Life lessons

I have been back in Haiti for about a week. I belive we will have 16 more houses finished in a couple of days. Leaving 16 not yet finished. Looking back on this project I wonder what I have accomplished. I am asking myself if it was just walls and roofs I set out to complete. I am pretty sure that the houses we have given have helped the families with their need. But it was not a moment of joy or hope that was what I had originally sought. I was looking for the homes to be a catalyst for change in the lives of those that received them. It may still be. I fear that I have done the same thing I warn others about. Thinking somehow "I" can make a difference. That my work can bring immediate change. Sometimes I disgust myself. It is such an arrogant position to think that my presence could somehow erase a lifetime of operating out of poverty. By my actions I have shown myself to be the one in poverty. When given opportunity to deepen relationship with these families I have often chose work above them. When I rely upon myself to be the change agent it overwhelms me as I fail and I dive back into the work so I can feel as if I have accomplished something.


Success is not defined by houses built or things given away. Rather by relationships deepened. My friend Djacki Buy brings me hope as I see him walk his life out before God. He has taken what in the worlds eyes are impossible odds and has begun to be a change agent in my life. He saves every dime he can to buy a few more concrete block continuing the construction on his house so he can move out of his mud hut. He teaches me out of the riches in his heart how I can come up out of poverty. I need to practice what I preach. I thank God that He has placed Djacki Buy in my life so that I might learn.

Brian