Our Open Hands

Sixth in a series

David Galloway

Muscle Memory 

The Singing Students

Deuteronomy 15:11 NIV 

It seems like everyone here in Port au Prince is poor and maybe so, compared to our standard of living back home. Some of the only exceptions might be the few who live in the hills. Based on even the best homes in the city or the vehicles that move over these rough and rocky roads, nobody in this town is wealthy, except in their hope and faith. This is my second mission trip to Haiti and both times we have crossed paths with at least two or three other mission teams. In some translations of our Deuteronomy verse, the term “open purse” appears. It is apropos on this island. Many have opened their purses for the people of Haiti. Christian Mission is big business in Haiti.

In the days of Deuteronomy the Israelites were in the early stages of grasping the full meaning of the law brought down from the mountain. They did not have the benefit of the Good News. Love had not yet come to town. The closed fist was more the order for the day rather than the open hand. The road to salvation was as uneven, bumpy and congested as intersections in the heart of Port au Prince. Thanks to the Prince of Peace and his teaching, we know today what love is and what it looks like. There are vans full of missionaries stuck in that traffic on the streets od Haiti. Love has come to town.

Benson at his school

So many scenes here joggle the senses, defy description. These reality adjustments fluctuate from horror to ecstasy. Saturday riding through market lined villages we saw a days dead cow laid and splayed across a table. The head was discolored so that we cannot find a color to describe it. At the other end of the spectrum were the voices of young adults coming from an upstairs classroom at the school our Benson teaches at singing in English “What a wonderful name it is.”

The difference between an open purse and an open hand is Love. The opposite of an open hand is the closed fist. Through the action of grabbing and clutching close, of the taking, keeping and fighting the hand is first to close into a fist. It is through the muscle memory of our human condition. The habit of the hand through the centuries is to close. My Orthopedic Nurse wife Patti tells me muscles in action are contracting. Muscles in relaxation are extending. It is through our open hands we extend the Love of Christ to our world. 

Father may we bring relaxing rest found in your Son to a contracted world. Amen 

Amen Brothers and Sisters

Bradford Bosworth

September, 2018

A Believer's Triumph

2nd in a series.

Brenda and Warren (In Memoriam) Taylor

Romans 8:31-39

I had just awakened from an in-flight nap. I had been slumbering in a window seat and my first conscious view was a spectacular Caribbean coastline sloping gently upward to a moderate mountain range. The expansive Caribbean Sea had a million ripples shimmering like a piece of turquoise jewelry sparkling under a hot tropical sun. I thought to myself we should be landing in Cancun shortly. What the….? Wait? Had I boarded onto the plane departing from the gate next to ours this morning? Then the plane began its decent. Suddenly I was brought back to full cognizance. I saw from above a sea of sheet metal lean-to shacks and trash lined streets. We were about to land in Port au Prince, Haiti. This scene of abject poverty and third world squalor is a far cry from a resort vacation destination.

What a joy it was when we stepped foot on Haitian soil. Our ground support team of local men greeted us with grateful recognition and when my eyes met our three-hundred-pound teddy bear security guard named Eric, it was as if no time had passed since we were here one year ago. It was apparent once again, no trouble or hardship nor danger or protest could separate us from the Love of Christ that binds this team to these our Haitian stewards. A man, Warren Taylor, whose favorite scripture guides this reflection, left us this past year. Through our shared faith, I am assured he is now face to face with that Love and Peace that surpasses our worldly understanding.

On many levels these Haitian in our clinics today face death all day long. In fact, today Patti and our medical team encountered an elderly lady who, from all of their discovery, was in a terminal condition which had gone untreated. The odds are she has a tumor in her abdomen which because of fluid build up appears as though she might be pregnant. She like all of her people are more than conquerors. In all the manifestations of God’s Love I have witnessed here, non was more than the witness of Patti, Dr. Jacobs and translator Jonathan laying hands on and praying over this woman child of God today.

Abba, may we always be mindful that there is nothing that can separate us from the eternal love that manifested in the glorious Love of your precious Son. 

