It’s our first full day in Haiti as a team, and as I sit down on the floor of the second level porch with a nice cool breeze blowing off the nearby ocean, I am ever so glad to be here.

As I look down the length of the porch, I can see most of the team that I am here with.  They are sitting together, gently conversing about the day, the gorgeous sunset or about home.  The energy and excitement that they used to climb in and out of the box truck we rode around in has gone, replaced by a soft contentment.  I haven’t asked any of them to express themselves yet, (that is coming…I am here to tell their stories after all) but I know they will struggle to find the words to describe how they feel.  I have been in their shoes, and it is only long experience that allows me to put their contentment into words.

In the United States, we each have jobs, families, and places to be or places to go.  Work is never done, and all of our obligations are never fully satisfied.   In Haiti, we have work to do, the family of the team, and many places to go, but when the day is done we can relax.  Together or apart, we find time to stop, reflect, and explore a quiet inwardness that we have not found in the U.S.

Perhaps the satisfaction comes from a job well done.  The team saw nearly 160 students today for eye exams and basic physical exams.  Each student now evaluated to be seen by a small medical team that arrives in July.  Nearly 800 more students will be seen by our team in the next few days.  It is a big job made harder by the language barrier, but those obstacles only slowed us down, the work for today is complete.

Alitza, Troy, and Beth at the school, surrounded by students!

Perhaps it comes from the climate, it is beautiful here, and I can’t remember the last time I have been so enraptured by the scenery around me.  8 miles on a trail in Shenandoah, one of our nation’s fine national parks, can’t even begin to hold a candle to the beauty that just naturally is around us here.  I could spend hours describing just the sunset.  Even as the palm branches wave beside me, I know that isn’t the true source of our contentment.

The picture hardly does it justice…

Instead of spending the next hours describing all sorts of incredible things and then telling you that they don’t bring contentment like this, I’ll cut to the chase.

Our contentment is found in being people, in a community, giving of our time, talents, and treasure to a larger goal.  Our contentment is found in forgetting about ourselves, as we seek to serve those who, though dirt poor, could teach us worlds about an inner life that we may never know.  Our contentment is found in this place without a TV, with limited connection to the internet, because we are fully present here.  There is so little that can overwhelm the immediacy of where we are.  I cherish these trips because I get to experience so much that I would never experience at home.  I experience it because there are no distractions loud enough to break through the noise of life around me here.

It makes me wonder if we could live like this in the United States.

In community.

Content.

I must leave you for now my friends…the moment needs me!

Yep…lots has happened since I wrote this post on our first night…and now that I’ve discovered the trick to internetting down here I should have more posts coming along soon.  Subscribe for the next adventure…which is really quite powerful and involves speeding down the road in the back of a pickup truck…seriously.