Chante Pou Mwen

Psalm 96: 1-3, 7-9

Oh, sing to the Lord a new song!
Sing to the Lord, all the earth.
² Sing to the Lord, bless His name;
Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day.
³ Declare His glory among the nations,
His wonders among all peoples.

⁴ 

⁷ Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
Give to the Lord glory and strength.
⁸ Give to the Lord the glory due His name;
Bring an offering, and come into His courts.
⁹ Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!

This week in Haiti has been such a sweet time of worshipping God with the children.  They praise the Lord with such gratitude and sincerity.  These children have been through so much hurt, abuse, turmoil, neglect, and emotional hardship, and to see them sing to God with such a thankful heart, I am so humbled.

Last Saturday we had a time of worship and teaching at the Ben's, the play area for the kids.  The people from the neighborhood are also invited so many of the songs are in Creole.  During worship time I was holding Jefflina, our newest girl to our homes, who is about 7 years old, but is about the size of a four year old.

Jefflina

Jefflina was facing me with her head laying on my chest and had her arms wrapped around my neck, as if she was about to fall asleep.  Then I heard her start to sing along, at the top of her lungs, to a Creole song as she raised one of her hands and waved it around in worship.  The next song they played was an English one, so I joined in singing, raised one hand and held her with the other.  She started singing along too, raising both her hands in worship.  My heart just melted as I could literally feel our hearts beating together as we worshipped God together.  "Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
Give to the Lord glory and strength."  It truly felt like we were from the same family, glorifying the Lord together.  The worship set went on, the musical instruments kept playing, and someone on the microphone began praying in Creole.  Jefflina laid her head down on my chest again, but then started shouting out in intercession as loud as she could.  (In Haiti, they often pray all at the same time rather than one by one).  I couldn't understand what she was saying, but man was she passionate in her prayer.  Worship ended, I sat her on my lap but she was so tiny, she couldn't see over anyone in front of her to see the person teaching.  So she just swayed in my lap, continuing to hum worship songs, and raise her hands.

This past Sunday I was at church and I heard the sweetest voice behind me; a child singing along to the worship songs so loudly.  The band continued to play a worship song as everyone was exiting the building, concluding the service, and I glanced behind me to see this beautiful little boy who had been singing so loudly earlier still dancing with such joy to the worship music.  He was swaying side to side with arms wide open looking upward and then closed his eyes, just feeling the music and basking in the presence of God.

Then yesterday morning I went to Child Hope's school to pray for the 6th graders and 9th graders as they are preparing to take some major government exams.  The other missionaries and I walked in as they were doing worship and all I could see was Ti-Junior, the newest boy to our boy's home, with his eyes closed, singing to God with his whole heart.  You can just see how much he loves and appreciates God by the way he worships.

Ti-Junior worshipping at school

Just to give you a little bit of background on Ti-Junior...his dad killed his baby sister years ago.  He was living on the streets on his own for Lord knows how long before we took him into our home.  He could easily blame God for his misfortune, but yet he chooses to thank God for the life he has now. He chooses to believe that God is still good and God can help him forgive his father.  This child, who I knew a year ago before he came to our orphanage, had such major anger problems and was such a troublemaker on the streets.  And now he's softened, he's such a sweetheart, and he loves Jesus with everything he has.  To know everything he's been through, I get choked up just thinking of how unappreciative for how much God has blessed me with and I still complain and still doubt.

And lastly, yesterday I enjoyed worshipping with one of the students at our school, Angelo, who is one of our laundresses' sons.  We danced and worshipped God to a Creole song.  I love the Haitian culture and the jubilance of their songs.  Later Angelo volunteered to sing with his friend, Nahum, "Jesus Loves Me" in front of the whole school and then he sat on my lap and said, "Chante pou mwen."  Which translates to, sing for me.

