You know the movie. It’s a classic-Dumb and Dumber.  In the movie, they use it as the last statement in a succession of other terrible statements…something to the effect of, “We live in a dump, we’ve got no food, we’ve got no jobs, and our birds heads are falling off!”  As if the first three aren’t bad, the absolute worse is that their pets heads are just falling off around them. And so Brandon and I have somehow picked that line up, and use it, in jest and sometimes quite seriously, when it seems like everything around us is going wrong.

We used it on Monday.

What lead up to the line? It started about a week ago. I got sick. I still am sick. I have maleria. I had every single symptom for four days straight. Then when I could actually leave my bed, I agreed to get in the truck to get tested and the result was negative. Apparently, in the case of maleria, you can get a false negative, if you don’t have a fever when you take the test. I did not, because I was only willing to leave my bed once I didn’t have a fever! So, we still don’t know what is wrong with me, but we’ve decided to treat for malaria anyway.

Then, Monday afternoon the generator was acting up. Brandon is Mr. handy dandy, so he fiddled around with it and surprisingly it still wouldn’t work.  He decided to let it sit off, overnight, and try again in the morning.

At the same time, he woke up Monday morning with an extreme case of what we loving call, ‘haitian sensation’. Thankfully, we don’t get it too often anymore these days, but it does come a knockin’ just to give us a good cleanse now and again. He had it bad. So bad he wasted no time taking the good drugs-the stuff that kills everything right away. And so that afternoon, he had to let all his to-do lists stack up  and hang out inside all day, by the toilet.

All this on top of the fact that we have twelve guests arriving at our house in tomorrow. Our last group just left only six days ago, and we are still fixing, straightening,  and cleaning up after that. (Which they were so wonderful though, and don’t worry fun photos to come later when I feel up to it!) You can imagine what prep work would need to be done if twelve people were coming to your house for a week in the states-but add on top of that fact that we do live here-where things are impossible to find, and harder to line up and organize.

So we sat in bed on Monday night, sweating without any electricity (because now we are so spoiled with a fan!) cause our generator was down, Brandon stroking my feverish head and me rubbing his arm. And would couldn’t help but laugh. I mean really. And as we listed all the ridiculous things that had gone wrong this last week, and the ways in which we are being spiritually and physically attacked, we ended with, “and our birds heads are falling off”.

The good news? We immediately sent out an email asking for prayer in all the above mentioned things and a few other things, and the amazing part was watching the Lord answer so quickly. I mean, you know that Bible story about Peter and how he ends up in jail? And all his friends get together to pray that he gets out, and then he does get out and comes knocking on their door and when they open it they don’t even believe it’s him!! Check it out in Acts 12, it’s a good one! And I am so guilty of that too… I’ll pray over something, ask for prayer over an issue, and sometimes God is so fast to respond I don’t almost miss it or don’t believe it!

The next day, Brandon went to check on the generator. He changed the fuel filter-which he had recently done-looked at a few plugs, one was kinda loose. He started it up and puuuur baby puuurrr. It has been purring since then.

I have felt much better. I am not completely better, but just the next day I made it an entire day with no need for Tylenol, and didn’t get symptoms back until the afternoon, and they weren’t nearly as strong as before. Today I had no fever at all. Still am weak and get headaches, but no spike in fever!

Finally, the peace of the Lord has surrounded us. And we know that only comes from the Lord. Because while we look at all the things that are not ready for this team coming in, we know the Lord has them in His hands. His timing is perfect. We have to trust in what He wants to accomplish while they are here, and rest in that.

My point in telling all this? I guess to encourage you. To remind you of the Lord’s goodness. This week has felt like some intense spiritual warfare is going on, and the Lord has been gracious to provide us small miracles along the way to show us He’s right here with us. That He will pull us out of this small storm, these tiny set backs, if we can continue to set our eyes on Him. The weaker we are, the stronger He is and the more His glory can shine through us.

There are lots of words floating around in the non profit world these days. Almost everyone would agree that they are good words, good ideas, good things to implement. I too like these words. Words like sustainability, community development, community engagement, local buy in, ‘don’t give someone a fish, teach them how to fish”. I mean, most people these days would agree with those ideas-the fact that helping needs to be done in a way in which the people we are helping are edified and lifted up. (Go ahead and read ‘When Helping Hurts’-it’s pretty good stuff) Yet we also need to learn how to help them help themselves, how to better teach them and give them tools on how to sustain things for the long run. But these are not simple issues. They sound great on paper but how is that implemented? There are many books and ideas out there on the topic, plenty of research is being done and ideas floating around. Even some people and organizations are implementing and trying it out.

But it’s a tough process.

