Time doesn't stand still whether we are in Haiti or the States. It's amazing that each second is clicking away a lifetime. No wonder Paul said to Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice! The passage of time should be measured by the joy we have in our hearts because it will go on eternally IF we remain faithful.
Thinking about Haiti and how we can improve upon the foundations we've laid. Also thinking about this summer and how we can impart the vision to friends here so that there is the necessary funds to continue.
I've been reading, Too Small to Ignore, an amazing book and it's changing my life. It was written by the CEO of Compassion. Children are of such great value that we must continue to reach out to them.
The one thing (to borrow a phrase from Glen Beck) it seems we've been unable to get others to see is the importance of educating children. We all know it's important but in our Western thinking, it's part of the cycle of life for a child. Not so in Haiti. Children can start out in school, go a year or two and then have to drop out due to their impoverished conditions...no money. One little boy (in another school) was absent because he had no shoes to wear.
My point is this: We seem not to take note that education is ministry and that in educating children in a third world country, can eventually change a nation. Gary and I have been at it for nine years now. We've watched El Shaddai change lives. We've watched as their eyes become opened to the Gospel (which is our main focus), to Science, Math, and English plus the other subjects they have.
I asked at the end of the school year to tell me one thing they learned this year that they didn't know before. The answers were interesting; planets, insects, electricity.... For children who would have been in a crowded school, with a teacher standing at the board having them repeat over and over a phrase until it was memorized, never explaining why it was true, what our kids said that day means they are expanding their understanding of life and the world around them. They are learning to think and reason. This is ministry!
El Shaddai kids won't grow up with the same narrow thinking that's prevailed generation after generation. They won't buy into the wild stories of voodoo if they understand how bodies function and how electricity works. Our kids are learning God is real and that He is powerful and that the devil is defeated. They are also learning that a man can't be turned into a donkey or a woman can't be pregnant for years. Light always dispels darkness, truth always dispels lies and education dispels ignorance. Children must learn to reason so they don't become victims of superstition.
When you give a child love, he has value. When you give him Christ, he learns he really has value and when you give him an education along with love and Christ, he knows he can conquer the world. Education will change a nation.
Look at the faces of our those God has entrusted to us. The future of the church, the future of Haiti. Amazing God, amazing children. Education! Changes a Nation. I'm convinced. Are you?
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