Update from Haiti!

Friends! I am beyond excited to share this post with you, and it is such a pleasure to tell you that we have a guest blogger today!

As many of you know I was part of a team that visited Haiti on a missions trip in August 2014. I originally shared about this trip earlier in this blog (which you can read here), and I am so happy to be able to share an update!

The week I spent in Haiti was undoubtedly one of the best weeks of my life. It changed my heart and it changed my life. I met some of my very favorite friends in Haiti!! I remember returning from Haiti and praying relentlessly for a long-term missions opportunity to appear. Fast forward a year and a half and look where I am - in pursuit of my long-term missions opportunity. How cool is God!

So many special friendships formed during our week in Haiti, and I sit here smiling, still, over all of the laughter we shared during that week. The below excerpt is written by my dear friend Emily, whom I've had the pleasure of knowing since she first befriended me outside the airport in Port-au-Prince. Em - I am so thankful for your friendship, your encouragement, and your heart to love and serve others. I am so thankful for the love in your heart for God. I am so excited to watch you continue to walk the path God has made for you in Haiti, and I can't wait to one day sit on that rooftop and watch the sunrise with you again. Love you friend!

Enjoy everyone!! :-)

 

Hello Everyone!

It is truly an honor to be a guest blogger here at ‘Kathy Goes Global’. I’m always ready and willing to talk with anyone about Haiti, and am so grateful to Kathy for asking me to share my love for Haiti, and my experiences there, with all of you. 

Indeed, God is doing some amazing things in the nation of Haiti, and I am honored to be a part of it. Before we talk about what’s to come, let me give you a bit of backstory.

Haiti has been “on my heart” since the earthquake hit in 2010. Less than a week after the earthquake, I was standing in a prayer meeting and we were all praying for the people of Haiti, who were in the throes of the aftermath of that disaster. During the meeting, I sensed the Lord speaking to me about my having a significant role in Haiti at some point. I still remember the exact words and images that came up in my spirit. I didn’t have a sense that I needed to do anything immediately, so I just filed it away in my memory bank and got back to life as a housewife and mother.

In May of 2014, I was on the phone with a friend talking to her about Haiti. She proposed to me that perhaps NOW was the time to step into the calling the Lord had placed in my heart so many years before. I began to ask around about missions organizations that I could go with. Food for the Hungry, whom I have worked with for almost a decade in child sponsorship, recommended an organization called Adventures in Missions. I looked on their website and low and behold, they took trips to Haiti regularly.

After talking and praying with my husband, gaining his full support and the peace of the Holy Spirit, I decided to go to Haiti in August; which meant I had just 3 months to prepare for the trip. The very next day, an iron fell out of the top of my closet onto my foot, which put me on crutches and in Physical Therapy for the next 6 weeks. I took this as a sign that I was on the right track! I thought to myself, “If the Enemy doesn’t want me to go to Haiti badly enough to cause this very painful accident to happen, there must be something really special for me there!” You can sort out this theology on your own time, but for me, this was all the confirmation I needed.

As I mentioned, I decided to go to Haiti at the end of May 2014, and the trip was scheduled for the end of August. This meant I had just 3 short months to fundraise about 3K, get a passport, vaccines, tons of gear, and all the other particulars in order. I will do everyone a favor here by being honest. My assertion is not that this endeavor came without a lot of hard work, organization, and determination. I will say, however, that my efforts were bolstered by the grace of God. There was no striving, forcing, or freak out sessions; everything came together beautifully. By August, I was fully funded, and fully prepared for this new adventure.

I’ll fast forward now through a lot of beautiful details and just say, this trip was so much more than I could have ever expected, hoped, or imagined. God instilled vision, revelation, and calling in my life in ways I never knew to ask for. He also gave me a rapport and incredible favor with our host in Haiti, Pastor John. During that trip Pastor John and I “vision casted” about Haiti’s future and just really had a meeting of the minds about what was possible in Haiti, through God. I came back from that trip completely transformed, with my life on a new trajectory that has proved to be life changing.

