Time to get out of the boat

Sometimes life catches you a bit by surprise. You think you're prepared to face the day, and then ...WHAM!!!! ... it hits you like a bus. That was yesterday.

It started off as a regular day. It was Saturday, so before breakfast, running to the bottle depot, fixing my wetsaw tile cutter, and cutting some tiles for a friend a minute, I decided to check on our friends in Haiti and see how they were coping with "regular" life. That's when my day got derailed. I went to facebook, where you can chat live with them, and a friend had written that you need to go through Jean in Colorado if you want to go to Haiti, but a LOT of people were offering, and a team was prayerfully deciding who should go.

So I sent Jean a brief yet lengthy email describing how we would be honoured to go, but we were planning a fundraiser for GLA on Friday, and Michelle would need to give two weeks notice at work.

Ten minutes later our phone rang. It was Jean. I thought "Wow, she's good", and I was saddened that she wasn't swamped in offers, but that she had time to respond so fast.

" Do you want to go to Haiti?" she asked. "Yes". " Do you really?Are you positive?" "Yes" I replied. "It's January. Things have slowed down at the store. In our hearts we are already there".

She replied "There's a chartered 737 loaded with supplies headed for Haiti. We need 10 volunteers to be on that plane at 6am sharp on Tuesday morning".

"But...." I said. "But....."

"It'll be the only plane for a while. I need an answer yesterday, because otherwise we will have to find two other people."

Following the conversation, I had to call Michelle, who was at work. Waiting for an answer, I went and checked email. That's when I realized it. There was a notice on our email account that said that my email to Jean was undeliverable, because her inbox was full!!! That means that her call to me had nothing to do with me emailing her at all. It meant that she had no clue about our fundraiser, and it meant that she WAS totally swamped!!!

What followed was a nightmare, a whirlwind of planning, phone calls, switching phones to charge them up again, back and forth, Michelle had to get most of her shifts covered before she could go, which means that in faith Jean patiently waited, Michelle gathered medical supplies, I gathered luggage, cancelled the fundraiser, phoned the pastor, took calls from elders, got military clearance for the charter flight, relayed passport info, purchasing tickets to Miami,( thanks mom for helping),... ... ... ... ... .

Then it was 4:00pm and the phone rang. It was Jean.

" Garner, I'm not happy right now."

" Wh... What did I do wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing." She replied.

"Garner, I just recieved a fax from the charter company. It clearly states that ONLY Americans can be on board.They say that to take Canadians on board is too much paperwork. There are three Canadians supposed to be on that flight. Two are nurses. I need them on this flight!!! I have put everyone that I have on this, and we will fight it, hard, but it looks bad. We are fighting this. It's our plane. We chartered it. The problem is that it's Saturday evening in Miami, things are closed. Monday is an American holiday, and things will still be closed. We likely wont have your answer until Tuesday morning, and the plane is going to wait until we have our answer. If you come to Miami, you may just have to turn around and go home again."

Wow. I now know what it feels like to go from 100 miles an hour to a complete stop in a second. And I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. :(

I went on, packing, the momentum gone. Everything seemed much harder to do. How could this be? Everything indicated that God was calling us, everything went so smoothly!? Then WHAM!!! It was like deja-vu all over again! :)

When Jesus walked on water, He asked Peter to step out of the boat. I can only imagine what went through Peter's mind as he put his first foot forward. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! ? Maybe. Or maybe he just trusted, and just did it.

Some of you may think we are crazy, to fly to Miami and go through all the greif of waiting and not knowing. By the way, our return flight is out of Port-au-Prince, so we do not have a way out of Miami. But we're going . And we are going to have to take that step.

There are so very many people praying for Haiti, for GLA , it's staff that are there, it's staff still missing , it's shortages. As of last night, they are almost out of cooking propane! Much more prayer is needed.

Please everyone, please feel free to leave us comments on our blog. You are our support. We need that.

Well , more stories soon...