I Need Words

Mislene, one of the kids I help with homework in the afternoon.

Kervenson! It was a treat to walk him home from school.

Magdala and Kervenson. The only person she wanted helping her was Kervenson. She allowed me to help by getting her more water. That girl knows how to wash some clothes.

On some Friday nights, I make popcorn for the children at the orphanage for movie night. Making popcorn was never so much fun. 

My eighth grade physical science taking a test. The rare moment when they're all quiet and still. ;)

Magdala, JJ, and Herode, who I help with homework in the afternoon. I found the best way to motivate them to do their homework for me was to bribe them with juice or sweet tea. :) And they really like drinking it with a spoon  for some reason. :)

Well, I finally siked myself up enough to write a new blog post! Ha. Ha. Only two months late. I wouldn't say it'll be worth the wait, but I'm not really much of a writer and I've found I'm really not much of a blogger either. Haha. So here's my best attempt at recapping the last two months of my life in Haiti and my return home after 5 months there. 
So, I pride myself sometimes on being pretty open and blunt. Honestly, the last two months have been a roller coaster for me. Which leads me to the title of this post. It comes from a song by the David  Crowder Band called, "I Need Words". The lyrics go like this:

"I need words as wide as sky.

I need language large as this longing inside.

I need a voice bigger than mine.

I need a song to sing to you that I've yet to find. 

And I need you and I need you to be here now. To hear me now."

I found myself relating to this song in a big way the last few weeks before I went home for a 2 week break. It was quite literally the prayer I needed. Homesickness, along with every emotion known to man had slowly crept in on me at some point. Fear, anger, loneliness, sadness, bitterness, you name it, I felt it at one point. I never imagined when I left the United States in June that life would hit me so hard here. And honestly, I cannot exactly place my finger on what exactly it is that has me feeling this way when I am getting to minister and serve in exactly the place I have wanted to for the last year. But I've been reminded that God's grace abounds in deepest waters. (Excuse me for stealing that line from "Oceans"). 

On Saturdays, the soccer club has training at a nearby athletic field. I went with them one day and watched. I still know basically nothing about soccer. :)

Amongst the bad days that made me cry and just wish to come home, I would be reminded again of why I was brought to Haiti and given doses of love and happiness from the people around me. Whether it was a note telling me goodbye before I left, messages from students on days when I was sick, acts of kindness from my fellow family of missionaries or smiles and love from the little children I tutor and work with everyday, God's grace finds me...everywhere!

I returned to Haiti about a week ago and have easily returned to my life here. Teaching, helping with homework, loving on precious kids. :) Things here are always pretty busy, which can be helpful.  I thank God that I was able to return and that I am also blessed to have a home in the United States to return to, if that is His will. My visit back home to the states was short, but wonderful! I was reminded that God has blessed me with two great places to be. An American home and a Haiti home. I've found that if I'm at one home, I will always miss the other. But how blessed am I to have two places so worth missing. It's been so long since I blogged, I know I'm leaving out stuff like a trip to the store on a tap tap that quickly turned into having to turn back because of a protest and tear gas, being in the back of our blue and white truck and quickly having to exit because of being squished against a wall by a dump truck, But that's just life in Haiti. No biggie, stuff like that happens all the time, right? :) I do want to mention that apparently I broke one of the toes on my right foot,...I found out a week later. However, after visiting an orphanage for children with special needs and seeing the kids there and the struggles they have to deal with....my toe that I could still walk on was not that big of a deal. God is just consistently using every day life to remind me how blessed I am. I could never ever say it enough.
So anyways, please pray for myself, Christian Light School, and all of the people associated with this ministry. At the end of the day, we can do nothing without the grace, love, and guidance of our Heavenly Father. 

Ashleigh

They love their "juice".

The many faces of Herode while playing the air guitar. :)

The sweet 5th and 6th grade classes at Ashford Academy I was privileged to share with while home.

I Only Have Two Hands...

I only have two hands. This though ran theoughmy mind two weeks ago when i was visiting an orphanage in Montrouis. My friend Tammy and I were here for a quick weekend trip before the start of school and my friend, Pierre, needed to take care of some business at the orphanage. The children almost immediately surrounded me wanting to hold my hand, touch me, or even smell me! My thought when looking into their eyes and seeing their eager smiles was, " Ugh, why do I only have two hands?!" I wish I had one for all of them. That's a question I do not know the answer to. I guess what I learned from that moment, simply, was to make sure your hands are busy being Jesus all the time no matter what! Just when I think I've had just about every experience and won't have what I call another "God moment", He surprises me yet again. I should really be used to this by now, right? What can I say though, I'm stubborn.

