The Awakening at Pincroix - Part 2

School's main assembly

When we arrived Thursday afternoon, the school was still in session so we walked over to see 170 students packed into, and around that one church building. The children were sitting mostly on chairs and benches, but not like you and I would sit on them. They were packed in so tight, that you couldn’t hardly have forced a ruler down between most of them. Two chairs would be set side by side and one person sat on the gap between the two to get more seating.

Or sometimes they put a slightly flattened piece of log between two chairs to gain even more space even as it comes at the expense of comfort. There were no desks or places to put their notepads on to write, just their laps, but they had to watch their elbows as everyone had to jostle to find room. And yet they were happy to be learning, and sang mightily with bright, shining eyes!  School is a little different there. They will start at about eight in the morning, and go until about one in the afternoon, at which time they will dismiss for the day. The reason for this, is that they bring no lunch to school, and it’s almost an hour’s walk back home for many of them.

The teachers are a precious group of people! They have taught school on donated time for almost three years without any pay, or compensation as the people were too poor to do so! Some of these teachers have even given of their own precious allotment of food to the students that were the hungriest as they couldn’t study for the ache in their bellies from lack of food. The love they show these children, goes far beyond the desire for them to learn! Let me introduce a few of these teachers to you and explain their character from what we observed over the weekend. 

Daliese 

Daliese (da-LEASE’) is a father of seven from next door to the church. He used to be involved in politics but after becoming a Christian, he recognized that he could no longer fulfill that role as it required a significant level of corruption to keep your head attached to your neck, and his conscience would not allow that. This man blessed me so much with his example of sacrificial giving! He gave up some of his precious garden space for a house to be built for Ewins to live among them, and as a “guest house” for those who come to help in the work. He is a tall man by Haitian standards, and both he and his wife would never win any awards for their beauty. But they have hearts of gold! They have opened up their already crowded home to another of the schoolteachers who heard of the work from the city and left her parents to come out and help with the building of the church. I will introduce you to her later. He had two of his daughters helping Daniella cook the food for us, and there were many times over the weekend that I saw him quietly working around the fringes to make sure that what was needed, was done as efficiently as possible. 

 

The part that made me almost cry was when we got up at 5 AM to get ready for church Sunday morning. A team of three were going to hike with me over an hour away to another church over the mountain, and we needed to eat breakfast early, so that we could get to the church by 7:30 am when their service was going to start. I walked out into the predawn darkness to talk to God and heard a noise from the small gate in the cactus fence just up the hill. There was Daliese carrying a 5 gallon jug of water that he had gone to get that morning from the river so that there would be water to flush the toilet. That toilet was added just before we came, because they know that their privies are tremendous places to pick up diseases and they wanted to keep us as safe from that as possible. And so, he arose in the pitch black of night, to walk two hours in the dark with no flashlight, to bring us water for the toilet. This soft spoken man, showed the love of Jesus in so many ways, that I still get a lump in my throat to think of how he loved so sacrificially! 

Molibell 

Molibell (molly-BELL’) is a young lady of 23 who had a comparatively comfortable life in the city with her parents. But when she heard about the work of Ewins and Daniella in the mountains, God moved in her heart and she asked if she could join the work. Ewins told her that there would probably be no financial support, but she chose to trust God, the same way he did, and she has served faithfully for over three years. She is a shorter, sweet faced young lady that used to be incredibly shy, but has grown so much in her ability to communicate confidently with people. She teaches the youngest group of children how to count to ten, and learn some of their basic letters and sounds before they move on first grade. Many times she will go without eating so that she has some food to give to the little people who are crying from hunger and unable to concentrate on the lessons. Her school room is simply a little hut beside the church that is barely tall enough for me to stand up in. It has no tin on the roof yet, as they don’t have funds enough for that yet, so they use several old tarps to keep the sun or rain off their heads as they sit on a few rocks they have there, or the ground if it not muddy. She has over 30 students on most days, but that number fluctuates depending on if the little people have their older brother or sister coming along to help them over the rough trail. She currently lives with Daliese and his family, though she plans to move into the new house with Ewins once it is finished. She has given so much of herself, without any hope of personal gain, and that example has put me to shame! Just before we left, Molibell returned with a jug on her head, cushioned by a little wound-up strip of cloth around the crown of her head. She had left immediately after church so that she could make the trip to the river and bring back enough water to flush the toilet a couple times if we needed it before leaving. I can’t describe the confusion of my heart as I ached for all that she felt she needed/wanted to do for us, and yet accept the love that she was offering through this selfless act of service! 

