Joy & Water

Susan and John Fleming & Chuck Whiteside

Haiti 2018 Reflections

John 16:33

Tebow's trials and sorrows.

It has been less than three days since returning from Haiti to the comforts of a familiar bed and a consistently hot shower. A week in a locale that defies most descriptors and where the people speak an unfamiliar language was truly another world to this man. As I learned on the first go-around last year, the return here is akin to scuba diving decompression or an atmospheric reentry by an astronaut. Although there were no time zones crossed, it seems I can feel jet lag. Maybe it is my age?

The first time this scripture from John’s Gospel spoke to me was in 2009, December 5th to be exact. I had been watching the SEC Football Championship and noticed John 16:33 on Tim Tebow’s eye black. I helped establish a Google record that evening. At the time, the scripture reference was the most trafficked Google search for one time ever. Tebow was strongly ridiculed for his open display of faith as well as crying on camera. His Florida team lost the game 33-13. Indeed, this night Tebow was having trials and sorrows (NLT). Maybe it is the when and how I first tasted of this Christ lesson, but it is one of the first I ever memorized.

"Our Boys"

On my first trip to Haiti, my tendency was to view our Haitian guides and translators in a different light, thinking they were better off than the rest of the population there. They could speak our language, were well educated and I just viewed them through a different lens, so to speak. This year our directors, Lori and Charles invited each to give our morning devotion each day. Subsequently they all shared with us their tribulations (NKJV). My lens changed, and I could see this group who the team refers to as “our boys” no different that the rest of their brethren in Haiti, and no different than suffering (HCSB) missionaries that travel to and from in this disparate land.

Joy

On our last and Sabbath day, we went to Church and worshipped together. We rested and played like boys and girls together and the trials and tribulations, the suffering and sorrows washed away. “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3). If just for the moment, we were all able to overcome the world.

Agape from our boys.

Yahweh, may we take heart in your Son’s teachings and find peace as if a life preserver in choppy waters. Amen

P.S. – Very early in Patti’s and my relationship, maybe second or third date she gave me an agape card. Inside it had the scripture John 16:33. There are no coincidences and the honeymoon is not over!

Amen Brother’s and Sisters

Bradford Bosworth 

October 2018

Glimpses of the Unseen

Seventh and finale in a series.

Patti & Brad Bosworth

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

2018 Sixes/St Andrew Haiti Missionaries

We Americans are impatience experts, anxiously anticipating impending failure that we let the present slip away and with-it God’s divine blessings for us go un recognized. This cannot be said of our Haitian brothers and sisters whom we attend to. They come early in the morning, line up, sit quietly, wait patiently for a moment of our time to build upon relationships begun years before. In addition, they receive a touch of physical comfort from educative advice, managed medication and vision enhancement. Their patience, their lives, their very presence defines perseverance of hope uncompromised by their circumstance.


Yes, their harsh environment and living conditions play havoc with their outer person, but if you join them on Sunday for worship you will find a vibrant Body of Christ rich in an abundance of serenity. They live admirably noble lives. These Haitians’ focus is on the presence of God in their life which no circumstance can shadow. What visitors see in Haiti, is a literal wasteland with refuse strewn along every street, buildings still crumbling away from an earthquake many years before. It is a material rebuilding that never becomes finished. But these people we see are whole and complete in their unbridled love of Jesus and the faith that accompanies that affection. In other words, they have not fixed their eyes on the seen but dwell instead on the eternal Love of the Father, or that which is unseen.

The unseen in Haiti this week has included the broken English of one of our local translators as he read from the Gospels and delivered to us a heartfelt devotion before we started the day. It has been a young deaf school girl who showed us how to sign- I- love -you- last year, running to greet us with hugs and sounds of joy. Our team was being renewed day by day like when we heard voices in exuberant song from school children echoing in corridors or floating through barren fields. These glimpses of His eternal grace are what keeps us coming back year after year.

Papa, as we raise our arms with hands opened wide, lift us up into your eternal glory just for today. Amen

Patti and Brad Bosworth 

October 2018