Haiti April 10, 2016

Report by Jola Casey

Well, our week is coming to a close, and for me it has flown. I am never ready to leave. Bro. Chuck Martindale and his staff with Truth Evangelistic Ministries have been such wonderful hosts. Pat Gary and all the interpreters have been invaluable. When a mission team of 10 people come together, all with different visions and dreams from God, it’s hard to imagine how it’s going to work. But God knows how it’s going to work.

Many times I have used an illustration about being in God’s will. Remember the scene in “Finding Nemo” when the sea turtle explains how to swim into the Australian current? You can paddle along outside of the current, watching everything and everyone going by, and do nothing. Or you can get in there and go with it. That’s how it is with God’s will. We can watch others listening to the Lord, ask Him how we can be useful in His will, and then jump in. Sometimes it can be a little frightening, unfamiliar. I think that part of the reason God calls us to foreign mission fields is because it is frightening and unfamiliar. We have to depend on Him. When we don’t know the language, the terrain, the culture, the food or the people, we must look to what is familiar–our Lord. In our lives, we keep our heads down and do it our way–God really wants us to look up and depend on Him.

Very little has gone as we planned this week. Everything has gone as God planned, which was so much better! We estimate that we had VBS for more than 500 children in different villages. Our first women’s gathering had over 50 women, and the second had almost 50. We were able to provide hygiene and health education for about 50 teenage girls, also. I cannot describe the feeling in my heart when I am wrapped in the arms of an 80-year-old Haitian woman, being kissed on the cheek and told that I am “zanmi” (good friend). The wrinkles on her face make up the road map of her life, and I want to travel with her. It is beyond human understanding the peace and solace I feel in this country. Straight from God.