oh joyous day! hot summer sun! sweat sticky sweat!

just finished spending an hour handwashing my laundry. i was never meant to be born during a century without amenities such as a washer (line drying isn't all that bad). i actually opted to do mine after dinner, when the sun's not so hot, but i' still find my self dripping in sweat (to be assumed for the duration of my stay).

this morning at intercession, i couldn't shake this spiritual and physical fatigue i was under, and it was physically exhausting just to worship and pray. fortunately, through through tribulation, perseverance is produced, leading to character, and character, hope, and hope the love of God which does not disappoint (Romans 5:1-5). let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. (Hebrews 12:1-2). its not easy to cast it off, but we most press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward cal in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:14).

we had a great morning with the kids, mainly doing color recognition, sorting, and fine motor skills by making a haitian flag as a class, finger painting individual flags, and working on handwriting by writing St. Marc, Haiti or I live in St. Marc, Haiti (depending on kinder or pre-k). the kids have gotten so good at their phonics, and i'm really encouraged by the ability of Irving, Nohrry, and even Vardy in particular, who came a few weeks after i started, not knowing a word of english, nor any of the english letter pronunciations. those three in particular are able to decode words quite quickly, and Nohrry and Irving are able to read for meaning!

but the glory moment happened this afternoon after my one-on-one, when leah and i hitched a ride to SD and there i saw her: sitting in the cooler in the back, all in her green glory. mountain dew. i had a come-to-jesus moment and squealed in sheer excitement as i quickly grabbed 4 cans (3 for me, 1 to share!). i would have bought more, but cans of soda at more expensive than their twice-the-size glass bottle counterpart, running 35 gourdes, or about $1USD.

after grabbing a bag of yucca chips, some pringles, 2 cans of diet coke (stock up while its available!), pineapple, white/kidney/and pinto beans, and a candy bar my total ran me $18 USD, which is actually rather expensive. i felt like i was back in college, purchasing the most disdainful dinner available.

but i was quite satisfied :) now on to my mani/pedi with the Swiss FCM girls on their last night on outreach.

life is good. hot, but good.

when your here, you're family

only in Haiti would i start cooking a simple supper at 9:30 AM, simply because i know it’s going to be a disaster.

first obstacle: i try to dry the bread cubes in the oven for the bread pudding. i check them once, and stir them around a bit. check them twice and notice the moisture hasn’t really changed much. actually, the oven feels sort of cool.

we’re out of propane. it’s a weekend, and even if it wasn’t, the chances of getting gas the same-day: it’s like people in st. marc wanting orange juice hell asking for ice water.

so i run across to anne-ruth and amalia’s apartment, but no sign of them. so i run up to base and track down anne-ruth to see if she minds if i use her oven. no problem. so i go get the matches from my place, turn on her gas, strike the match and ...

wooosh! the flame reaches my mid-forearm, and takes my arm hairs with it. the sound of her grumbling oven doesn’t sound right, so we shut it down and joshua offers his oven next door.

finally, three ovens down, and i’ve got the bread pudding cooking an hour later.

can’t imagine what’s going to happen when i try to fry and bake the chicken parm, boil the spaghetti, bake the garlic bread, and cook the green beans....

***

ask and you shall receive.

i had wonderful help from amalia and anne-ruth prepping the meal, and it actually turned out pretty good, which is better than i expected, all things considered.

as we’re in the guys’ apartment cooking, the oil just wouldn’t get hot enough. after about 45 minutes of trying to let the oil heat as we breaded all the chicken breast, anne-ruth suggested we use her stove (which she claimed didn’t have the gas leak; only the oven). once we moved everything back over to her apartment (where i originally started with the prep), it took but just a moment to get the oil hot and amalia and i began churning out the chicken and running it back to the guys to put it in the oven (which apparently never got turned on!).

working on the sauce, i realized the tomato sauce i bought was not nearly enough for 13 hungry mouths, even once i added the diced tomatoes, onions, peppers and garlic. fortunately, i had an extra can of paste on reserve back home.

i got the pasta going as anne-ruth and i worked on the garlic toast, only to come back to find it had absorbed all the water and was overcooked. fortunately, anne came to the rescue and made an entire new batch of pasta. only in haiti could i screw up pasta!

