Elevate-Haiti: Tiny acts of obedience

Grace Church is a wonderful place to worship. Pastor Wesley has a passion for worship and praise that I have seen in few others. He is also a very gifted speaker that keeps the audience engaged and makes listening to him fun.

Grace Church holds its services in the feeding center at Grace Village. The room dimensions are approximately 40' x 80' and hold our 52 children that live at Grace comfortably during meal time. However during the Sunday service there are anywhere from 150-300 people attending church. It is close, hot, and filled with God's spirit.

Last week I was sitting about 5 rows from the front. As I was sitting there I became aware of the woman next to me. The reason I noticed them was because they smelled very bad, it was the smell that comes from bodies that have not been washed for many days. This told me that she must be very poor. So I began to discreetly observed them. She was very slim and had on a long green skirt and a bright yellow shirt. Sitting with her were three little girls approximate ages 6, 4, and 1 1/2yrs old, dressed in their Sunday best. Their little white dresses looked like confirmation dresses and one of the children had on soccer cleats. They were incredibly cute and it was obvious that their momma loved them and took care of them as best she could. Everything about them screamed absolute poverty and love.

During the hour worship, the smallest little girl began to cry and throw herself around while the mom tried to get her to relax and to fall asleep. She did eventually fall asleep, cradled in her momma's arms. As a mom, I know what a hungry cry sounds like and that is what she was, hungry.

I have a job during the service to help put the offering in a safe place and when I returned,my spot was taken. The service was full so I decided to go sit on the medical clinic stairs so I could listen in the shade. As I was sitting on the stairs, the same woman was being helped out of the church by the ushers. I watched as the woman held her sobbing middle child, and two of our ushers helped the other two kids follow their mom. They came and sat on the stairs near us and I felt a prompting, "Feed them."

Immediately I had a million excuses why this was a horrible idea, but I said to the woman, "Bonjou. Pou kisa pi ti ou ap crye?" (Good morning. Why is your child crying?) She patted her stomach and said that her daughter was hungry. That was all the confirmation I needed. I told her that I was going to give her some food but that it would only be this one time. I gave her 4 granola bars and then hung out with her as her little girls ate the snacks. After a little bit, the girls where finished and the momma moved them back into the feeding center to finish listening to the service.

After the service I went to Pastor Wesley, the woman and her children were still sitting in the feeding center, so I pointed to them and asked Pastor Wesley if we could do something to help her. And thats when I heard the rest of the story.

Pastor Wesley had been working with this family for the last month and had actually just recently asked us if we had clothes donations to share with this family. The family had come from the country; a father, the momma, and three little girls. The father was a voodoo priest and a rival priest was trying to kill him and his family. So they moved to Titanyen. They are living with another voodoo priest in Titanyen and yet somehow the man got connected with Pastor Wesley and they began to attend our church. The man accepted Christ recently and Pastor Wesley was mentoring him in what it means to be a believer.

Two weeks ago, the man mentioned that when he was sleeping he had spirits attacking him with faces in his dreams and lots of fear. Pastor Wesley told him that he was saved but he needed to use the power Jesus' name to cast out the demons so that he could be free. The man did this and the next morning, he told Pastor Wesley that it was different...he was free. Well, the wife has noticed the difference too. Pastor Wesley told me that was why she came to Grace Church today. She had decided to give her life to Christ as well. After she had gone back in, she had given her life to Christ.

1 Chorinthians 12:12

The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ.

This story isn't really about me. My part is tiny and relatively unimportant. All I had to do is to listen to God's prompting and give 4 granola bars so that the woman could go back inside and accept Christ. But this family is going to be saved for eternally because of many tiny acts of obedience by believers. Our God is SO big!! It is an honor to be able to play a role in someone's eternal destination.