 

By October of the same year, I was enrolled in the Ministry Leadership program at Northwest University and on my way toward Ordination. My husband and I also decided to become monthly partners with Pastor John to support his ministry, Success Ministries. I wish I could share with you all the pivotal moments, conversations, and special ways God revealed Himself and His plan to me during that season, but there are too many to list and simply not enough time! Another time perhaps.

Let’s keep fast forwarding now to Christmas Eve, 2015. This was another pivotal season for me. As I was nearing completion of the Ministry Leadership program, God was leading me more and more to make decisions that required complete trust in Him. You know the kind I’m talking about. These are the decisions that lead you away from things and people that you really want to run toward, and opportunities that look amazing “in the natural”; but you know the voice of the Lord well enough to know when He’s saying, “No”. This was a heart wrenching season for me. And right smack in the middle of it, my husband sat down beside his weepy mess of a wife and said, “You need to go to Haiti”. The tears stopped and suddenly the vision returned. I knew it was time to lift my head and get on with it. I made the necessary arrangements and again, everything fell into place by the grace of God. As a matter of fact, I was actually overfunded for my trip by several hundred dollars! Within a month, I was on a plane back to Haiti, only this time, I wasn’t going through an organization; I was going by myself.

The significance of this trip was that I didn’t go as part of a team. I was the team. I was setting out into the brave unknown where, though I wanted someone to, there was no one to lead me; except Jesus.

I will stop here to say this:

You, Dear Reader, may have a call on your life that you are not courageously stepping into. You are standing in the shadow of some other leader and your precious, glorious calling which God has placed on your life is collecting dust. Well, I have news for you. Other lives are attached to your obedience. There are certain people and places that God has ordained for YOU to impact and they are not getting impacted because of your indecision. In the beginning chapters of Exodus when God is calling Moses, Moses shrunk back in fear again and again. Did God decide to find someone else? No, He didn’t. He kept His eye on Moses. In His mercy, He brought Aaron alongside Moses to aid him in the beginning stages of his ministry, but never for a moment did Moses’ calling shift to anyone else. Don’t let your pride, your fear of man, or the well-crafted lies of the Enemy that you are believing keep you from living out the reason for which you were placed on this earth to begin with. One of my dear friends in Haiti who recently became a Christian often says, “I have no time to waste”, regarding pursuing the plan God has for him. I echo his sentiment.

That was for somebody :-)

Back to my story…

God was calling me to trust Him, to have confidence and be bold, and know that I didn’t need to lean on the arm of the flesh; I needed to lean on Jesus. And so, I did it. I took the leap and went to Haiti alone.

I am just a few weeks back from that trip and I am here to report that it was better than I ever could have imagined. God downloaded so many powerful insights about leadership and how my ministry is to be built. God also created a deeper bond between me and Pastor John, his family, and the beautiful people of Haiti. Additionally, because of the finances I was able to supply from the donations I received, we took some big steps in the construction of Pastor John’s school, which opens this September. All of this happened because I trusted God and took the step of faith He was calling me into. I have returned transformed, and full of vision for the future.

This June I will graduate from the Ministry Leadership Program at Northwest University, and I hope to be licensed and Ordained shortly after. From there I will get to work on forming a non-profit, through which I hope to do impactful work, both here in Seattle where I live, and in the nation of Haiti; all for the glory of God.

A team of incredible people is beginning to form who will accompany me on my next trip to Haiti, planned for this July 16^th-24^th. There is still room on the team FOR YOU, if you are interested in joining us. I have some detailed resource material in a Missions Packet I drew up that I would love to send to you, which will answer all of the questions you may have regarding this trip. So, if you are thinking that perhaps a trip to Haiti is something God has planned for you this summer, please let me know (egklever@hotmail.com).

I hope that this post has been an enjoyable and inspirational read for you. If I could leave one final thought with you, I would say this:

Don’t ever let your fear overshadow your faith.

For surely, with God all things are possible (Matt. 19:26).

Thanks again to my dear friend Kathy for making a little space for me and my story here on her blog!