going to check the chicken, the electric goes out. perfect timing, as usual.

and fortunately, the green beans were no trouble at all.

troubles aside, it was a great meal, with great friends here in haiti. everyone enjoyed it, but more importantly, it was so nice to just sit and eat a meal with people you can joke with, laugh with, and those that truly make you feel at home. here, we are each other's family. we are all in this together.

even though many offered, i insisted on doing dishes. there’s nothing like seeing the productive end of a good meal. washing the pots and plates, listening to mat kearney made me feel like i was standing in my kitchen in Nashville; a feeling that left me feeling more at home here than i have in a while, yet more reminiscent of my Nashville friends family.

anne ruth, amalia and i at our family dinner

rest for the weary

although i just showered an hour and a half ago, i find myself already sopping wet with my own perspiration. it feels every bit of the 107 heat index today. the electric is off, the air is still, and i just ate my first can of relief soup here in haiti (you can imagine why we don't do soup very often).

today was a good, yet almost exhausting end to a very tumultuous week. i'm blessed to be feeling a million times better. yesterday attributed to that exponentially.

i woke up yesterday in the most ridiculously, almost giddy mood. between the many voices just beyond my window, and the baby cries from just beyond the bathroom, 8:00 seemed like an appropriate time to get up on our very necessary day off from school (Pan-American Day; who has the answer?).

in my overzealous, glad-to-be-back mood, i decided productivity was the word for the morning! anne was up, too, so i offered to make us breakfast. i made us each an order of croissant french toast (modeled after my fave brunch item at Marche in East Nashville!) and we just talked and enjoyed the morning (which was such a blessing to each of us!). following breakfast, i decided to finally put away my laundry from while i was sick, and clean and sweep my room!

at 9:40, i was treated to a massage by a lovely lady from the Swiss FCM team (Praise JESUS!). it was such a relaxing and healing experience, and left me feeling even more in love with life! because physical touch is my love language, it spoke volumes to my massage-deprived soul!

thursdays are salad days on base now, so i definitely took advantage of the offer of fresh veggies! it was my first time back up on base for meal time in nearly a week, so it was SO bizarre to see SO many people again; i think my eyes had become acclimatized to small pockets of people in and around my apartment. but in my eagerness and excitement about life, i volunteered for after meal clean up!

after lunch, i spent my time journaling and in the word; both were SO good for my soul. (pardon the interruption, but i'm pretty sure i hear a cow. that is not something i think i've ever heard in haiti. interesting. carry on now.)

in congruence with thursdays, there was staff meeting, dinner, and ladies group; busy, but even those couldn't diffuse my stamina!

praise God for healing, and thank Him for who He is. this life is meant to be lived, fully. enjoyed, fully. but most importantly, He is to be worshipped. and i feel as if even on a thursday, my mood reflected my heart towards Him, and vice versa.

mission: recovery

welcome back to vertical, rhiannon. we've missed you.

the past week has been a blur, and i have to keep reminding myself that today, indeed, is not saturday. it is thursday. a thursday off of school for Pan-American Day (fill me in if you know why that is a holiday), but a thursday nonetheless.

i spent this last weekend pretty low-key. friday night after dinner, i came back to the apartment and hung out here for a while or up at the school making weekly phone calls. saturday i woke up in an excellent mood, had breakfast and conversation, went for a morning jog in the near-99 heat, spent some time poolside before lunch, and again after lunch. mid-afternoon, anne-ruth, joshua, and i went out to the market and to SD and Deli Mart to stock our fridges and get some stuff for a pot-luck breakfast on saturday. baked some brownies saturday night to share, and then decided to retire pretty early after feeling a wave of exhaustion from my first-unplanned, low-key weekend.

sometime around midnight or one, i woke up convulsing from feeling cold. one word likely never used in the history of describing Haiti would be cold. my entire body ached, and i barely managed to get out of the tangle of my mosquito net fast enough to put on sweatpants and a long sleeved shirt. it still wasn’t enough. i found my sheet and my blanket and came out to the couch with my pillow to curl up. i was miserable. it wasn’t long until diarrhea was added to my laundry-list of unpleasant symptoms (especially in a house with thin, manufactured walls, and no ceilings).

