Planning

    I am a natural born planner. Sometimes this quality proves an advantage for me. And sometimes I get too caught up in the plans I make, that I don't stop to ask God what HIS plans are.
Since I am all too familiar with this quality of mine, when I began planning the details of my most recent Haiti trip, I prayed especially that God would direct the plans and I would simply obey them.

   If there is one thing that I learned throughout the trip and its entire process, it's that there is a tremendous amount of planning that goes into a trip to La Source, Haiti. Most of this is done by Lisa Adams. If I wasn't already amazed at all the work she puts into each mission trip, I certainly am now, since this time I was responsible for many of the things that she normally takes care of for each team trip to La Source. (Sometimes I'm convinced she is a super-woman.) Anyways, being the planner that I am, I was determined to handle as many of the details as I could on my own. And determined to think of every last thing that needed to be dealt with and prepared for before Sammy and I could depart. I had a list for EVERYthing. There were packing lists and grocery lists, supply lists, and funds lists. A list of worker's names and people we had to meet, things we needed to say and "to-dos" that needed to get done. I had a list of emergency phone numbers and instructions for how to get places and find certain things. I won't keep going. The funny thing was, that in the midst of all these lists, neither Sammy nor I had one list of agendas to get done once we got to La Source. We both felt instinctively that God was actually telling us not to have one. As I mentioned in my last blog, our lack of projects and agendas was, to some people, questionable to say the least. We got questions like, "What are you going to be doing while you're there?" and responses like "So.. what's the point?" For many of these questions my only response was that we felt God was telling us to go and that He wanted us to be without plans in order to be fully surrendered to Him.

On July 4th night, Sammy and I sat together in her room packing last minute items, sorting out money and going over all of our lists just one last time before we would head for Haiti the next morning. As Sammy was organizing our suitcases I was trying to get us checked into our flight online. When I pulled up our flight information I realized something was missing. We had paid for an insurance through the airline that would cover lost or stolen baggage, but also insured us medically if any emergencies were to occur. The insurance receipt was not there and when Sammy's step mom checked her credit card charges there was never a charge for where we had purchased the insurance. There was no record that we had ever ordered it. The insurance was still available if we wanted to purchase it then...but at a price of $285 (originally it had been only $35.) As we prayed that night we lifted the issue up to God. The next morning we arrived at the airport and told the man at the check in counter our dilemma. He didn't have any authority over matters like that but gave us a number we could call that he thought may be useful. Sammy's dad called and after a few minutes on the phone the airline somehow found the insurance we had purchased. I'm not sure how this happened being that we had no receipt of buying it and furthermore that we were never even charged for it. But I did know that God was taking care of us and it was an encouraging start to our journey. Something that Satan could have used to worry and discourage us, God used as affirmation that He was in control of every last detail of our trip. And so, after parting with our luggage, taking a quick picture, one last bathroom break and a hug goodbye to Sammy's dad...we were off.

 

  Although Sammy and I had no concrete plans, there is no doubt that ideas and expectations of how we thought things should go had seeped into our minds. The one and only thing that Sammy and I knew for sure we would be doing while in La Source was a bible study book recommended to us by Mrs. Lisa. It is called La Jwa Le Chemen (the road to joy.)

 
  On our first night in La Source Sammy and I told our translators that the following morning we wanted to have a meeting with all of the church leaders and pastors of the village. We didn't care what church or what denomination they were from, all the leaders were invited. So, the next morning we all met. Sammy and I introduced ourselves to everyone, took everyone's name and prayer requests and then explained the Bible study that we wanted to do with them for the next two weeks. Collectively we decided that every morning we would all meet in our camp from 9:00-11:00am. Sammy and I both had a similar idea in our heads that the Bible study would result in a crowd of 30-40 people and that we would end up going house to house praying for people and seeing miracles. I can certainly say that God worked miracles during our time there, but He did so in a way different from what Sammy and I expected. Instead of large crowd at our morning bible study, we had a faithful few of ten or eleven. As the bible study continued, Sammy and I realized that investing deeply in those faithful few was more prosperous than the large crowd that Sammy and I had expected. Over the next two weeks we would continuously be astounded at the way God took our expectations and formed them into His grander, miraculous plan. Of course all of this would have been impossible without the impeccable amount of prayer that Sammy and I were both being covered in and taking part in. I'll share more about this in my next post.
Thanks for reading!


The next four pieces to the series are:
Prayer
Power
Patience
Perseverance