September Newsletter

September 2010

Dear Friends and Family:

10 is said to be one of the perfect numbers and signifies the perfection of Divine order. Noah was the tenth generation from God. There are Ten Commandments, ten Lords a leaping, October is the tenth month and hopefully we all have 10 fingers and toes. This October will also mark 10 years that we have been working in Haiti.
In ways too many to count, it is both hard and easy to believe we lived in Haiti for two years and have worked there for 10. In preparing to write this “anniversary” letter, I got out my first travel journal. I saw names of places we traveled to, clinics we held, adventures we will never forget, hand prints of children I had traced as we sat waiting and waiting for our rides to come, supply lists of things needed, names of doctors, some crazy ideas that really worked, carrying a child, who should be walking, in a basket that now sits in my house, laughed at some of our made up songs, cried over people who have died and cherished the people who have become life long friends. I think about the boy who died on the boat with us on that first trip, the little girl who looked like a walking skeleton who came to clinic with her grandmother in funny, black high top tennis shoes that were meant for a boy and about they boy who stole my heart 10 years ago on that fourteen hour boat ride back from a place called Pestel, who is now a grown up and calls me “Mom” and my children call “brother”. He changed the way I see God, gave me the courage to believe in healing and showed me that the scripture about having the faith of a mustard seed that can move mountains is really true.
Yet, in all of these memories, it was the journal entry a month after I had been home from my trip that stopped me.
“I have come home a different person, I now understand men who have been at war coming home. No one from your everyday life comes with you to this place you visited or to the place you went spiritually. You think to yourself, ”what is wrong with everyone” and then it clicks, they can’t come with me and I have to give them grace. I will never be the same, and for good or for bad it feels strange to be in this body. There aren’t words to connect these two experiences and trying to put them together is culture shock that causes me to cry often. You really feel like you left part of your soul there and now something is missing. Is this a soul tie or burden for the groaning of those held captive? Somehow the saying, “the carpets been pulled out from under me” comes to me and I have to reevaluate a lot of my beliefs.”

In this place of the perfect number and divine order, we continue to believe that the Lord has ordered our steps and is calling us to work in the Nations. We are putting everything we have done down on paper creating a business model for a “purpose business” that we can put into action in other countries, we have applied for grants seeking the funding we need to move forward into the next 10 years. I (Sheila) will be in Haiti the first few weeks in October preparing to ship 5000 pounds of fabric, working with different ministries, while accompanied by an old friend from high school, who will be helping me put “the corporation” (his words) I have in my head on paper so we can present it to different resources. We have been approached by other organizations with the opportunity of expanding our work in Haiti, while taking what we have already done and putting it into action in Africa. It is a new season in our lives!

EMPOWER – REBUILD – RESTORE!
His Grace, Dan and Sheila Lynch