Mesi Mr. James

I remember my first trip to Haiti in June 2001. We visited the North Haitian Mission in the northern part of Haiti near a village named Caesse. We were there only a week, but it seemed like an eternity. I wrote the following in a diary at the time:

As we started down the road, the sun was directly in my face and yet I did not put on my sunglasses. I could see clear as a bell. I soon realized that I was positioned to see all there was between Caesse and Cap-Haitien. It was a culmination of everything I had seen over the past several days. The extreme poverty of the people was in full evidence - men, women and children walking barefooted along the highway with belongings or food stuff carefully balanced on their heads; the houses without doors, floors or windows; the animals roaming all about in the squalor of every yard; the landscape seemingly devoid of any ability to sustain life; and the road with makeshift vehicles of every sort darting from side to side to find the smoothest part of an impossible surface. The vehicles created cement dust bowls that completely consumed the people on the road. As we passed by we could see the people disappear in clouds of dust. They did not seem to mind or at least they accepted it as simply a part of their life. Some vehicles drove faster than others and created unbelievable clouds, such that at one point we pulled over to allow some of the dust to settle.

I wondered why God would allow this to happen to these people. What had they done? What was to come of them? When will God show His mercy upon them? Then I remembered God's answer to the complaints of Job in Chapter 38. God had not abandoned these people. In fact, He had sent many to help them. Some did and some did not. He also sent me and placed me in the back of that truck to show me the problem. I had a clear, unobstructed view. My eyes were open and not shaded by sunglasses. What am I to do now? 

Now, some 11 years later, I am standing in a classroom in an orphanage that was born out of my experience. When I arrived in the classroom, the children rose to their feet and said in unison, “Mesi Mr. James, Mesi Mr. James, Mesi Mr. James.”