Well, today marks three months in Haiti for me and the end of the second week of school. I already come to love my students, although, adjusting to being a teacher in Haiti versus America, has NOT been easy. Here are some differences I have noted in the last two weeks in teaching and preparing to teach:

1) I float from classroom to classroom. 4 different grades, 4 different rooms. This is actually not that bad considering my Thirty One bags I decided I needed to bring. Thank you Lindsey! (We will see if you actually read my blog)

2) Breakfast and lunch are both serves in the classrooms. Here's he thing, there is no consistent times for when the meals come. So, I never know when a tray of 12 or more plates will appear in my doorway. :) Nutrition is an important part of our school though, so we just go with the flow. Our cooks are amazing. Enough said. They turn out over 600 meals per day. 

3) Electricity in Haiti is never guaranteed. Sometimes we have it sometimes we don't. This makes this first world teacher a little stresses when she was depending on copying or printing a particular worksheet in class. The chalkboard and I have become friends though, even though I secretly despise it. 

4) Some things are hard to come by. Just last night, I was preparing to teach temperature conversions, density, volume, etc. to my two physical science classes. I began going over the formulas and it hit me that we were going to need calculators to do this! We don't have enough calculators for every student and you cannot expect them to go out and purchase one. So what am I doing??? Skipping temperature conversions all together and focusing on density and volume with numbers that divide easily. I tell my students this every day here and in America, I am not a math teacher! If I cannot do the math without a calculator, I'm not going to make them do it either. Ugh! Did I mention I hate math? 

5) in Haiti, teachers are referred to by their first name. Therefore, I am Ms. Ashleigh. Or I'm also called just Ashleigh to some (very few), Ms. Ash (a lot), and a couple who really want to try and annoy me (it doesn't work anymore) call me Ms. Kruse, just to be different. But hey, it doesn't phase me because to my students back home that's who I am. Ms. Kruse. :)

I'm writing this on Friday because Friday is the best day ever for a teacher! It has been awhile since mu last blog post and with some of my Facebook posts, I was afraid people might be a tad worried about me. Well yes. I have been stressed as of the last two weeks. Yes, I have been homesick and wanted to be on one of the planes I see taking off since we are so close to the airport. Yes, I have felt like teaching here might be too much to handle. But really it's not. Teaching in the States I believe has prepared me well for teaching here. After all, kids are kids. Haitian students and not that different from American students when it comes to teaching. 

I am enjoying teaching them and getting to know them. They are exceptional and I know I will be a better person when I leave here because of them. Of that, I am certain. 

Ashleigh

I Can't Think of a Title for this Post!

Wilna. She's sweet, but sassy....like me. 

Well I have been on the island of Hispaniola for 9 weeks tomorrow. I just recently got back from a week long mission trip to the Dominican Republic. Okay, here's a geography lesson for you. In case you didn't know, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island in the Caribbean known as Hispaniola. This is where Christopher Columbus first landed back in the day. Haiti occupies the western third of the island and the DR  the eastern two-thirds. The DR is slightly special to me because it was the first place I ever visited outside the US and my first mission trip. I always get to work with the best people when I am over there. But before I talk about that, I will wrap up Haiti since I last wrote, if I can remember back that far...it's been like 3 weeks.

J.J.'s selfie. :)

Summer school wrapped up on July 25th and we all celebrated. :) Teachers and kids were worn out. But overall, I did enjoy teaching my class and hope they improved their English reading and writing skills. 

Testing substances for pH. 

Looking at various organisms and samples under the microscopes. Most of them had never used a microscope before. They were trying to look at everything from their own fingers to grains of rice from their plate. 

Classifying fingerprints. The picture on the bottom left is them scrubbing their fingers on the sidewalk to get all of the ink off. My American students would never have thought to do that. lol :)

The day after summer school, David, April, and Richard left for the DR. We left a day early and were supposed to go on a nice bus that would take us all the way to Santo Domingo (capital of the DR). Well, it turns out you really need to buy your tickets the day before because by the time we got there, they were sold out. :( Soooo, Edmond was nice enough to drive us over to Jimani, just over the border so we could catch what we call the "goat bus". Now, I road the goat bus last summer and it was surprisingly

