Sharing Stories

John Sloan led a group on a week long mission trip to Lagosette, Haiti this summer and has written about his experience to share here.

The Tipping Point

I know this blog is read by people that have been influenced by the experience of being in Lagosette. We all share something that is difficult to verbalize with our friends and family that were waiting on us to return. They all wanted to see pictures and hear all the details of our journey to the poorest country in the western hemisphere where chaos was abundant, especially since the earthquake. They all imagine crime on every street corner, bodies laying everywhere and danger, danger, danger.
The real story of our trip is the bonds that were made in 7 days. I don’t think anyone besides those of us that went understand how we miss kids like McKenzie, Kay Kay, Steve, Jimmy, Ericson, Eveleen and of course Onz. Or how we got to know Beedel, Miscial, Nama, Mary Lou, Toto, Wilson, Weston and Joanne so much that our conversations all seem to migrate to our experiences with each of them. The truth is, the people of Lagosette are what we all really want to be, sincere, joyful, genuine people who aren’t caught up in the rat race so deep that our relationship with Christ becomes distant to the ignorant desires to acquire things.
If you’re like me you are asking yourself, what do I do now? I can’t continue to ignore those people. Emails and phone calls aren’t enough. We are the 10 talent man who has buried our talents most of our lives. My prayer is that God shows us an opportunity to serve him in Lagosette and that we don’t turn a blind eye when he does.
I heard a story recently about the conversation that must have taken place between Abraham and Sarah after God gave his command to sacrifice Isaac. Can you imagine the faith and confidence he had to actually explain to his wife that he was going to sacrifice their son? He would have to allow her to say goodbye to him. He had to tell her why he was going to go through with such an awful thing. There is no way he could just come back from the mountain after killing Isaac and then tell her what he had done. Imagine yourself telling your own spouse that you were taking this child you loved so dearly up a mountain to sacrifice him. Is it possible for us to believe our purpose in living is equally important and that it demands the same level of commitment in the way we live and gobble up an opportunity to be obedient to God’s will?
We have tasted the love of the Father while serving in Lagosette. We have shared sweat, laughter and tears with each other. Can we go on dwelling on childish desires for earthly pleasures? The Father has asked us to follow the example of his son. That can’t include worshipping the idols so abundant here in the U.S. Thank you Brian, Tammie, Jeff, Keely, Felicia, Jessica, Jordan and of course Savannah. Our week was wonderful because of the way it started with your joyful giving attitudes and then the way it continued one great day after another. Our nightly devo’s were awesome. Sherri, Logan, Jeff, Nikki, Kaylon and Tony all shared compelling thoughts. Rashon was a great Goliath, Sarah Gary can beat any of us in Soccer, Dylan and Jennifer survived a sinking kayak, Jeff and Nikki were awesome leading the VBS games, Beth, Jodie and Tina created such cute crafts, Kaylon was magical, Caleb loved singing and Olivia was so sweet playing duck duck goose with all those kids. And how good were those pancakes? We even added bananas to them 1 day.
I miss our team that went to Haiti July 4th. I miss the Interns and I really miss the Haitians. I really miss them because I of the uncertainty of seeing them again. I pray that the Mission continues and we can stay involved but if it doesn’t at least we experienced the Tipping Point that has changed us forever.