sometime in the morning, my lovely roommates came to my rescue and prayed with me, made sure i was hydrated and fed me an i.b. profein breakfast as i fell back to sleep for an hour or two. before i knew it, i was sweating and tearing layers off of me. i took, and actually enjoyed, a cold shower; and started to feel a little better. laying back down for a bit i realized how wrong i was.

at 9:30 leah came to borrow some ingredients from the breakfast i was so regretfully missing (if ya’ll know me or have ever been to visit in Nashville, you’ve been a recipient of the breakfast smorgasbord, and i don’t take entertaining and hospitality as a light matter!), i told her my symptoms and she said she would get one of the visiting nurses to check on me.

the details stop there as i completely lose concept of time and/or chronology. somewhere in the course of events, my fever climbed above 103, and wouldn’t come down even with the tylenol. just before what was supposed to be our teacher-parent meeting at school, they woke me and moved me in my stupor to shelley and freeman’s house on base, and into a room with electric (and a wall unit when the generator was on or we actually had power from EDH).

it was a violent pendulum from freezing cold to burning hot; and sweating regardless of my state. the headache i had was super intense, and never dulled even if the fever or other symptoms did. my entire body didn’t just ache, it was in pain. the diarrhea didn’t cease. as the visiting surgeon had been making house calls every few hours, he kept checking in on me, wondering if what we were dealing with was malaria.

one of the nights, walking back from the bathroom, i nearly collapsed as my vision got dark and i felt so faint. shelley came and helped me walk the rest of the way to the bedroom, noticing how my arms were even radiating heat.

on monday, they brought ben and i down to the hospital to be tested for malaria. the whole experience was SO unsettling. it was apparently immunization day, so the small laboratoire was packed with about 50 haitian mothers and their babies. the sight of a malaise blanc sitting on the ground in sheer pain made some of them scoff. but even through my ill-content and their laughter, i tried to pray blessings on each of the lives in that room.

when they called ben and i down, for some reason they couldn’t understand that both of us needed the test done and kept mixing up our prescriptions. right there in front of the crowd, without gloves on their hands, with blood splattered across the open vials on the table, they took our blood (from packaged syringes, rest-assured mom and daddy!) as they made loud, snide comments to each other about us. the whole thing was just so unsettling, and my body was in so much pain under this fever that i didn’t have the heart or strength to deal with it.

fortunately, God has the strength. and fortunately, He never gives us more than we can bear. sunday and monday, i slept a good deal of the time throughout the day and night; waking only when visitors came to check on me, give me meds or gatorade, or pray with me. God really gave me a fair amount of rest in my weakness and pain.

monday night, when i was sleeping however, i just could not be comfortable. i was tossing and turning, quite abnormally; like, feet to the head of the bed, head to the right then to left and then back at the top. it was odd. but one time when i awoke, i couldn’t move. i felt, like, this presence; and then God’s peace. it was as if God was speaking to my heart: “don’t worry. it’s my angels; they’re fighting for you. go back to bed.”

it is such a comforting thought, that our God fights for us. i know i’ve revisited this a few times since my Exodus emphasized entries, but it is still so surreal to me. 1 Peter 5:7 tells us to “give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you.” I can never get over how much our God really, truly LOVES us. that NOTHING we have done or could ever do would separate us from His love. a dear friend reminded me of His promises and and scriptures:

as the torch was being passed from Moses to Joshua, Joshua is reminded to “be strong and courageous! do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail nor abandon you.” (Deut. 31; and throughout Joshua). what comfort we find in a God that never leaves or forsakes us. never, ya’ll! we are not once without the Lord. even through the mud and the muck, the vomming or the diarrhea.

in Jeremiah, we are reassured that God’s plans for us don’t include harm (although that is a tactic of the enemy!), but they are to prosper us and to give us hope for the future. God tells us that when we pray, He listens. if we look, wholeheartedly, we will find Him. our God is a living, breathing, actively-involved God. and He’s got good news for us! even when we are weary, perhaps even especially when we’re weary.