Dancing during worship time at the school with Angelo

Honestly, Angelo's words were as if it were God Himself talking to me.  "Sing to me!"  As Psalm 96:9 says and I pray, that I'd worship God in the beauty of holiness.  I want to praise God, not only with words and song or just in Haiti, but with a life that reflects gratitude and a desire to give God the glory due His name!  I think in doing missions work, we often focus on the call of the first part of James 1: 27, "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble."  I feel like I've obeyed this, but I feel like God is constantly remind me about the last part of the verse,  "and to keep oneself unspotted from the world."  I pray that my song, my worship to the Lord, would be a path of sanctification, bringing glory to a God who is worthy, who I'm ever thankful to.  That I would "present myself to God as being alive from the dead and my members as instruments of righteousness for holiness to God." (Romans 6: 13, 19)  May I remember his faithfulness and mercies every morning.  May my life bring honor to Him.  I pray I'd remember to sing and dance with such gratitude and joy in the presence of my good Lord.  I am so thankful that He has used these sweet kids to remind me of how beautiful He is and how I should praise him with all my heart, mind, soul and strength.  Feeling very blessed today.  

Educating Haiti's Future

Hello Friends,

I’m writing you to let you know that God has opened the door for me to go to Haiti on the 13th of September to do teacher training with the staff at Maison de Lumiere School! I’m looking forward to working together with these wonderful Haitian teachers and being a part of helping provide a quality education to the kids there. I’ll be sharing some fun ways to get the children excited about learning, using visual aides in lessons, encouraging active student participation and ideas on displaying what the class is learning on the walls of the classroom.

I just received an email with the current needs of the school and wanted to see if anyone would be interested in donating any of these things or would be willing to do a quick donation drive. Feel free to forward this email to anyone you think would be interested. I’m in the Ventura County area so would be able to receive any donations from the Southern California area and would need these donations by Saturday, the 10th of September.

• Educational posters (animals, numbers, science life cycles, maps, math concepts, etc.)
• Construction paper (Large size and small)
• White chalk (10 boxes)
• Calculators, pretty nice ones for our teachers/TAs (12)
• Staplers (10) the regular size w/ regular size staples please
• Boxes of Regular size staples (10)
• Erasers, those standard pink kind (100)
• Blue and Black Ball point pens (100 each)
• White board dry erase markers (75)
• Spiral notebooks (25)
• Math sets: w/ruler, cheap calculator, protractor (50)
• Bulletin board materials (borders, butcher paper that can fit in a suitcase, die cut letters and shapes)
• Large calendar sets with months, removable numbers, etc.
• Large reward/attendance charts
• Reward certificates

* If anything is used, please make sure it’s in good condition. We want to bless them with the best!

I am so thankful for your love and support. What a blessing you all have been to me and the kids at Maison de Lumiere! Please let me know if you can donate any of these items listed!

With Love and Blessing,

Jessica Selga

Hamburger Helper

What do you get when you combine Bieber music, hamburgers, and a whole lotta people that have been working way too hard....a pretty rockin party! ;) This last trip I spent a lot of time at the Transition Program Center, helping clean and set up the sewing program. It was clear to see that the staff and graduates had been working their tushies off and I wanted to bless them by cooking a special dinner for them at the transition program house. So myself and Avary (a wonderful angel helping build up our sewing program for the summer) made plans to make hamburgers and also teach some of the kids how to make chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

Israel, Willy B, Mikerline, Junior, Walgens, Emilien and two of their friends who have also been working at the transition program center, Emmanuel and Kesley, came to the dinner party. The transition program staff members and other interns came too! We had Haitian spaghetti (made by our lovely guest house cooks--Janette and Venise), chips, soda, and everything set out to make your own hamburgers; patties, buns, veggies and condiments. Chocolate chip cookies were a-cookin in the oven, the house smelled delicious, so we joyously prayed a blessing over the food and told the kids to line up to get their dinner.

