|
This afternoon as I
sit writing this, is my last afternoon at our beloved mission in St. Louis
for this trip. The sun has been shining all the day, yet as I write
this, large black clouds have formed out over the eastern passage, and mist
is forming over the mountains beyond the mission. It promises to be a
wet night. Earlier, this morning, we
went out to the big river market. Where the river reaches the ocean,
there is an enormous flood plain of white round river rocks, washed down from
the mountains above by countless storms over the years. There, ladies
gather to sell their wares on Wednesday mornings. There are mangoes,
picked from trees all over the village, some plantains which get put into
soups or fried like potatoes, cheap plastic shoes from China, and lots of
used clothes. Many of the stalls are too poor to even have an old sheet
to put under their wares. The well-to-do ones have woven leaves on
mango branches to help keep the sun off. On other trips when I
have been to the market, we have bought entire branches of bananas to carry
over our shoulders, home to the mission. This year, the bananas are
noticeable by their absence. The hurricanes ruined them. Also
ruined by September’s storms were the cashews. Here, on the huge ‘pomme’ tree, what Haitians call their cashew trees, inside
the mission, the cashews are all withered and black, when they ought to be in
full season right now. There were no breadfruits or avocados at the
market, though I have seen some young ones starting on the trees. The
fall crop was damaged, but the trees which are left, by God’s grace, will
produce again. We have dipped our
mangoes which we bought in strong bleach water for ten minutes to clean them
of any e-coli or salmonella bacteria which may be present on them. My
hands now smell strongly of chlorine bleach, and the heat rising from my computer
keyboard is filling the room with the aroma, not of food, but of bleach. Before we left for the market, after I went
downstairs to pray with our patients and their families, I met a friend in
the hall. This morning, coming in for her post surgical check-up, was a
dear sister in Jesus named Mercelia. We
hugged and she cried tears of joy, assuring me that she was okay, and healing
well after her mastectomy, grateful that the Lord spared her life and removed
the cancer from her. I want to tell you about Mercelia. On April 22, Mercelia came to the pre-op room, where I was receiving
patients. She appeared to be a very elderly, wrinkled lady, who
obviously walked many miles, and had become ill and bent with sickness.
To get to know her a little and help her relax, we talked about general
things: how far she had come, if she had friends nearby, where did she
go to church. She assured me that she went to the Catholic church in
her village and she did not smoke, “not even a pipe.” I tried not to
smile at this. For some reason, in Haiti, people think that a Christian
may have an occasional drink, but NEVER does a Christian smoke. (It is a well
known ‘trait’ among elderly voodoo women in the hills to sit outside in their
doorways and smoke their homemade pipes.) I asked Mercelia if she was a Christian. She shook her head
and said quite defiantly, ‘No!’ Very patiently, I asked her if she had
ever heard the story about Jesus, about how much He loved her, and even gave
His life for her, going to hell in her place, so that she could live? (Please forgive me for not describing the love
of Jesus in much more detail for you. I am assuming that every reader
of this letter knows intimately about our precious Substitute, who died that
we might live. If you do not know about these things, dear reader, do
not hesitate a moment. Write to me and tell me what you have not heard,
or ask one who loves Him. We, I, any who have met Him, will dearly love
to share all the news we have about Him with you!) Dear Mercelia
said that she had heard all about Jesus. She knew what he did. In
fact, her mother and father had been Christians. She said that all her
children were Christians. She had ‘made sure of that!’ So, I asked her, ‘So you
are NOT a Christian?’ She said ‘No!’ You know, there are times
it is better to think a little while before you open your mouth. So, I
sat there a while on a little step stool at her feet, and just thought for a
while. My spirit was crying out to the Lord to guide me in what to say
next. It seemed that before me was a closed door. And yet, there
was almost a challenge to try the lock on that door. I was so thankful for Nedgie, my faithful and very skilled young
interpreter. She knew how to follow the Holy Spirit, and not jump in to
rebuke the elderly patient before us. She just stood there, and
remained very still. So, I felt finally, that
as Mercelia had been very blunt with me, I, having
my share of white hair, could be very blunt with her. So I asked her
very plainly, that if she knew all about our Lord’s great love for her and of
His sacrifice for her, why did she not love Him? What stopped her from
clinging to Him with her very life, especially since she had this terrible
disease? (Mercelia had open cancer on her right
breast, a very large tumour, weeping through her hospital gown. She had
every right to be terrified.) She said she could not be
a Christian yet. She had a debt to pay. Then she refused to
talk. So, we got her blood pressure, counted respirations, got an IV
started, wrote a chart for her, and all the usual pre-surgery things we do in
this hospital environment. Then, in my spirit, I felt the moment
had arrived. I asked her what kind of debt was so great to prevent her
from becoming a Christian and receiving the help she needed? She said that she owed a debt to the Loa.
