Connections

On every trip with every team we always celebrate the moments when connections happen.  For some teams it's a break through in communication by mutually sharing each others' language; for some it's been when the Haitian children grasp English for the first time and use it in a complete sentence; still another time is when the children show us who their siblings are because they see whole families coming to serve.  All these connections are major victories in building relationships with the children and people from the community.

Today I saw another one if those connections.  I'll back up because it actually started last night.  A handful of our students are a part of the Rocky high school music program and earlier this spring they performed a Haitian song in the Creole language.  It was fantastic.  This same group shared it with our translator Volcy (who is himself quite gifted musically) last night at dinner.  Volcy recorded it on his iPod.  This morning after being a bit frustrated by the challenge of teaching music on instruments, the team decided to teach the kids this song that they had learned and performed.  I think the children were first surprised that these Americans were singing in Creole and then had fun learning the song with the help of Volcy as he translated.

Then I saw a couple of other things happen.  The mamas who provide full time care for the kids came in and I noticed that they knew this song and were singing along.  Pastor Jeannot came in after the kids had been working on it and his jaw dropped when he noticed that it was our team members teaching and singing in Creole.  Finally, the older girls who are sometimes hard to get close to pulled a couple of the girls who were teaching over to their homes and began singing again.

I can't stress enough that these little breakthroughs are actually earth-shaking in the formation of relationships.  Our teams put a lot of time in preparation only to feel like things didn't go well or they didn't go as planned.  Yet by being flexible and open to God's work, moments like these come along and make all the work seem worth it.

Pray for the team as some members are struggling with not feeling well.  And especially tomorrow as we say goodbye to our Desire children.