{"id":6660,"date":"2013-08-25T17:22:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T17:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6660"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:31","slug":"one-fear-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6660","title":{"rendered":"One Fear Down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

And one to go.One of my biggest fears in moving to Haiti was driving on the roads here.\u00a0 It’s hard to put into words the craziness of Haitian driving.\u00a0 There’s no line running down the center of the road – because lanes are only hypothetical anyway.\u00a0 If you need to get around a stopped tap-tap, a herd of cows, or a massive pothole, feel free to swerve into oncoming traffic.\u00a0 Just swerve back\u00a0to your side\u00a0before being hit by a speeding motorcycle weighed down with 5 or 6 people or dragging a load of 8 foot rebar.\u00a0 One of the other missionaries told me the other day about seeing a motorcyclist transporting a horse on the back of his cycle.\u00a0 A horse!\u00a0 And if that’s not enough to pay attention to, there’s the fact that 99% of the vehicles around here are manuals.\u00a0 In my lifetime I have logged maybe two hours total of driving a stick shift in perhaps 3 or 4 different vehicles.\u00a0 (And one of those didn’t survive a mountain drive with me at the helm.)\u00a0 So I decided yesterday that my first step would be to get the keys to one of the mission vehicles to drive around the grounds here where I could practice shifting with no distractions greater than a few speed bumps and an occasional goat.\u00a0 Caleb and Sammy weren’t gung-ho about accompanying me until I told them I planned to get a pickup truck and they could ride in the back.\u00a0 I made a couple of laps around the grounds and when I was finished, I decided to do one more for good measure – this time without the parking brake engaged.\u00a0 I am telling you …\u00a0this stuff makes me nervous.So when the opportunity to drive came up this morning, I\u00a0was prepared\u00a0to face my fears head on.\u00a0 Elida and her friend Calaine\u00a0were going to worship at an unfamiliar church and they needed a ride.\u00a0 My family and I were looking for a place to worship and didn’t necessarily want to go to the one familiar church within walking distance.\u00a0 Everyone could go together to\u00a0worship IF I would drive.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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No problem!\u00a0 (Although I worked up a non-sun-related sweat pretty quickly.)\u00a0 Photo courtesy of Hannah.\u00a0 (Perhaps we’ll have some time in our school schedule this year to do some art and photography classes and talk about composition…)<\/p>\n\n\n

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Hannah also took this shot as we were lurching down the road. My back seat passengers were trying to “look scared”, but only Elida succeeded.\u00a0 Sarah looks like she’s in a hurry to get to a potty – which she was.\u00a0 Melissa looks like she’s halfway between a laugh and a tear. I am comforted by the fact that the only Haitian in the truck doesn’t look scared at all.\u00a0 In fact,\u00a0Calaine seems to be enjoying herself immensely.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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We arrived at the church – in one piece – at about 8:50, early for the second service … only to learn that they have just\u00a0ONE service, from 7 to 9:00!\u00a0 Oh, well.\u00a0 As a group we didn’t accomplish our purpose.\u00a0 But I felt like I accomplished something.\u00a0 When Melissa and I first started praying about moving our family to Haiti, most of the reasons I came up with for saying no to God’s call were fear-based, plain and simple. So I decided early on in this process that fear is a sad and terrible motivation for any sort of action … or inaction.\u00a0\u00a0I decided it is best\u00a0to conquer fears as they creep up, one step at a time. So this morning’s drive was a big deal to me.\u00a0 And the Lord watched over us.My second big fear?\u00a0 Learning the language.\u00a0 Our first language study will be tomorrow afternoon at the seminary.\u00a0 Maybe I will drive us there.For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline. – 2 Timothy 1:7<\/em>P.S.\u00a0 School starts a week from tomorrow.\u00a0 Our house is set up and now it’s time to turn our attention to setting up classrooms and preparing for the start of the semester.\u00a0 It’s going to be a busy week.\u00a0 Prayers appreciated.P.P.S.\u00a0 Since we didn’t get a chance to worship with the Body this morning, we will go to the English Bible Fellowship at 3:30 this afternoon.\u00a0 It\u00a0meets upstairs at the radio station.\u00a0 I think the kids are looking forward to it – they found it a challenge to sit through a two hour service last week, all in Creole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And one to go.One of my biggest fears in moving to Haiti was driving on the roads here.\u00a0 It’s hard to put into words the craziness of Haitian driving.\u00a0 There’s no line running down the center of the road – because lanes are only hypothetical anyway.\u00a0 If you need to get around a stopped tap-tap, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6664,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6660\/revisions\/6664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}