Loa are Haitian voodoo ‘gods’, spirits which they worship. Voodoo
priests specialize in a few of them each, so a community might have several
different voodoo priests, each one with a different specialty. I read
somewhere that there are more than 200+ of these spirits that they
worship. One of the big objects of blood sacrifice in voodoo worship is
to be possessed by one of these spirits, even if only for a short
while. Worshippers have been known to do amazing acts, like lifting
heavy objects beyond normal human ability, etc. Often, they go into trances
and hallucinate. We know from scripture that all these false gods are
actually demons disguising themselves as ‘good’ spirits or even angels of
light. (1 Corinthians 10:20; 1 Timothy 4:1; and 2 Corinthians 11:14, to give you a starting place in the
Bible on this subject.) You know, whatever we
know about the gods people worship, we never want to make them feel like we
are putting them down. Our Lord died for them! So, I held her
hand, and told her that I knew these Loa. She didn’t really
believe them, did she? She said yes, of course. They are spirits.
AND they are POWERFUL. (Please see the capital letters as emphasis in her
speech.) Besides, she said, I could not possibly know the Loa. Well, you know…
There are times, when working with Jesus, that He does not let us keep our
prideful ways, and look all pure and white and like we were born
perfect! Talking to Mercelia, I remembered
well, that though I was raised in a Christian home, after much science at
school and simple rebellion, I became an atheist for a long time.
During that atheist time, I got hungry for something I could not find.
So, I bought books on mysticism. I went out on hillsides in the night,
drew the pentagrams, lighted the candles and set them in the correct places,
and even broke eggs for sacrifices – all to call up the spirits of the air and
the rocks and the water. Later, when I met Jesus for myself, and gave
my life to Him without reservation, I repented of that time of seeking after
other gods. I even burnt the books. Not easily do I speak of this
time of my life, because it is somehow embarrassing to me. (Here I am
sharing it with so many of you, my dear ones, now!
O, the things that our Lord would have us do!) Here was this precious,
sick, worn-out woman, who had travelled for two days to come to us for
surgery for something that was quite possibly a life threatening
disease. She came to us for help. So, I helped with even the
secret places inside my own heart. I assured her that I did
know the Loa. I told her that I had practiced the rituals out in the
hills at night, when the moon was hidden. I had drawn the circles,
lighted the candles and said the words of invocation. I knew the Loa. She looked at me with
unbelief in her eyes. She said that surely the Loa in Canada were
different Loa than the ones in Haiti. I said that maybe they
were. But weren’t the ones in Haiti the very old spirits, the spirits
of the waters, spirits of the air, and spirits of the earth? Didn’t
they work all over the earth? She had to agree that the Loa did (or
said they did.) So she really listened to me. Mercelia
explained that her parents were dead and that the Loa had them hostage and
would torment them if she did not obey them. My mouth fell open.
I exclaimed, ‘You don’t really believe those Loa, do you? You cannot
control them. And they LIE!’ She agreed that they did
lie. We talked about how they only do what people ask them until they
have them in control, and then they quit. They ignore their most
committed servants. AND they lie. They are tricky. She knew
all this. Never the less, they had her parents. We talked about many
things, about how Jesus was tormented in hell (Isaiah 52:13- 53:12, for a start on this subject.) so
that the demons would not be allowed to torment her dead parents if they were
Christians. Jesus was their Substitute, and God got Him out of there
after He had paid the debt. She looked reluctant, but hopeful. It was time for her
surgery, so I asked if I could pray for her. She said I could, but she
was not going to be a Christian. So I prayed that God would give her a
successful surgery, give skill to the surgeons’ hands, and that he would
spare her life, because she was not a Christian, though she was my
friend. She cried. After her surgery, she
woke up, and I was there. I practically live in the
pre-surgery/recovery rooms during the surgical mission teams. I saw her
a lot. Always, she was reaching for me. So I would stop and visit
with her. Every morning, I would do my ‘rounds’ touching each patient,
praying for them, giving God thanks for bringing them through the night, and
for healing their bodies. Each night, the young missionaries, our
interpreters, and I, would go in and sing some hymns, and pray over them as a
group. Mercelia
finally grabbed my interpreter, Nedgie, and
demanded to know why I did not pray for her. I only visited. I
explained very lovingly, that she was not a Christian. So was I
supposed to ask a Friend who loved her to bless her when she rejected Him to
His face? Of course, He was very good, and still loved me when I did
that. I thought maybe she did not want me to bring it up. She
begged me to pray. So I did. I asked God to make her hungry for
Him, for His presence. To give her strength to walk away from those deceitful
Loa. To give her peace about her parents. On April 27th,
dear Mercelia was discharged. Before she
would get dressed in her own clothes, she demanded that we pray with her and
be witnesses to the fact that she now accepted Jesus as her only Lord and
Saviour. She asked Him to forgive her for ever serving other gods and
for being afraid for her parents, and for not trusting Him to protect
them. We all cried. This morning, when I saw Mercelia, we cried again. She still is free of the
Loa which held her in bondage by fear. The lines in her face, even with
the post surgery pain of a mastectomy, have softened very noticeably, and she
stands much taller than me now. Mercelia
is one who knows what deliverance means. He, whom the Son sets free, is
truly free indeed. I have hesitated to share
the story of Mercelia with you, because it is very
personal to me, too. Our God is so very good. He soothes the
furrowed brow and takes away our fears. May He richly bless you
for the prayers you have prayed for our work in this mission trip. He is more than we could ask or imagine! In His great love, Tina May 7, 2009 –
Rev. Tina Leslie |