“So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold-- though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.” 1 Peter 1:6-8

i’m still comforted by the peace He spoke to my heart, even in the midst of fever-fest ‘0h-10. but i was also reminded that the physical battle is only half of it. there is a much larger, largely unseen battle waging in the spiritual realm that is as real as anything i’ve felt or experienced during my sickness. and that the the one we need to truly be praying into. just knowing that God’s army of angels is protecting me is wonderful news, but for me to need the protection of angels; that’s a mighty fine storm a-brewin’.

the spiritual climate in haiti is darker and more real than i’ve ever experienced. i’ve seen spiritual warfare stateside, but usually in smaller pockets, and not such a grand-scale attack. the enemy has a tight reign on this country, and he’s none the eager to pass off control to a mighty God that expelled him from heaven.

even our base as a whole: we’ve reached our highest number of volunteers yet, and as our numbers increase, so does our reach and effectiveness. the enemy is trying his best with sickness spreading faster than a kindergarten classroom among healthy 20-somethings and grown adults. anything to cripple our efforts. i’m reminded of even the enemies attack to plant fear in my mind and try to kill me driving down to prayer walk in the park one friday morning. the enemy does not have mercy, nor a heart. he loves to see us weak.

but fortunately, God does too. “for in your weakness, His strength is perfected,” 2 Corinth 12:9. after coming out of the physical drain of the extent of my fever, i laid on my living room floor, with an ice pack over my eyes and what felt like a vice encasing my head, in tears Wednesday morning. so beat and worn from the enemy’s attacks. i was crying out to God, how bad would it be if i just gave up? if i gave into the enemy and just left and let him win? i can’t do this; i can’t be this miserable any longer. and fortunately, He heard my cries and stepped in, fought for me, and rescued me.

as the leader from the Denver team spoke these verses from 2 Corinthians over our staff in the prayer room last week, i quickly scribbled his words, as a reminder of God’s movement in our lives:

so often we think during our tough times and struggles, we think were the furthest from God; but it’s then that God says, ‘okay, you’re done; you’re spent. now i can finally show up.’ when we suck at life, God shows up and He’s the one that gets the glory. Cos we just ruin it all.

those words have really stuck with me; shining light on some of the struggles i had been facing in being here already, but carrying on to anything i may and will face in my remaining weeks here. i am so thankful that our God is a present, loving, healing and saving God.

this week, i've chased a chicken out of my classroom. i've led my students on a trip to Mexico and Egypt (tomorrow is Greece!). i've made pineapple salsa, guac, and homemade tortillas. i've learned that God is teaching me some very, very humbling things about myself. and also some very encouraging things, too. i've developed a terrible allergy or infection in my mouth, and i think its a reaction with pineapples. i got a wonderfully thoughtful package of new shirts, a skirt, a hat, and enough chocolate to last me... this week; which left me feeling blessed beyond belief. I'm finally at a place where i'm feeling caught up to where i left off in my faith, before the week of hell happened two weeks (almost three now) ago. i'm learning to live in the present. and that is not very easy when it is presently 100 degrees.

and now, i go to another YWAmeeting.

be where you are.

i'm not sure what it is about today; maybe the thought of a new month, although not technically part of the summer season, at least characteristically the first of which can be considered summer. maybe the heat has gotten to my head. or maybe the distant dreams of temperature-controlled environments are luring my thoughts to the past and future. days like today make me long for porch-front, iced pink lemonade shared on a swing in the cool of a cabin deep in the mountains of north carolina. or enjoyed with twenty-odd twenty-somethings, eating good barbeque pork sandwiches topped with cole slaw, potato salad, fudge brownies and sweet tea at the pig pickin’ after the spring game. or sipping frozen margaritas with friends al fresco at the neighborhood upscale mexican joint around sunset.

i’m not sure if it’s nostalgia, a longing for the way things once were; or is it a longing for the way my heart secretly desires them to be?

sitting in 100-degree heat, and 114 degree-humidity, dripping sweat in the outfit i wore yesterday (... and the day before) is hardly the glamourous life i thought i once desired. it’s not exactly the summer-life i imagined at 25. summers have always meant a lot to me; time home from college, trips home from nashville, fourth of july, international galavanting, a maggie valley reprieve with 14 of my closest friends. sweating in haiti, teaching for free, becoming besties with strangers from around the world-- not what i envisioned for a season of my life. but rest assured, this experience is one met somewhere along vgotsky’s zone of proximal development (take that, praxis; you thought i’d forget!). the frustration-level is just at where it needs to be so i’m being the most challenged; therefore, learning to my maximum potential and experiencing growth unimaginable.

i’ve done the pig-pickin’, i’ve had my fair share of taco’s in edgehill villa, and i’ll be headed back to maggie valley for a well-timed debrief with my closest crew all at once. but right now, i need to be here. in this moment; not living to re-experience the past, nor to rush the future. i’m living for the moment, in Haiti.