nicer than I expected...air conditioned, but super crowded. So I was totally okay riding this bus. So we get there and I get on the bus toward the front because that's closest to the door. Immediately, before we even leave, the guy in front of me starts passing around a bottle of rum. And all I'm thinking is, please don't give any to the driver!!! Well he didn't, but this rum feat lasted throughout the whole trip. The man in front of me was passing it between himself and three other people, one of whom was the conductor, who stood at the door and collected the money and made sure everyone was back on the bus when we stopped, etc. The thing about the goat bus is that it gets stopped a lot by what I assume is like border patrol, to make sure everyone on board that is not Dominican has a passport. However, I find out later that there were some people in the back and probably the front who didn't have passports and the conductor was paying them off every time we stopped. Yeah and he was hitting that rum and I didn't see this, but my David, Richard, and April could see all of this going on from the back of the bus and confirmed that he was indeed lit. By the time we got to Santo Domingo, just about everybody that hadn't been drinking was ready to throw him off the bus! And despite what David Gunter will tell you, this Baptist wasn't offered any rum. Although, it probably would have made the trip easier. Yes. I just said that. It was the worst bus ride ever. But we got there all in one piece with all of our bags. 

So I am going to summarize the whole trip by day by day and here we go... 

Myself, David, Richard, and April with Rodney and Sharon Coleman.

Sunday, Day 1

We were privileged to get to see and have dinner with two IMB missionaries to the Dominican Republic named Rodney and Sharon Coleman. They have been in the DR for 15 years and were such a joy to be around. We thoroughly enjoyed sharing with them about the work we are involved with at Christian Light. Later when we met up with the rest of the team, we ate at McDonalds (I just had to put that in, I was super excited, a Big Mac never tasted so good :)) and began our journey up the mountain to Jarabacoa. This is where the Vida Joven (Young Life) camp is located. We spent the night there and did a medical clinic and VBS in the outskirts of Jarabacoa. Young Life is a youth camp ministry located in the DR and many of our translators are deeply involved in the camp. The camp truly breathtaking, but more important than that are the lives that are forever changed there because of Christ. The missions teams I have been a part of to the DR have helped sponsor teens to attend this camp. Please pray for this awesome ministry that God is using to touch the lives of Dominican teens. 

Young Life camp in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic

Monday, Day 2

Our first medical clinic was Monday and it was my favorite type: rural. It was held in a church building, but it wouldn't look like a church to most people. I love medical clinics because you get to come into contact with so many people in a shirt amount of time and meet so many physical needs, before meeting the spiritual ones. This is exactly what Jesus did! Bibles were passed out, the Gospel was presented, and people were prayed for, after seeing the doctor and the pharmacist. 

When doing medical clinics, I am put in the pharmacy and I love it! 

A few shots of our first medical clinic in Jarabacoa. 

Random shot of our bus driver in the DR, Mello. As far as drivers go, he is second only to our very own Edmond Auguste at CLS.

Tuesday, Day 3

This was the only day this week that we did not do a medical clinic. We moved to San Cristobal which is about twenty to thirty minutes outside of Santo Domingo. The majority of our work for the rest of the week was centered here in this city working with Pastor Salvador and his lovely wife Juana. 

Pastor Salvador and his wife Juana

On this day, we held VBS in a building that is being used as a school for many local children. There were probably 50ish kids and it was rowdy on this day, but good! They learned about Jonah and the whale. Our evangelism visitation teams started on this morning as well. VBS is also something I enjoy sing because ou get to touch the lives of the children and let them know there is someone who deey cares about them. Seeds are planted during a VBS that God can nurture into a beautiful new creation. 

VBS in San Cristobal. It was Jonah and the Whale story day!

Random shot: In the Dominican Republic, the popular sport is baseball. In Haiti, it is soccer. In both countries, you see kids playing their sport in the streets, sometimes barefoot and without the proper equipment like a legit ball or bat.

Wednesday, Day Four

Back in San Cristobal we hosted a medical clinic in a very nice school complex. It was probably the best medical clinic because the facility was perfect to see as many patients as possible. It was a great setup! In this day we saw roughly 330 patients. And thy were all prayed for and told about Jesus. Amazing to think the seeds that were planted. There were also home evangelism visits and VBS going simultaneously as well, albeit in different locations though. 

Second medical clinic in San Cristobal at a very nice school building. Pictured on the bottom right is John Wayne adn Morgan holding up the registration cards of all the patients we saw...all 330ish of them!

Thursday, Day Five

I'm literally sitting here counting up the medical clinics and trying to figure out where we were on this day! Luckily I remembered....finally. Our third medical clinic was at Pastor Salvador's church. The patients were registered and assessed or "triaged" where there temperatures and blood pressures are taken in the sanctuary part and in the room behind the sanctuary, is where the doctors and the pharmacy was. It was our tightest squeeze so far. But it worked out well and saw many patients, though not as many as the day before. But it was a blessing to meet the needs of the people directly surrounding the church. We also went to a beach somewhere near San Cristobal for sunset....it was beautiful, but not as those in Haiti. Hey, I'm semi biased towards that side of the island. I was so tired, this is what I thought of the beach:

Third medical clinic held at Pastor Salvador's church, pictured from the outside on the top right. On the bottom left, you can see a woman being fitted for reading glasses. They use John 3:16 to test to see how well the glasses prescription fits the patient.