Amen Brother Warren

Bradford Bosworth

September, 2018

Sisters, Drivers and Teddy Bears

(Final in a series) 

Angel Guides

Romans 12:2 (NIV)

John Fleming & John McCorkle

Our mission team has arrived back in the USA. For me it happened in earnest this morning waking up in my own bed. Starting with emotional goodbyes to the young men guides we have grown to love, to proceeding through the Haitian side of an endless maze of airport check ins and customs inspections, the journey road felt full of pot holes and speed bumps much like the streets of Port-au-Prince. Then a somewhat bumpy flight followed by the Atlanta side customs process and we were back on familiar soil with traffic lights, paved roads and, most of the time, a right of way. I thought of the atmospheric reentry that astronauts experience when they return to our planet. The pattern of the world we experienced in Haiti does not conform to the pattern of the world we live in here in Georgia.

Our mission to Haiti was about healing. Yes, it was medical in substance with the subscribing of fungal cream and blood pressure pills all of which provide corrective physical healing over time. This is the healing of our worlds whether Port-au-Prince or Atlanta. The true healing that took place on this trip was expressed in a young sister, another of Abba’s daughters, who could not hear or speak, teaching us to sign “I love you”. It was healing played out watching our adept driver learn to swim in the Caribbean and opening his eyes under salt water for the first time. For this writer, it was a big hug from a three-hundred-pound misty eyed teddy bear who would be a security guard.

This week was about the healing that is born of the Holy Spirit. It is a healing that cannot help but to travel both ways. It is the healing that transforms the giver into the recipient and the student into the teacher. It is the renewing of our minds. It is the testing and approving of God’s will for us. And we know for certain we are abiding in His good, pleasing and perfect will.  Se’ yon bil bagay!

Father thank you for always being present and ready to heal us when we conform to the pattern of the world. Amen

Bradford Bosworth

Have No Fear

(eighth in a series)

1 John 4:18-19

Patti Cox & Brad Bosworth

Yesterday for the first time in seven days our Haiti Mission Team took a day of rest and relaxation. We traveled to a distant beach where we lounged, frolicked in the salt water of the Caribbean Sea. Our Haitian guides, the translators, security guards and driver came with us. Gel, Achka, Jhon, Benson, Blanc, Eric and Patrice had the day off in a place they would not normally visit. Today our team ministered to them and thus ourselves and it was glorious.

There is a bond between the team and these Haitians. It is a connection through our Maker. God is Love and we speak to each other in the language of God without fear. On this day with no duties or responsibilities to distract us with doubt and petty fear, we come closer to perfection in love.

I have witnessed extreme conditions of poverty this week. Our medical mission team has attended to about three hundred patients who otherwise most certainly would not have had access to any kind of treatment. In many a religious circle, there is some belief that God punishes for the sins of humankind. But God is Love! Therefore, being perfect His love is infinitely certain. There is no doubt here that God loves his children who are, in total, humankind. Since Abba’s love is perfect, there is no fear for God does not punish His children.

Since arriving last week we have had two sizable gentlemen displaying badges and wearing “Security” splashed across their backs. They possess a solemn demeaner and holstered firearms. Their presence is to first give the team distance from danger and threat. In truth, they are here to help assuage any fears we have in this very foreign, but not hostile environment. At first they remained distant, in the shadows, almost out of sight. As they witnessed the Grace of God raining on their fellow Haitians, Patrice and Eric came gradually closer, smiling more and more until it was the perfect Love of Christ moving between them and us allaying all of our fears. We have loved each other because He first Loved us.

Father, we long for the certainty of Immanuel filling us with His perfect Love that drives out all our fears, Amen

Bradford Bosworth

Bougainvillea Beautiful

Tuesday, September 26, 2017                                                                                                                                                 (6^th in a series)

Better Bougainvillea

Isaiah 55:12-13

Ed Hogg

Over the past week I have asked myself, “If this is what Haiti looks like now, what must it have looked like after the 2010 earthquake?” The answer begging for acceptance is, “Not much different.” There is no apparent infrastructure in and around the huge steaming municipality that is Port-Au-Prince. Basic amenities like bathrooms, plumbing and consistent electrical wiring exist in a dark ages time warp. It is a city of razor wire and rebar, cinder block and barred windows. Around every corner I expect we will be entering a “nicer” neighborhood. That district never appears.  There is no apparent sanitation initiative. The only word that appears an appropriate descriptor is desolation.