Abdias 

I also want you to meet Abdias(AB’-dess). He is a good-looking young man with the blackest skin you can imagine, and a soft, lower voice. I watched him lead the church service Sunday morning with quiet, humble grace, and none of the loud fanfare I heard from some of the other men. He introduced his fiancé to us on Saturday, and indicated that they are hoping to get married in the next year. Many young men have a hard time getting enough funds to get married and thus do not do so until they are into their thirties. And despite that, he has continued to teach in the school with only occasional donations for pay. They also are living pure, celibate lives as they wait for their wedding. This is rare in Haiti as many cannot afford a wedding, so they just live together in the girls father’s house until they can get enough money to get married and start on their own. They do not want to follow that tradition, but have committed to walking in integrity because they believe the Bible calls them to do so. I asked him what he plans to do after he gets married, and he doesn’t know. He loves the work there, but can’t see a way to provide for his new bride, if he stays, so he is very torn.

Sunday morning he was one of the men to lead me to the church over the mountain in Angoment (ONG’-go-mont) He told me that I am the first white person to ever walk that trail, and probably the first white person that most people along it had ever seen. That trail was an adventure. It was a narrow footpath that most places was ONLY single file. The hardest part of the trail was the rocks, and the steep mountain side. The rocks seem as bountiful as God’s grace! They are everywhere! Many parts of the trail you are literally stepping from rock to rock, but they are stuck up and out in many weird angles. The trial is also littered with thousands of rocks the size of a man’s fist, and about that shape. If you step on them wrong, you could twist an ankle very quickly. I walked behind Abdias on the way back and noticed that his Sunday shoes where simply plastic stamped out shoes designed to look like leather dress shoes. The heels had split and cracked open and he had used something to make holes in them and with some string, laced them back together. There was no support to them at all, and yet he walked confidently and quickly along and over terrain that I was very grateful for my hiking boots!

He couldn’t communicate much in English, but if he took his time to work out his response, and I talked slowly with easy words, we could have small conversations. I only found this out when he spoke up out of the blue, saying in his quiet voice, “I will not forget this morning”. I asked why and it took about 100 yards of trail before he responded “you walked this trail with me.” To have a white person “sacrifice” himself to walk their hard road with them, made an impression in his heart. My eyes blurred with tears as I compared the relatively easy sacrifice I made to be there, compared to the magnitude of what he had put on the alter. We stopped on the steepest part of the mountain to take a rest in the shade of the over cropping rocks, and I shared with them the dream I had experienced before coming down. The dream was that my father and I were being beheaded in our sleeping hut, and I awoke in the terror of death. And that night I had wondered if this was a warning of God not to go, or an attack of Satan to try and use fear to keep us from going. And so I prayed, asking God reveal His will by either blocking our trip, or giving us peace in going. His peace came over me, and I went right back to sleep and had no more dreams. Would it happen? I didn’t know, but I knew that God wanted me to go, and no matter what happened, it would be in God’s plan. And now here I was preaching the gospel, and yet leaving feeling that I was blessed far more than they! They had blessed me more than I felt I had blessed them! Abdias looked at me and said through the interpreter “Thank you for coming! God wanted you here and thank you for being faithful to His call.” This, from a man who knows how much sacrifice faithfulness truly requires, is humbling beyond words.

The church at Angoment, waving goodbye. 

-to be continued...