Perfect! It all worked out as expected…

As I planned many months ago, and as you probably already know, I am in the United States preparing for my next adventure.  What might surprise you is that my next adventure will look a lot like my last adventure.  If you are wondering how working to liberate restavek children in Haiti will compare to the academic rigor of a seminary education at Oral Roberts University, you are simply missing out on a few minor details.  Minor detail number one: I deferred my enrollment at the last minute.  Minor detail number two: I am returning to Haiti to work full-time for another 6-months to a year.

I know, i know… You’re thinking “You are soooo random.  When did all of this happen?”  First off, I’m not random… I am actually very, very calculated.  Perhaps my life calculator has more cool buttons than yours.  To you, this may seem very sudden, but i’ve actually been contemplating this decision since as far back as February (if you are still skeptical, I have journal entries to prove it).  Back then it was barely more than a “feeling,” just a thought in the back of my mind that kept telling me to “expect a longer stay.”  In my heart I felt that unexplainable “knowing;” I knew that something was on its way.  I knew that I was a part of a movement that would pick up speed quickly and somehow I knew that it would take me with it…  It was more than a sense of urgency.  I knew that my own destiny is wrapped up in it.  (Now that I say that, I can probably say that this started as far back as October with a word from Pastor Laffoon).

This may all sound weird to some of you, but I’m very accustomed to this feeling… this urge… this wordless “voice” guiding, pushing, and pulling me.  This voice is the main function on my life’s “calculator.”  In fact, nothing in my life ever equates without it.  With it, everything always runs smoother than a dream.  Over the months I have consulted friends and mentors about what I was feeling.  I discussed it with Joycelyne.  I shared it with my dad… but I mostly contemplated it on my own.  Then as the days went by in Haiti, I watched as everything else that I had ever intuitively “known” for the past four years rolled out before my eyes.  Just about everything that God has spoken to me since the beginning of college has been occurring all at once, and it is all so unbelievably connected.

Every day, especially in the months of June and July, I became more and more aware of the need to stay.  Not just for the Restavek Foundation, but for all of the other work that I have going on in Haiti.  The church is at a unique point.  My ministry toward a small group of children has reached a critical point and is ready to be transformed and expanded.  Even the business that I am starting (which I have yet to write about) requires my presence.  I realized that there was no way that grad school in this kyros moment was the best idea.  I would be leaving an opportunity that I would never see again.

At the time that the feeling became its heaviest, Dad began to say exactly what I was thinking: “Junior, I think that you’re leaving right when you should be arriving.”  He said it several times during the two weeks before I was offered a new position with the JRC Restavek Foundation.  For that reason and so much more, from the moment that I was asked, I knew the decision that I need to make, but I prayed a day or two on it.  I asked for council.  The result of both was the same thing that I “knew” all along.  I needed to stay in Haiti.

So, that’s the “new” adventure.  I will be staying in Haiti doing what I have been doing all along in all domains, but on a different scale.  As the new In-Country Direct for the JRC Restavek Foundation, I will be working on a new project to eliminate slavery in the very area in which I live and work, Petite Place Cazeau.  We will be working to see children uplifted and esteemed, seen as the valuable treasure that they are.  This goal is unbelievably connected to the work that I am now doing with the children in my church (who also, consequently, live in the area).  The work in my church is guided by a vision that was shaped by a series of prophetic experiences that lasted from August of 2006, until May of 2007, and an unforgettable dream that I was given on May 25, 2007.  The vision was formed over a period of 9-months… (Only a few of you know why this is so hilariously ironic and why it is important, but I wouldn’t mind explaining it to curious people who ask).  I don’t even have time to discus my new creole-speaking Puerto Rican Jewish friend, whom I met days before my return to the States.  After feeling an urgent compulsion from God, he is moving from Puerto Rico into Petite Place Cazeau to start a children’s ministry.  He stumbled right into our service on a Sunday morning…  Everything is coming together.  Even my Haitian-American co-worker is deferring a second year to stay on board.

God is working on something big here…  Yes… My life is very calculated.  I’m not always the one pushing the buttons, but believe me, it is so much more fun that way.  If I can give a word of advice to any of my Christian brothers and sisters that are struggling with a decision, I’d say don’t allow what you’ve heard from God in the past block out what God is trying to say to you today.  Chances are that your future is not as linear as your thinking.  Expect the unexpected.  Let go and take a ride!