Can I be upfront with you? Melissa and I have had a wonderful/horrible week. I don’t mean to be a Negative Nelly, but I have to write about the horrible side because it’s crushing my heart at the moment. Something we’ve been fearing for a year (or so) happened yesterday.We met with some folks at OMS headquarters yesterday and were told that we cannot assume we will be returning to Haiti in August. Although many people are supporting us financially – some through occasional large gifts and others through regular monthly giving – over the last few months our support account has started to run at a deficit. So with two successful years on the field under our belts now and an urgent need for us to be in place for the start of the new school year in September, HR simply will not sign off on our return to Cowman School (and our house and our Haitian friends) until our account is in a healthier state. That leaves us a few weeks to show OMS a marked increase in support. We certainly feel a great urgency, but not a desperation. We know God can provide.We also know God doesn’t usually supply for needs like ours by blowing a winning lottery ticket through an open window, but rather through His people, and right now we cannot foresee the details of what His work in this case will look like or what His timetable is.Yesterday, just before heading to OMS headquarters, Melissa and I walked through the basement storage area of a local grade school. The teachers there call it “The Dungeon” because it’s a dark, damp place. A place where unwanted equipment goes to languish and die. It’s the excess stuff – items no longer needed or wanted in the dozens of classrooms above The Dungeon: chairs, desks, TVs, DVD players, computers, overhead projectors, bookshelves, carts, and dry erase boards.
Some items are destined to be recycled, some auctioned, and many, I suppose, will continue to just sit in the dungeon. Collecting dust. Rusting.Melissa and I just walked around it all with our jaws hanging. I was NOT coveting. I was aching. All that abundance. Enough stuff to handsomely supply Cowman School … and another ten Haitian schools to boot. Physical solutions to hundreds of problems and shortfalls. But as I look around, I am fully aware of the reality: these items do not belong to me and I have no claim to any of it. And even if I could lay my hands on it, neither I nor Cowman have the budget to move ANY of this stuff a thousand miles south of here anyway.
If the Lord is moving you to give, any funds given through HERE on our page at the One Mission Society website will show up pretty immediately on the screens at Headquarters.
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