Today’s scripture is speaking to me here this way: Instead of a prickly thornbush, look for the juniper tree, and instead of briars find myrtle.  Old Testament Profit Isaiah, ever the eternal optimist, is showing me how to make chicken salad out of, oh well, I better not go there. You get the drift. Seriously though, you and I will find what we look for. It has happened that way for our mission team here in Haiti. In spite of the oppressive heat and spartan surroundings where we set up our clinics, we experience almighty grace and beauty because of the presence of the Lord in the humble nature of these remarkable people.

When we have stopped to catch our breath and look around, in the midst of the ruts and rubble, there on top of a razor wire covered cinder block wall is a beautiful bougainvillea bush with vibrant red and white blooms! Surely, we know this allure is for the Lord’s renown.

Sunday, we worshipped with the locals. The experience was a piece of heaven on Earth. Then we set our clinic up on a second floor overlooking a small valley that held another large open-air house of worship. The land burst into song before us and we were reminded that His Love endures forever!

Abba, may we go out in joy and be led forth in the peace of your precious Son. Amen.

Bradford Bosworth

A Universal Language

(5^th in a series)

The Language of Love

John 15:1-7

Randy Pettit 

Even with a cursory glimpse or review of Haiti’s history one can glean that there has been and still is a continuous thread of corruption and greed in the upper echelons of the political power base. Slavery has been ever present on this tropical island since Columbus literally stumbled upon it in Christmas of 1492. Thusly he named the place he found “La Navidad” and then his settlers turned around and forced the native Taino people into slavery. Today almost 600 years later the Haitian people are still enslaved, now by poverty.

How do we apply today’s scripture to these people? To the untrained eye there is little or no fruit here. To eyes of the world the deforested infertile land here is not suitable for growing ragweed! I want to ask Abba, the vinedresser, “Why these people”? I find myself searching for branches that bear fruit. Now I am in the vineyard closer to the Vine. On the third day I saw four young men already clean because of the Word spoken to them. These members of the “priesthood of all believers” have been our interpreters. On a Saturday morning upon arrival at the Haiti Deaf Academy their role changed.

We saw them bear a glorious fully ripe and sweet fruit with the young children who, without words, spoke the universal language of Christ, a quiet language of Love. As all who were present joyfully remained in him and he in us, the young men, who at first thought they could do nothing, suddenly were able to do everything in service to these beautiful ones. It was a miracle, a beautiful thing. The teachers became the students as the youngsters gleefully taught us all about sign language. If the children could have spoken they might have said, “Se’ yon bil bagay!”

Father may we be ever mindful that none of us can bear fruit by ourselves. May we desire always to abide in your precious Son. Amen

Bradford Bosworth

Not Forgotten nor Forsaken.

Sunday, September 24, 2017 (fourth in a series)

Haiti Deaf Academy

Deuteronomy 31:6 and Hebrews 13-5

Joyce and Michael Newsom

I often subscribe to the belief that we, the American people, are the same as the Israelites, God’s chosen people. Our ancestral pilgrims settled in a promised land, a land flowing of milk and honey. Oh how evident it is that we have forgotten from whence we came. But, you know what? These Haitian people, they too are God’s chosen people. Maybe they have just not found their Moses yet nor crossed through their Red Sea. Do you want to know something? These people are strong and courageous!

A few days ago our team arrived here on the heels of four ferocious hurricanes that passed by this island also known as Hispaniola. It is as if God has said to these people, I will not forsake you, my children, you have enough on your hands now and I have some of my other children who need a wake-up call! I’m not sure if Joyce and Mike intended it? A link exists that ties these two pieces of scripture together across a millennium or more. Moses’ exhortation, “Be strong and courageous.” is repeated by his successor (Joshua 1:9). In Hebrews, the writer is reminding his audience - Jewish Christians- that the covenant of Moses, carried forward by Joshua, has been superseded by the new covenant of Christ Jesus. Our presence here is now about the Love of Christ.

