At the end of a wonderful day in Haiti enjoying God's beauty, God showed some of his power as well! The truck with our totes for the mission (27 - 50lb totes all packed with food, medical supplies, and supplies and gifts for the VBS programs we would put on) arrived and everyone was very happy to get everything sorted and organized. Neal & Becky, Dave (Sparky) & Penny, and Lisa & I had all brought tents in these totes so we could snooze with the spouses (I know what you're thinking :)
We set up the tents in a pretty strong wind on the concrete roof of the mission. Well the wind was just warming up! The wind was quite strong (25-35 mph) and I was having trouble sleeping because of the flapping of the tent. Not only that, the pins that went into the ends of the tent poles kept coming out (they couldn't be staked down, only tied to re-bar). I kept having to put the pins back in and needless to say, couldn't sleep.
Then whamo! Shortly before 1:00 AM a monsoon hit! The wind picked up to a gale (maybe 40mph) and an all-out downpour started. The wind blew one corner of the rainfly off and we started getting wet. Before I could even get out to fix that the other corner blew off and the monsoon was coming down in our tent!
In the melee that followed, we were frantically getting our stuff out of the tent and downstairs. Apparently I was saying "Oh, crap!" (or a slightly stronger version thereof) repeatedly as I try to repair the tent. I was soaked. Lisa and I got some clean sheets and went back to the seperate dorms. All 3 couples were blown off the roof that night.
So, at 1:30 in the morning I was soaking wet, and worked up. And of course it was my turn in the prayer tower! (I had the 1-2 AM shift on the guys night). I thought about bagging it. But God planted a thought......think of the Haitians outside these gates in their leaky shacks and lean-tos. I hate it when he does that! Seriously it was good to have some prayer time and get things back in focus.
The storm had blown over and it was very calm out when I was finished. I got Sparky up for his shift and laid down on a mattress. With the wind gone and the heavy rain over, the mosquitos had woken up. After 10 minutes of swatting (still not cool with the DEET yet) I headed back up to the tent alone (sidebar: tent = no mosquitos. These are mosquitos you don't want to mess around with either, they carry malaria, dengue fever, typhoid). I wiped up much of the water inside and stacked the mattresses on top of each other. I got 2 hours of sleep for the second time in 3 nights. I was by then concerned about getting sick due to low defenses. I prayed often about this and you know what....God provided good health the whole trip.
Day 3 next
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