I’m thankful we are working for LWI-an organization that has plans and goals to move into a ‘developmental’ role with the work they are doing. What does that mean? Well, at first glance you’d think water should be free. It’s a basic necessity in life-one that we from America take for granted-and millions of people in the world don’t have. Not only do many people lack it, but they even lack the means to ever getting it. They can’t find it, don’t have a way to get it, don’t have the tools to dig for it, buy it, or don’t have the money to clean it. So providing water for free doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.

But my opinion-ming you is just that, my opinion-is only based on what I have seen. And if people are used to being handed things for free, often and for most of their lives, a few things happen. One, they won’t do much for themselves simply because eventually someone will come along and do it for them. Two, they don’t have pride or take ownership for whatever it is, and that means things get run down and abused.These are generalities, and Haiti is an anomaly when it comes to these issues as well. I mean, take renting vs owning for example. Everyone knows you are harder on a rental (car, house, skis, bikes, apartment whatever) because, well, it’s not yours! There are always exceptions to the rule-we were still freaks about stains and keeping things clean in our apartments over the years because even if it’s a rental, it’s still your home. Yet we certainly push our little rental cars to their limit most of the time! But as a generality, there is a lack of pride, ownership, responsibility when something is not yours or is given to you.

Regarding water, unfortunately, it’s not much different. You might be thinking, ‘how do you charge people- who more than 80% live on less than $2 a day- for water?’. That seems ridiculous. Mean. Even wrong? But maybe the community buy in and engagement isn’t just centered around money. Local ‘buy in’ and engagement can mean many different things. And we have seem too many organization throw around those terms and not really follow through.

I am here to tell you, that Living Water is trying, one patient, small step at a time, to move into community development. But the word “develop” implies an aspect of time. You develop from an adolescent into an adult over years. You develop a relationship over weeks,months, years, decades.  And so, development work takes time.

But who likes to wait? Raise your hand if you are impatient…

Both hands up over here. (God’s working on that one in me, and I still need lots of work).  But back to what I was saying. As LWI is trying to move in this direction, the cool part is they are willing to learn from those we are already doing it. Organizations that are out there, specifically in Haiti-since it’s such a unique place-are doing good development work. Our new boss over Haiti and the Americas is pretty great, and he brings to the table not only lots of experience, but he is also Haitian, and he’s done development work for years in Haiti. In addition, he knows most of the ngo’s out there, and who we can learn a few things from. And of course Brandon I love this because why should we go around and make the same mistakes when we can learn from others? Oh don’t worry, we’ve made plenty of mistakes and will continue to, but at least this way we can avoid a few.

So off we went last week to Pignon. We met up with the other LWI staff living in Port au Prince, and met together as a group to discuss the plans and strategy for the next year, and also to learn from an organization who is doing community development centered around water. Brandon and I packed our bags-complete with mosquito netting, sleeping bag type things, our own pillows- because we have stayed in some freighting places here in Haiti. Only to be pleasantly shocked with their guest house/hotel, compete with hot water, constant power, and it was clean clean.

We had some long days of taking about the next year, 2012, and mapping out goals, strategies, ideas, plans, and hopes for the next year. Interspersed in that was visits to the communities that this other organization has been working in. And it was very interesting. They are doing some pretty cool things regarding community development and water. One of the biggest things I realized is these changes we are going to make will take time. It will be hard to keep things running (we’ve got a program to keep going!) knowing it’s not exactly how we want things yet. Or even halfway there. But we are changing. In the meantime we’ll continue to do work that is not development, yet, but we’re getting better. The projects we are doing this week are better than we did last month. And November will be even better.

We are learning from others, learning from our mistakes too. That doesn’t mean we’re not impatient. But all we can do in the wait is continue to seek the Lord, waiting for His timing in these communities, relationships and what He wants this next year to look like.  We can plan and plan all we want, but He is control, He is sovereign, and He will do what brings Him the most glory. And I for one am thankful! I am thankful the work we do here isn’t ours. Thankfully, He is in control, He will create the program He wants-how and when He wants it. And that is the beauty of working for an organization that loves the Lord. Not only is it our hope and desire to put Him first in all we do, to glorify and honor Him by working to give people clean water,  but it’s also the desire of the organization we work for-and that is pretty cool.

Okay, so all that talk about how we never get to go out isn’t entirely true. There are a few restaurants here, and some of them have some very tasty food. But the best part is finding people to enjoy it with too. We met another couple who live just a few miles down the road from us. And they are so sweet! We went out to dinner with them a little while back, and it was so nice to get to know them. They have a pretty amazing story of what God is doing and has done in their lives. They are currently running an orphanage, and have their work cut out for them! But they both have huge hearts and simply want to love on and care for these children and it’s a beautiful thing to see their commitment. Their names are Hunter and Jillian-and Brandon already set up a link to their blog on the right. If you like,  check out their blog and see what they are doing here in Haiti.