Our mission team’s humbly joyful interpreter/guides are mere boys content with what they have. Gel, Achka, Benson and Jhon are the vines bearing fruit that brings daily the new covenant Love of Christ to the poor. The chosen people of Haiti know the Lord has said to them, “Never will I leave you.”

Yahweh, through all the storms of our lives may we remember that nothing can separate us from your Love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen

Bradford Bosworth

Tenderly Teachable

Saturday, September 23. 2017

(3rd in a series)

Psalms 25:4-5

Chuck Whiteside

One week ago, I was serving on a men’s Walk to Emmaus retreat and just as this weekend, that effort started in earnest on a Thursday evening. A dozen times I have made that Emmaus journey and it always happens. After about forty-eight hours or sometime Saturday afternoon or evening I reach acquiescence, lose the world’s ties that bind. A similar surrender is happening on this mission to Haiti. Initially my search for truth in the suffering here led me to label impoverished Haitians as victims and look for villains to blame. That type of thinking - akin to fantasy – resides either in the past or in the future. It is of the world, time bound. If I am absorbed in the time bound thinking of the world, then I most certainly will miss Truth in the circumstances here now.  The Truth in Port-au-Prince here and now is that the people are not stuck trying to find someone to blame for their living conditions. During the Delmas rush hour on Friday they were busy living their lives. Most, are certainly not even aware of an adjective, “third world” used elsewhere around the world to describe Haiti as a country.

Today’s scripture “Show me your ways Lord” reminds us to let go and let God. As we gain our measure of humility from serving these humble people, do we also receive teach ability, a most critical characteristic of a humble nature. We are all in our right mind when we are teachable.

My divine image of this day was the earnestness and purpose in all the mothers’ eyes guiding their nattily dressed little ones to school. My dream for them? That these women would have faith and hope all day long knowing the children will be guided in His Truth.

Abba, may we be so fortunate to receive one nugget, one morsel of wisdom from our experience today, so we might carry that message back to from whence we came. Amen

Bradford Bosworth

Humbled in Haiti

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Haiti

Matthew 20:25-28 & Philippians 2:5-8

Brenda and Warren Taylor

In preparing for this reflection, the (NKJV) phrase, “But Jesus called them to himself” (v25), struck me.  This calling is not the type that screams, “Hey y’all, get over here.” No, it is the Way of Christ, a drawing to, a charismatic attraction, the magnetism same as the humble carpenter walking along the sea of Galilee beckoning to a few fishermen, “Come follow me.” Paul describes it this way in his letter to the church at Philippi, “Who being in very nature God” (V6, NIV). When we are called this way, we stop what we are doing. We “drop our nets.”

Our team left today for Haiti on a medical mission. Being the first time for me, I can only go by what I have heard from those who have gone before and before me. Do we already have the same mindset as Christ? Well, for me, I believe it is a lifelong quest.  When I listen to how our servant team describes their experience of past Haiti mission trips, I can imagine they came by their “same mindset as Christ” or a glimpse of that same mindset as a byproduct of the willingness of their servant’s heart. Does our humility come before the act of service? More, I believe, it comes from the very humble nature of those served: God’s children who inhabit this devastatingly poor and destitute area; a people hungering for the breath of the Holy Spirit to whisk them away if not just for a few affectionate, attention filled moments.  Indeed, it is these moments that humble our servant team and allow us to adopt, if only for an instant, the same mindset of Christ.

By the way, today’s gospel scripture repeats in Mark 10:42-44, which gives this truth lesson in humility a double shot of importance.  We have it on good accord that Mark was basing this journal of Jesus’s teachings on Peter’s own eyewitness account.

Yahweh, soften our hearts today, opening the windows of our soul and let the Holy Spirit whisk in a bit of Lord Jesus’ humility. Amen

Bradford Bosworth