Our team picture at the beach near San Cristobal. This is an awesome group of people right here. 

Friday, Day Six

Again, I'm racking my brain trying to figure out where we were that day! I got it, today we were across the highway in a community center type of building. This was the first clinic where everything was all in one big room. As usual, things ran smoothly despite any attempts by the enemy to disrupt our little clinic! 

The people I was privileged to work with in the pharmacy pictured on the top left. On the top right, even the lizard showed up for the medical clinic. In Haiti and the DR, lizards and geckos are everywhere! Pictured on the bottom, a view that shows the simultaneous parts of the medical clinic going on all at once in the same room.

We even had a little bit of what I call tropical weather during it which cooked things down a lot, but like most good things it didn't last. But we were thanking Jesus while it did! :) That afternoon, I got to go on home visits with the pro, John Gunter and got to share my testimony with several families. Most of whom said they were already Christians. We still prayed for them and have them medicine for Chikungunya pains and have out baby clothes to several mothers and one mom-to-be. 

John blessing a soon-to-be mom with some sweet gifts for her baby. 

The ladies of Pastor Salvador's church dishing it out at the Fundraiser Dinner.

That evening, we attended a fundraiser dinner to help the youth of Pastor Salvador's church raise money for camp. It was soooo delicious and a great way to support the youth in their endeavor to attend camp and grow closer to Christ. 

Saturday, Day Seven

Today, we went to the "Mercado" downtown or the market where you can buy souvenirs and things like that. It is quite an experience going there because every vendor tries their hardest to get you to come into their booth and look at their merchandise....and you can get easily lost in there too. Yes, I sort of did for a few minutes. We also visited the home of Diego Columbus, son of Christopher Columbus. More importantly, this afternoon saw us hosting the fifth and final medical clinic in a community of Santo Domingo known as Pantoja. There was a nice couple from a local church that we have worked with in the past who lent us the use of their restaurant for the clinic. It rained during this clinic and I just had to soak up that goodness because we seem to rarely get rain whenever I'm in Haiti. With the patients we saw at this last clinic, it brought our total patient number for the week to over 900 and pretty much all of them were given a bible and prayed for. God used us to touch many may lives this past week in the Dominican Republic. Though it was exhausting, I feel glad that God was able to use me there in whatever way he saw fit and that he will continue to do that for as long as I am in Haiti. 

The Diego Colone House in Santo Domingo

Another group picture in front of the house. You can't really tell, but we are all squinting in the picture. :)

This is Wilness, on the left. Imagine that face singing.
You have to come hear him. :)

Seeing as how summer school has ended, I am very much enjoying having some free time to spend at the orphanage with the kids. They bring such joy to my heart. As I sit here typing this post, Wilness, who lives next door to the school is singing the most beautiful song sitting by a quinep tree. His has the most precious voice and calls me his sister. I have no idea what he is saying, but I don't need to. It is beautiful just the same.

Do I really need to say who this is???? Okay, it's Jean Wilson. 

It reminds me that even when I am not sure what God is going to do with me here exactly, I can enjoy his beautiful time and soak up as much of this beautiful island and its' people as I can. 

"Take delight in the Lord and He will give you your heart's desires." 

  Psalm 37:4

I love sweet Pame. <3

Magdala shows off the sombrero and her new hairdo. 

It's Just You and Me

I seriously want to put a brick on Magdala's
head so she doesn't get any taller. :(

I recently shared on Facebook about how God has been making he aware of idols in my life. Like a smack in the face, He forced me to confront the incredible amount of time, emotion, and spiritual space I had allowed it to take. Coming to Haiti, I never thought God would bring me to my knees and reveal these kinds of things to me here. Maybe I thought doing mission work would mean I would be in some sort of spiritual bubble? But there is no place the enemy will fight harder than when God's will is being manifested in your life. I know I am supposed to be here. Nothing has ever been more apparent or clear. However, I was letting myself get caught up in emotions and worries that were distracting me from my purpose here and just generally making me constantly question myself. I recently asked God for a biiiiiiigggg dose of "get over it" and through prayer, I believe I got it! The dilemma is, how long will it last? I need continual reminders that we must take life literally day by day and sometimes only hour by hour, especially in unpredictable Haiti. I am so thankful, encouraged, but not at all surprised by the fact that God turned what I thought was going to be something incredibly hard to shake into exactly what I asked Him for. I am amazed, as always, that God can use someone as frail and broken as myself to accomplish His work.

