Changed

Mackenzie,
Tomorrow we will fly back to America.  As the time to leave approaches, I miss you more.  Maybe it's because I know I
will hug you tomorrow.  I can't wait to hold you and to share with you even more than these letters describe.

But tonight as I close out my time in Haiti, I am also thinking of this country, and more importantly, its people who I am leaving behind.

I came to bring something to the people of Haiti, to bring them Jesus' love and some financial resources to help meet their needs.  What I didn't expected is all that they have given me.

God has used them to reveal himself in a whole new way.  I have seen displays of unselfish like the little boy who ran into the church crying after we finished serving lunch to the children in Bigarade.  He begged for a plate a food so we fixed him one.  We told him to sit and eat, but he refused.  He said he must take the food home because his sick brother needed it more than him.  What Christ-like love!

Or like the young girl at the Children's Home who asked me if Paw was my father.  I was almost embarrassed to answer that yes, he was my family, because I knew she had no family of her own.  But she just smiled and said, "I have a father too, a Heavenly Father."  She has no Daddy's arms on earth, but she feels her Abba Father in a way that I never understood before coming here.

Last night we spent about two hours answering questions our interpreters had about the Bible.  I told you that one of our interpreters lost his baby girl three months ago.  Right as we were about to wrap up our time with them, he leaned forward and said, "I have one last question...Is it OK to ask God, why?  Why me?  Why my daughter?"

Tonight I find myself asking the same question. Why?  Why the hunger God?  Why the sickness Lord?  Why the suffering?

I don't know the answer, but I know the One who does.  And I know that He has not forsaken this country.  He is here in so many ways, in the unselfish gestures of sacrificial love, in the fullness of knowing that God is enough, in the joy that comes only from salvation.

I am coming back to America tomorrow, but I am bringing a little bit of Haiti with me.  God has used this country to change my heart, and I pray that I will never be the same again.

Anxious to hold you and share my heart with you,
Momma