Haiti: Outside comfort zones

An impact medical missions team served in Haiti through Go Now Missions.

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In Haiti, I met a “crazy” man—one I had prayed to encounter.

We had been serving at the clinic two days, yet I had not had a single opportunity to share the gospel with a person who did not know Christ. I found myself searching the word of God and praying earnestly for an opportunity to reach the spiritually lost. Never had my heart so yearned to share his light.

The very next day during our lunch break, a seemingly incoherent man approached the clinic. He yelled in our direction in his native tongue—Creole—while holding weird fixtures in his hands and, again, pointing them in our direction. Frankly speaking, my mind raced back to the conversation we had on spiritual warfare and the alarming prevalence of Voodoo in Haiti. Needless to say, I was terrified!

Haiti 300Medical missions team members pray together in Haiti.To add to the confusion, none of the translators would tell us what he was saying. We could only gather the man formerly was a Voodoo priest and was known among the natives as a “crazy” man. I joined hands with a few of my fellow team members and I prayed—for peace, understanding and the man’s sanity.

In that moment, I felt led to touch and pray with him. I reached out to our adviser and asked if she would join me in prayer with him. The underlying premise was that it was acceptable in this case to pray from afar. As the man rested from speaking, I continued to observe him from afar and the respect that he had for the pastor of the church.

I left that day without touching and praying with this man, only to realize God had sent me exactly what I had prayed for. Yet, because it was outside my comfort zone, I had missed that opportunity to share.

I was convicted of my own self-righteousness and reminded this type of occurrence is all-too-familiar in our daily lives. We pray for opportunities to share God’s word, but too often we miss those opportunities do to our unwillingness to be uncomfortable. This man was harmless; even so, not a single person would touch and agree with him because he acted outside of that which was normal. Did he not deserve just as much as anyone else to receive the word of God? Moreover, was it not the presence of God that continuously attracted him to that particular place of worship?

I went to God again in prayer that night, asking him for forgiveness as well as a new opportunity to share his word. This opportunity was granted the following day. I meet a young woman who never had accepted Christ. At the completion of her daughter’s visit, she revealed to me that she wanted prayer for a relationship with Christ. I reassured her she was God’s promise, and he was waiting for her with outstretched arms.

We voiced a prayer of confession together, and she accepted Christ that day. I prayed God’s blessings upon her life, her daughter and her descendants for years to come.  I will never forget the joy in my heart in knowing that one day, I will meet my dear sister in heaven.


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Upon returning home, one of our BSM leaders shared a quote that was very much reassuring of my experience in Haiti. Francis Chan said: “But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if he doesn’t come through.”

Marjada Tucker, a student at Rice University, served with a mobile medical impact team in Haiti through Go Now Missions.


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