Matt and David were pouring soda for everyone when they looked up and saw that every one of the children had their hamburger contents laid out all over their plates separately...a piece of bread here, the patty there, one piece of lettuce here, a piece of onion there. It was so cute! I had totally assumed that since most of them had eaten hamburgers at Epidor, a local food court, they would know how to make one themselves. Assumption wrong. Matt asked them, "Wait, do you guys know how to make a hamburger?" Walgens kind of smirked and laughed and confessed, "No!! I need help!" So we proceeded with little lessons on making hamburgers.

The night was wonderful!! We ate delicious food and had a lot leftover. We even got to invite in two of some of my favorite neighborhood kids, Dupren and SonSon, who were standing outside of our gate. Take a look at how the rest of the night was spent...

Dancing, lotsa dancing. Here I am with Junior :)

Dancing with Walgens :)

Willy B got in on the fun too! :)

And playing cards....the losers had to eat the plate of cookies! I don't know how that's a punishment, but I thought it was hilarious that Walgens was dreading having to eat the cookies that HE made! :)

Here's a little video from the night. :)

What Would Happen if We Loved Instead?

"But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you."
Matthew 5: 44

When I arrived in Haiti this last trip, I had a hard time reconnecting to our girls. I could see some of their hearts growing cold toward the Lord and other people. It broke my heart. I kept my distance because I didn't want to force a renewed relationship with them. I prayed and asked the Lord for wisdom on words to say to them and the patience to wait for the right timing. There was one girl in particular that I had bonded with since day 1 of my first trip to Haiti. But during this trip I could see she was absent, sad, unwilling to participate in corporate worship and Bible studies. I was concerned, wondering why there was this change in her.

The last Tuesday I was there, I attended their girl's Bible study at the Manasseros' house. Sue was sick, so Bill was teaching. I was the only other American there. Bill gave a great Bible study on love and started a discussion among the girls on if it's been hard for them to love everyone around them all the time. Like all of us, in truth, they admitted, yes!! I could still see their resistance to listening...arms crossed, eyes rolling, some starting to fall asleep. Tough crowd! But Bill, with fatherly love, kept on with his lesson on love, undeterred by their attitudes. "Does God just ask us to love our family and friends and people that are nice to us?" Bill asked. A corporate, "No, our enemies too!" was their response. They could repeat this from the Bible, yet their was such a disconnect to their hearts. Bill then said, "Yes, God even calls us to pray for them. So we're all going to do something difficult right now. We are going to think of the person that is our enemy. This is going to be hard because this is someone who has done, or is still doing, really mean and evil things to you. And we're going to pray for them, ask God to help us to forgive and love them."

Then, the girl who I mentioned earlier who was absent and sad, quickly said, "What if they did something really really bad to you?" Instantly, I felt the Spirit moving within me to speak a word to her and the girls. It was time. In a nutshell, this is what I felt the Lord wanted to communicate to the girls, "I know it's hard to forgive people, I have a hard time forgiving people that have done bad things to me. But when I do, I think about Jesus. He did nothing but love people when he was on earth. And what did they do to him?" They responded, "Killed him, made fun of him, spit on him, beat him." "Yes, that's right. And what was his response? He loved them anyway. And when He was on the cross He even prayed for them. He prayed, 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do.' The people that did horrible things to you, they may not have known what they were doing and some know exactly what they were doing. Either way, we're called to forgive them, love them and pray for them. What the Lord has shown me is that we have even more reason to pray for people that have hurt us. You know why? Because who knows...if you pray for them and they turn to the Lord and turn from their sin, they won't continue to do the evil things they're doing. And you know what, they won't do the same evil thing they did to you to someone else." At that moment I looked at the girl that originally asked the question and I could see her eyes starting to water.

I then shared, "Just like how Jonah, when called by the Lord to call the people of Ninevah to repentance, he ran the other way. He got swallowed up by a fish. In the same way, God is calling us to call these people that hurt us to repentance and to forgive them. When we choose not to forgive or do what Christ tells us to do, just like Jonah, we are in darkness--not free. We forgive because God wants us to be free from the sadness and hurt that comes from unforgiveness."