I recently fell in love with the song, "Only You" by the David Crowder Band. It was the song we sang at church on Sunday and the words convicted me of my recent disconnect with God. God had not gone anyway. I had placed a barricade between us, reaching for something that wasn't right for me. The words to the song say, "And I will worship You Lord, only You Lord. And I will bow down to you Lord, Only You Lord." Our heart's desire should be for God to come first always. Before work, family, jobs, relationships, fears, hobbies, even ministry work. The bridge of the song, I guess, says "It's just You and me here now." I love the imagery of these words. An empty room, just myself and God, in total intimate worship. No matter whose around or if you are alone, worship is the relationship between you and whatever or whomever you are placing first in your life. But also, it reminds me that in the end, this life is all about two people. In the end, when you take everything, everyone else away, IT IS JUST YOU AND GOD. That's it! No matter how many people I love, friends I have, all of it can be taken in a second. Don't we want this eternal relationship that can't be taken away to be all that it can be? Why do we resist giving God all of our affection, time, and devotion? I think of this quote often, "Want to know where your heart lies? Look to where your mind goes when it wanders." I think, when I space out during the day, who or what am I thinking of??? This can be a very convicting exercise and one that brought me to tears recently. Why do we spend so much time thinking, worrying, and stressing about people, things, relationships, problems, etc. that do not really matter?! I don't think I will ever know that answer. I do know, like I said earlier, that the enemy uses these devices to distract us from God's will for our lives. We find ourselves totally disconnected, emotionally and physically, from the work God has laid out for us to do. 

I say all that to say this. We often are faced with our most challenging and most difficult circumstances when we are on the edge of something incredibly important. I can only chalk this most recent development in my spiritual walk as preparation for great things God is currently preparing me for in the near future. God is faithful and He will fulfill His purpose for me. :)

I stole Jovenel and Carmel to help me make banana puddin' last Saturday night. It was sooooo good. I love these moments the most. :)

The Gummy Worm experiment that didn't go according to plan because of the lack of a climate controlled room. The heat caused the gummy worms to dissolve instead of expanding like they were supposed to. I hope all my experiments don't go wrong like this one did. On the bright side, I taught them how to use a triple beam balance. :)

Okay, now to what's going on in Haiti. Summer school is more than half way over and I have been so blessed by the things that have been happening in my class. My friend Denise arrived last week, after a rough first day, we have settled into a groove and I love love love love her! She has been such a blessing in helping this high school biology teacher teach English in a four hour block! We said goodbye last week to our teacher professional development class in the afternoon. I loved hearing the  teachers read and have such an excitement for improving their teaching skills and their English. The reminded me that I really need to start getting better at my Creole. :) I'm completely surrounded by people that know three or four times the languages I do! Talk about a reality check for the old ego??? ;) 

Our Haitian teacher class playing a scrabble-like game. 

Our latest experiment, after the gummy worm flop, exhibiting diffusion and osmosis by soaking an egg in various substances. Maybe the heat won't mess this one up! 

I have also been enjoying spending time with the children at their new home down the street. They are settling in like a family now and learning how to adjust to living in this new situation. With so many wonderful people here for summer school, this is happening very smoothly and efficiently. We are blessed that God brought the right people here to help our kids become comfortable with this new life adjustment. 

Last Friday, we made Acid-Base rockets by filling film canisters with vinegar and Alka-Seltzer tablets. They. loved. them. I am just totally in love wtih how much fun they had. It was a great way to end a week of summer school.

Movie night at the children's home involved making stove-top popcorn. The movie of the night was one of my favorites....Finding Nemo. ;)

I mentioned before about God answering prayer concerns of mine. I can already see myself as the recipient of something that has gnawed at me since I arrived. My independence. God has afforded me a recent dose of confidence to go out and learn how to do things like going to the store and different places on my own, on public transportation. I haven't done it yet, totally by myself, but I feel His hand moving in this area, giving me opportunies and again, confidence, to have more autonomy in Haiti. 

I am going to stop with this post for now. Let me leave you with this quote from a devotion my friend, Tammy, reads to me frequently, because she apparently thinks I need to hear it! ;) 

"If the greatest character of all time, even He who was the very touchstone of destiny, could be made perfect only through suffering, is it not probable that you and I must also?....Take the hardest thing in your life—the place of difficulty, outward or inward, and expect God to triumph gloriously in that very spot. Just there He can bring your soul into blossom."

<3

Ashleigh

"I sought The Lord and He answered me, He delivered me from all my fears." 

Psalm 34:4