey needed to begin reading this year and I am thankful to say she is making great strides at it.  Otherwise, I have been keeping up with daily life stuff… laundry day is still a day I need to mentally prepare for here, but very satisfying when finished.  I have also been helping get pictures taken for the school sponsorship program.  This involves accompanying Paul and Pam to the schools MH assists… I always sleep well at night on the days I hike with them.

Logan, Aubrey & Regan – The girls are adjusting well.  It is good to see people continuing to embrace them. 

    Logan has been reading a couple books per week.  She is our daughter who keeps to herself the most which has been the case even in America.  She does well and is happy playing by herself and continues to have a big imagination.  Logan got to accompany Pam and Bethany to AWANA class Saturday morning as well as take part in a recorder lesson… so now we have a recorder in our house 

: )

   Aubrey would prefer to be around people and we have to kindly remind her to not hover or overwhelm others! Haha.  Most of the time Aubrey is found carrying around her latest precious stone or piece of wood that she has turned into some pretend object.  The other day, she saw me through out a stone I found inside our house, and immediately she was reduced to tears cause that was her ‘most special one.’  Big news for Aubrey is that she has lost her two front teeth!  We told her the ‘tooth fairy’ (she knows the truth about the tooth fairy… sorry, we are realists) would buy her something at the airport on our return trip.

   Regan… well, she is the same ‘full of life,’ Regan!  Her knees are perpetually skinned because of her inability to move at any speed other than full speed.  It has been fun listening to some of her thoughts and/or reasoning about things, we can tell she is able to understand and process more than she could even 6 months ago.  Amazed at how fast she is growing up. 

Last blog entry I said I would do my best to explain the state of our hearts at some point too… so here it goes.

During my years as an art teacher I often taught and spoke to my students about contrast as an element of art.  Visually speaking, contrast is the difference between a light value and a dark value.  When referring to contrast with my students, a lot of times it was something added to a piece of artwork to really make the art come to life; something that visually intensified a project.  In the past 6 weeks in Haiti, contrast has been on my mind again, but for very different reasons.

In our first few weeks here I am sure our family was perceived as having a ‘deer in the headlights’ look about us.  The environment we were placed in had a lot of contrasts, everything from obvious things like language to not so obvious things like what you do at night if it is raining and you have to use the bathroom (our bathroom is about 20 steps from our house and has no roof!)  As I have stated before though, our family has been embraced and cared for well.

Now for a bit of a confession… Before we moved, Tim and I spent a lot of time talking about how this wasn’t in OUR plan for our life, and yet we were confident of what we put in front of us.  And God affirmed, in many ways, this call.   So the word surrender became a very real part of our life.  But until we lived here a couple weeks did we really understand what surrender meant.  In America, we said we were surrendering and yet deceived ourselves at the amount of control we still tried to hold

After being here now for about a month and a half, it is clearer to us that we have NO control of our life (we never really have, we just thought we did), it is not up to us to know what will happen from moment-to-moment. This fact breaks all language or geographical barriers.  All that is asked is obedience and trust.

Tim and I are often amazed and humbled by the team members God has placed around us as part of Mission Haiti.  They are an example of truly living by faith alone, not worrying about what the day has brought, or what tomorrow will bring.

I was emailing a friend the other night and describing to her about a couple events that had taken place that day.  I commented that if these things had happened in the first few weeks of us being here, our family would have had a tough time processing or dealing with these situations.  I understand 7 weeks is not that long to be living in this country, but we are so grateful for God’s gift of grace and mercy when it comes to us being able to see Him, even in the events that don’t always make sense.  I am not sure I am making sense right now!  I will wrap it up.

(As I am writing this our Director, Pam, walked by and I told her there is so much in my head that I could write but I don’t want to write 3 pages of stuff that is not written down well! I wish words were my gift!)

Almost daily, we find ourselves, in one way or another, saying thank you to God for His mighty presence amongst all the contrast right now in our life.  Just as in art, this contrast has brought to life things God has planned to reveal in a very specific way for us and for those He puts in front of us.  Keep praying our eyes see what He wants us to see, hear what He wants us to hear, and say only what will bring Him glory. 

Love to you all from the Mulders.