haiti - the voice

open windows.  tin roof.  cinderblock walls.  children in every nook and cranny with their sunday school teachers.  little glances and big smiles.  it was exactly how you'd expect, sunday service in petion-ville, except in french.  or maybe kreyol.  i don't speak either of those languages well, but i was able to manage the french hymnal quite nicely.  

in front of us, the sweetest family of young people.  i was coochy cooing at their baby, all three months of amazing beauty and smiling...oh that smile.  and the husband turned around and, in english, proudly introduced me to his son. and his wife.  her sisters smiled and smiled at me.  the bracelet boys sat behind (oh...the bracelet boys are in my heart).  they fell asleep.  sweet brothers holding hands.

to my left was pastor tom.  he attempted to translate which was endearing.  to my right was the voice.  when the worship leader began to pray, the voice spoke louder.  she held her hands out.  she felt it.  she chanted and prayed until the led prayer was drowned out as background noise.  everytime there was a prayer, i would try to decipher the french.  to pick bits and pieces of meaning from words i could not understand.  and the harder i tried to hear, the louder the voice became.  the voice speaking its truth.  until i started wondering which prayer i was listening to and which one i was hearing.

i thought about that all day.  especially as we drove to port au prince.  i was keenly aware that i, or anyone else, could spend a lifetime telling these stories only to be overpowered by a single news report on the television.  still, all voices have truth.  english, french, kreyol.  it all comes back to what is listened to and what is heard, and how the information is translated in the heart.  

pastor tom mentioned that there would come a point when people at home would stop wanting to hear the "in haiti" stories.  not translatable.  i knew it would be hard for me to stop telling them, though.  "in haiti", your actions and words feel like a tiny drop in a bucket.  the ripples, the effects, far reaching.  something foreign and hard to understand. 

the listening and the hearing.  the talking and the telling.  the translating and the deciphering.  the doing and the changing.  there is so much power in that voice.