***

i was in the prayer room for the 24 hour burn in worship and prayer, laying down and half-asleep, i was singing with my eyes closed and someone touched my arm. i look up and its the leader from the denver dts, whom i have yet to even meet. he said “i feel like the Lord is trying to tell you to stop trying to please Him. instead, i get this vision of like, a coffee maker, but there’s no pot under it. he’s ready to fill you up, you just have to put your pot under Him.”

it was such a good word, and partially not even the words that were spoken. the fact that God is speaking about me. just that He loves me that much, and cares about me that much, He touched someone else, and said, “go, tell her this for Me.” that is how much God cares about us individually. i’m refreshed in knowing that He loves me so much, even when it takes everything i am to sing a simple praise song some days.

i am feeling worn and tired, but i will praise Him. I declare His goodness, His mercies, His victory. I declare His strength, His rest, His peace. I declare His healing, His comfort, His renewal.

***

a day or two later, again in the prayer room, we prayed for people that needed strength. meaning, phoebe prayed with me. as i had just been journaling thoughts and desires for the future, phoebe came and prayed over me, stating how she feels like i'm so consumed with what God has planned for me after this, that i am missing out on what is happening in the present. she couldn't have been more on point. she reminded me that the Lord was taking care of those details, and that even this adventure was part of His planning and preparation for my life. that i need not worry, because He knows the desires of my heart, and He will fulfill them. Praise God for the encouragement He gives to us through others, and the wisdom and discernment He gives to others for us.

busy little saturday

ya'll: it's hot. not just normal hot either. but the kind that you go to breathe, and you can't actually tell that the air is going into your lungs. but then you realize that fire feeling filling your diaphragm is actually the air. it's the kind of hot where everything just sticks to you: your clothes, the chair, either side of your knee-pit. it's too hot to sit, too hot to stand, too hot to lay in bed, too hot to go to the pool. i'm typing lesson plans as i journal, but even that is making me break a sweat. when its 8:30 in the morning and you're already sweating, you know your in for it. thankfully, edh is gracing us with electric this fine saturday; hopefully it runs through the day, because i don't know what i would do without my fan!

***

i want to wear white. and sit in a big floppy hat sipping ice water with lemon from the porch of the franklin mercantile. i don't even really care for their food that much. i just want to people watch. in comfortable weather, of course.

***

im really excited about the lesson plans i'm creating for our first full-on thematic unit for the next three weeks. it's going to be a work in progress, likely the whole time i'm doing the lessons. nothing is ever finalized here; its always changing and adapting: electric goes out, half the class doesn't show up, it rains, it's too hot. but for now: its a plan to travel the world and learn a little bit about different areas. very basic: weather, geography, the kids, the language, map, flag and food. hopefully there's enough time in the day for all of this! we are only doing one day of intro, which might need to be stretched to two to cover maps and travel before we actually start talking about far off countries. i hope the kids are primed to know that the world is a big big place!

we're spending monday making passports, plane tickets, and mapping the classroom. each day, we'll get a stamp in our passport for what country we've "been to", and at the end of each day, they will fill out an exit card "postcard" about their favorite thing they learned from that country. for the youngin's, it will be a pre-generated choice they circle; for the kinder's it will be a self-generated response!

i'm excited for the strides and excitement to be made over this! (hopefully!) we plan on going to: Ancient Egypt, Greece, China, US, France, Mexico, and Africa, before winding up in Haiti the day before Haiti Flag Day (a huge holiday here)!

***

the people that woke me up at 7:30 on a saturday by cutting 2 x 8's and drilling concrete outside my window just earned a little respect. they are playing jack johnson now. i'll take it.

***

fingers crossed. club indigo tomorrow? if not, next weekend for sure. i'm trying to convince for tomorrow, too.

***

dreaming of ice water with lemon.