Oh man this is so cool

This is so incredibly cool, I just have to share it tonight…

We spent the day today in the village of Birel, a tiny – and super, super remote – village close to the border of the Dominican Republic.  It’s so remote, in fact, that our friend and translator Sonel tells us that no white people have ever even been to Birel – we are literally the first.

Sonel has made friends with the preacher at a small Pentecostal church in Birel, and has continued visiting and studying with this preacher every week or so.  So Sonel calls the preacher this morning and tells him he wants to bring some friends out to visit, and asks him to invite as many members of the congregation as possible.

After several miles on a gravel jeep trail we arrive in Birel.  The church is fairly typical of what we’ve seen in rural Haiti, just an open air lean-to with a dirt floor and short wooden benches.  It appears that the entire congregation has come out to meet with us, about a couple dozen people or so.

We spend the next three hours sharing a simple gospel message with them, including an overview of God’s plan of salvation, Christ’s sacrifice for our sins, and the importance and necessity of baptism.  The preacher there and the entire congregation are just amazingly loving and gracious – we’re completely overwhelmed by their outpouring of love and appreciation for our willingness to come to their village and spend the day with them.  At the end of the service we all stand in a circle holding hands with our new Haitian friends as they sing “How Great Thou Art” in their beautiful Creole language – I don’t think any of the four of us had a dry eye by the end of it.

As we have done in the other villages, we send each person home with a month’s worth of basic food staples – rice, spaghetti, and cooking oil.  (Thank you again to all of you who contributed to making this possible!)

But here’s the really cool part…

Before we leave, we ask the preacher if there’s anything in particular he’d like us to be praying about for him, for his church, and for the village of Birel.  He asks us to please pray for rain, and explains that they have had no rain for several weeks, the early crops are all withering and will be complete destroyed if no rain comes soon.  In a fully agrarian society, in the midst of what the UN has declared to be true famine conditions, this is literally the difference between life and death for this community.

So we pray with the preacher for the village of Birel, that it will receive the rain it needs – and soon.  As we turn to leave I tell him, “N’ap priye pou lapli” (we’ll continue praying for rain).

Now here’s where it gets interesting…

As we’re driving back to the guest house, Russell gets our attention and points out the window to our left.  We see dark clouds moving in from the south, and Johnny says, “Man, wouldn’t that be something…”

We arrive at the guest house, change clothes and start unwinding from the day.  Johnny, Russell, and I are sitting on the front porch at 5pm when the first drops of rain start to fall, after being completely bone dry the whole week we’ve been here.  The rain quickly becomes a drenching downpour; the three of us are speechless – all we can do is just look at each other, completely in awe at what we’re witnessing.

So now it’s 10pm as I’m writing this, and I can still hear the rain falling outside – it’s been a nice, heavy, soaking rain for the last 5 hours, with no sign of stopping.

I can’t help but think of Mark 16:20:  “The disciples went everywhere and preached, and the Lord worked through them, confirming what they said by many signs and wonders.”

I’d like to think that maybe God used this rain to show the preacher and the people of Birel that we’re legit, and that they could trust our message – but who knows.  Either way, God has answered a desperate cry for rescue, and the people of Birel will be blessed.

Bondye Bon (God is good).