With that said, Bill played the worship song, "We bow our hearts, we bend our knees, Oh Spirit come make us humble. We turn our eyes, from evil things, Oh Lord we cast down our idols. Give us clean hands, give us pure hearts..." Some of the girls knelt down, they were broken and hungry to be close to God again. Bill invited anyone who wanted prayer to come to the middle for he and I to pray over. Four girls came forward. Breakthrough. Only through the presence of Jesus in our midst. God is good!

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty with which Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."
Galatians 5: 1

A New Creation

"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away; behold new things have come."

2 Cor. 5: 17

One of my first posts from Haiti last year was about a little boy named Makenzy. We've had a special bond since week 1 of my summer of last year. Makenzy made it his job to protect me every time I came out of my house. If some of the neighborhood children would bombard me and try to take things from my hands, he'd quickly come to my rescue, pushing them away, grabbing me, and escorting me to wherever I needed to go. We'd often spend time playing and dancing together at feeding time. I instantly fell in love with this kid and knew that one of the reasons I came to Haiti was for him.

However, although Makenzy was so endearing and lovable, I quickly learned that Makenzy was also the biggest trouble maker. He'd often get in trouble at the feeding program for getting in fights with other kids. He had problems listening to staff members. So frequently, his face would instantly turn from joy and laughter, to anger...no, rage...from seemingly small problems, like having to share a ball he was using. He had a stare that burned with fuming anger, and, I would venture to say, was demonic. Last time I visited in December, I let Makenzy borrow my camera during feeding program to take pictures for me. When I took it back, he pushed me...really hard I might add, ha. He then started following me around and hitting and biting every child I held or played with. Then he told another staff member I was Satan. I was so dumbfounded, at a loss of how to minister to this child that I loved so much and wanted so desperately to know Jesus.

From my teaching experience, I knew in the back of my mind that Makenzy probably had a really horrible home life with his family. I soon found out that his mother was very distant toward him, his step dad hated him, and every time he ever got something new, his older brothers would take it from him when he got home. It wouldn't surprise me if physical abuse was also a frequent occurrence in his household. It made sense that he didn't know how to respect adults or authority figures. It made sense that he always felt like he needed to fight to keep something he was using or playing with.

By the end of my time in December, Makenzy was back to his sweet self. He hugged me goodbye and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I came returned to the States, praying that God would continue working in his heart. I prayed that God would bring about people that would love Makenzy, teach Him the Word, share the love of Christ...that Makenzy would be healed of all the hurt from his family life, that he would accept Christ as his Lord and Savior.

When I came back to Haiti this last May, I was so excited to wrap my arms around him again. I could hardly recognize him. He had such a calm, sweet demeanor about him. He was soft spoken, kind to me and other people, listening to the adults at the feeding program. He was even a helper at the feeding program!!! Whatt??! My heart melted, I was so thankful that God had been faithful to answer my prayers. A new creation...still in the process of sanctification, far from perfect of course, but my goodness, Makenzy is definitely a different child. I am so thankful for people like Susette Manassero, Alicia Simmons, Scotti Robbins and Ivens Bastien for taking this trouble maker under their wing and loving him, accepting him, being patient with him, and pouring into him. To God be all the glory! May more testimonies of new creations continue!!

Lost in Translation

Some fun stories where things got lost in translation.

Story 1

Daniel, one of our 12 year old boys, got into Brittany's truck and asked:
"Can you please pass the freezer?"
Translation: "Can you please turn on the air conditioner?"

