“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Matthew 5:44-45
Next month is when the rainy season typically begins in Haiti; “bon lapli” is what the locals will tell you with a broad smile on their face. Lapli, or rainfall, is very good as it refills their cisterns and replenishes their ground moisture. I never saw a center pivot while living in Haiti and the closest anything reminded me of irrigation were the small laterals used to bring water to the rice paddy’s in the Artibonite and Les Cayes districts. The majority of family gardens receive water from a 5 gallon plastic bucket. This same bucket is used to bring water from the stream or neighborhood well to their homes and provides water for cooking, bathing and washing. We take so much for granted.
The rainy season also brings extra work for mom. Children walk to school on the roads or through fields and their feet get wet and muddy and when they get to school and go through the door there is a 10’ arc of mud inside where two hundred wet feet touched the dirt floor. Dirty shoes, socks and possibly pants and dresses too. For the two girls in the attached photo, this is their sole school uniform and shoes and socks. Mom has to do laundry that same day so their sons and daughters will look their best the next day.
Mom doesn’t have a laundry room in their house with a washing machine that she can dial in the water temperature, load size, spin cycle and push the start button and then go and start another task. She will get the plastic bucket with water, a scrub board, a cake of soap and a knife and begin to clean the grim off her child’s clothes and hang them up in the house to dry during the night. We take so much for granted. When you pray for Haiti today, give thanks for the rain and ask our Lord to give Haitian moms an extra measure of patience as they do extra chores during the rainy season.
Heavenly Father, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.
May God be with you…Jay