When It Rains It Pours

Family & Friends,

Day 97 of our Haiti Adventure!

The following comes from Cory's journal on the night of February 12...

Right now everyone in our family and on the visiting mission team are trying to get some rest after a very difficult week. I am sitting on the porch writing as the rain comes pouring down and washes away on the rocky soil below. In Haiti the well-known saying is literally true...when it rains it pours. I hardly remember any times of misting here. Normally we see torrential rain. This week our lives have been more like pouring rain than gentle drizzle.


When Pam came with the team she told everyone she was getting a sense from God that it was going to be a week filled with trials and spiritual warfare. Boy was she right. It will be difficult in this short post to even begin to describe all that has gone on, so I will just focus on the week from our family's perspective. I'm sure the members of the team and Pam would all have plenty to add of their own.

First of all, I mentioned in an earlier post that Mike and Pam and some of us staff in Haiti had a big discussion about the ministry we are doing and decided to scale back in some areas. That discussion has continued over the last couple of weeks and Mike and Pam have both felt overwhelmed by the work of Mission Haiti and the heavy load of stress it puts on their lives, especially considering the intensity of the past year. That stress filters down to the rest of us and affects everything that is going on here, so we have been thinking and praying a lot for our leaders and these issues.

A source of spiritual warfare, even before the team came down, has involved the Haitian staff who come from Ti-Riviere. I'm not talking about Patchouko, Gertrude, and Renard, who direct the on-site ministries and come from Port-au-Prince. They are all doing a great job. I'm talking about the various people who work for us on the grounds including those who cook, wash clothes, and carry water. Basically it comes down to the overarching issue we deal with at all times in this community. The vast majority of people here haven't developed emotionally beyond a middle-school level and so their lives and relationships are constantly marked by middle-schoolish drama. I won't go into too much detail, but the evil one has used this situation to cause a lot of stress around here lately and we've had to deal with people embezzling, not showing up for work, saying nasty things, etc...

Another similar problem has to do with the kids in the orphanage who have their own extensive issues with over-dramatizing everything. It would be impossibly exhausting to keep track on a daily basis of who-is-mad-at-who and who-is-in-trouble-for-what. Some of that has been spilling over into the lives of our kids and once in awhile they come into the house crying because of the drama. A big issue has to do with John, who is having a hard time adjusting to everything going on in his life (see post, “Dear John”) and unfortunately has been acting out lately in the form of just plain being mean to people.

Then Pam showed up with the team and the spiritual warfare intensified. One of our family rituals when she comes is to receive care packages, mail and other information. Earlier in the day I had checked email and found out that our house still isn't rented out in Sioux Falls, so we are paying a lot of money each month for an empty house. We had someone lined up to rent in March, but that fell through. After not feeling too good about that we got the news from Pam that our financial contributions in January were down pretty severely. Pam also brought some tax software for us, and I figured out that filing taxes will be very difficult as missionaries. So all of these financial issues added up to a big opportunity to give in to discouragement, which is one of Satan's best tools.

Then the sickness started as I was riding to Les Cayes on the back of a motorcycle. Chelo knew something was wrong because I wasn't cracking jokes the whole way like usual. Alexandra also got sick that day and throughout the remainder of the week the two of us wore a trail through the yard to the outhouse. We also made a severe dent in our toilet paper supply. Others in the orphanage and on the team also suffered from diarrhea, vomiting, extreme fatigue, soar throats, and other symptoms. Thankfully it isn't Cholera.

Thursday night was a climax of spiritual warfare, both good and bad. What I am about to share will require a separate post, but I will give you the overview for now. Gertrude had brought two friends from Port-au-Prince to spend time here praying for everyone, and they had asked to lead youth group that night. They started with some worship and a little bit of teaching from Scripture. Then they moved to a time of praying for people, and Starlan came up to be prayed for. I posted earlier about issues with demon possession.

We have been praying for Starlan for a long time but have never seen any dramatic results other than her whole family giving their lives to Christ. Then something else happened Thursday night. Finally the demon or demons reacted to the prayer and Starlan broke out into some pretty intense growling and writhing around on the floor. I still remember our kids watching from the porch nearby and the strange looks on their faces. The kids from the orphanage went running in all directions. The adults circled around her and kept praying and pretty soon she settled down. We still aren't sure if the demons are gone. The man from Port-au-Prince, who is more experienced in these matters, thinks they take over her body and then leave and then return again later.

The meeting continued and soon the leader asked if he could pray for Lynn to be healed and walk. We talked about it and agreed to try. Everyone gathered around her, sang worship songs, read several Scriptures about healing, and then we began to pray. We started the Youth Service at 6:30PM that night, with the prayers for Lynn beginning around 9PM, and when it was all said and done it was after 1AM when we quit. We were all pretty sure God was going to heal Lynn that night, especially after the craziness of the week, but it didn't happen. We'll write more about this later.

The next day felt better despite the lack of sleep and yet many other difficulties continued to pop up. Sometimes it was just strange things that don't seem so bad, but they all added up. For instance, our dog keeps waking up and whines to go outside every hour of the night, but when I take her out she does nothing. Then she keeps doing that hour after hour and it begins to wear on your nerves and your physical body. I'm not one to look for Satan under every rock, but there have been so many little troubles this week that all work together to make you believe that something is up in the spiritual realm.

So our attitude this week has been like the blue fish Dori from the movie “Finding Nemo” always said...just keep swimming, just keep swimming. In other words we are determined not to give up on this Haiti adventure no matter what happens. We don't want to leave here until God tells us to. We don't want to be pushed out by Satan. Of course I always like to make light of every situation, so the thought crossed my mind that Satan needs some work on his strategy. If he is working to keep our financial support down and working to kick us out of Haiti at the same time, the whole plan will backfire if we don't have enough money in our account to buy plane tickets home this summer! That is how my sick mind works...just wanted to let you know so you can sympathize with Lynn and the kids.

So the rain has been pouring, but God is bigger than all problems and He sustains us at all times. We are just more aware of that fact when life gets overwhelming. We asked for the adventure, and this week we got it!
 
Embrace your ADVENTURE for Jesus today, both the blessings and the trials!
- The Grimms