Story 2

I was at church at Port-a-Prince, walking with one of our boys, Emmanuel, who doesn't speak much English at all.
A man from church stopped me and asked: "Excuse me, where can I find my pee?"
Me: (confused, wondering if this was some weird pick up line since it was pretty common to get hit on at church) "Ummmm, what?"
Man repeated: "Where can I find my pee?"
Emmanuel jumped in: "Pee pee?!!" Then pointed toward the bathroom.
The man said thank you and proceeded to find his pee while I struggled to find my composure.

Story 3

I was teaching a math lesson with Markendy and Oline, two second graders. Markendy was doing his math independently while I did one on one work with Oline.
Me: "Okay Oline, what is 9+5 equal?"
Oline: "12? 13? 14? 15?"
Me: "Stop! You're just guessing."
Markendy interjects: "What? Why do you say that?"
Me: "Say what?"
Markendy: "When Oline say 12, 13, 14, 15...you say DISGUSTING!!"

Prayer and Healed Relationships

So those of you who had followed my blog last time and heard my awesome horror stories from teaching...here's what happened this trip with my dear Richard. When I first arrived, the kids didn't know I was coming. They were at school as I was helping set up for our big soccer event against another school at the Ben's, our little play area. When they all filed in for the event, a lot of the kids ran up to me in surprise and gave me the biggest hugs ever. And then there was Richard. He saw me as he walked in. He sat down on a bench and just kept looking at me from afar and then looking away. I kind of giggled. I could only imagine what was going through his head. "Oh my gosh, please don't tell me she's going to be my teacher again!" I could see him thinking back to all the sentences I made him write as consequences for his bad behavior.

During half time I said hi to him. He said hi coldly, not even making eye contact. I asked who his teacher was now and he said it was Mr. Lucner. Now Mr. Lucner had him before I had Richard in the summer. I heard Richard was waaaay worse for him than me. He told me in the summer, "Richard was so bad all year. I tried everything with him and nothing worked." Anywho, all that was going through my mind was, "Poor Mr. Lucner has him again?!" I asked Richard, "Oh, you have Mr. Lucner? He's way nicer than me huh?" He quickly responded with a "yes" and a little sly smile. "I know, " I said. I asked Mr. Lucner, our Principal, Mr. Ivens, and Cindy, Richard's house mom how he had been doing. I was so pleased to hear that he was doing really well and that he had changed so much since the summer. Praise God! Man, if it took Richard having to endure my tough love and discipline and hating me to appreciate what he had, then so be it. I'll be hated for the greater good of everyone else and his maturity growth. I came to terms with being disliked again, and trusted that God would continue to do the good work he already began in Richard.

The first few days with him were a little weird. He would get the old look in him again and say over and over, "Sentences!" at me and try to get the other boys to gang up on me. The boys usually ignored him, well, except for Diene who I apparently traumatized when I was here in the summer too. Oh my, a little discipline and it's never forgotten. And I was so stubborn last year too, I would not let them get away with anything...talking back, disrespect, not listening...if it happened, I always had the last word. Anywho, when they got in angry mob mode, I just hung out with the girls.

Then, just like old times, Richard would surprise me with his sweetness. One day I was hanging out at the Ben's play area, watching the boys skateboard. Richard asked for my camera, laid his head down on my lap, and looked at my pictures. He told me stories of things that were happening recently. The most adorable, loveable kid in him shone through again. The next night I prayed with some of the little boys by their beds as they were about to sleep. At first I didn't get to pray over Richard, because another missionary had already prayed for him. As I was leaving, I could see Richard's big, mischievous eyes glaring at me. I walked over to him, kissed him on the head, and said goodnight. He just continued glaring at me. "Do you want me to pray for you?" I asked. *silence* "Orrrr, do you want me to leave? *silence* "Okay, for real Richard, do you want me to pray for you?" Pushing through his pride, he finally shook his head slowly, yes! And oh boy did my heart leap with joy. I prayed for him and was so thankful that God had healed this strained relationship. I was okay with being the enemy for the greater good of everyone else, but God in His grace, blessed me and Richard with a renewed Christ-like love for one another.