Drained

One night in Haiti we had a teaching on passion. We split into groups and discussed where it comes from, why people get burned out in the areas they are passionate in, and how to not become burned out. My group agreed that people become burned out because they lean on their own strength and enjoyment when we should rely on God for strength and His glory for our enjoyment.
I believe that when we depend on our own strength and things get hard, we usually have no reason to push forward and therefor become frustrated and burned out. But when we are depending on God’s strength and doing everything for His glory we aren’t factoring our enjoyment/how easy something is into whether we press forward, instead we focus on the fact that when we do something simply because God has given us the gift and we want to use it for Him, we can sometimes feel His pleasure in walking out in it. To quote Eric Liddle, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure”. Our purpose is to worship Him, but He has given us passions to walk out while we are here.

Two days ago I flew in from Haiti. Since then I have mainly slept and caught up with family and friends and I am extremely exhausted. Honestly I don’t understand why I feel so tired, but I keep thinking about Haiti and how little sleep I got, how often I went all day on pb&js, would spend half the day in blistering heat and yet I was never exhausted. I was very tired, but I still had strength and energy to everything I needed to. I was the appointed photographer for the group I helped lead down there, this role carried over after they left, and there were a couple times when I wasn’t thrilled about hauling my camera along with me, but for the most part I was very excited.
Anyways, my point is that since getting back from Haiti I now can feel how much the trip wore on me physically, spiritually and emotionally. Too me the crazy thing is that God gave me so much energy while I was there in Haiti, while I was walking out in the passion He has given me, to the point that I didn’t even realize how much I was putting into my time there. Talk about God keeping me under His wing.

Discipleship

The devastation here is unbelievable. And the problem didn’t start with the earthquake. The mindset of the Haitians is so different than Americans. Most of them just simply want to leave, yes they care about their families, but besides that they want to cut ties with Haiti. When the earthquake hit it gave Haiti a new beginning because all of a sudden the world cared, but even with all the help, food, supplies, and water that has been given the nation is still in a horrible state. Many of the YWAM Port au Prince and St. Marc leaders believe the condition of the nation hasn’t changed because there hasn’t been any discipleship; food and water are always given, wells are even dug, but the people don’t know how to maintain anything.
Right now the YWAM bases are working on teaching the people in tent cities irrigation techniques and how to maintain a house (which we will HELP them build). There is a need, but first there needs to be action on their part. A mind set needs to be changed, before Haiti can move forward.
Millions of dollars have been thrown at Haiti since January and when I drive the streets here there is no sign of it.