Dear Lord,

Lord,

I'm in Haiti, I need your help.
I don't know how to cope with this dilemma
I know what you tell me is true, but others think differently,
What do I do?
Do I share the truth when I am not fully prepared
Do I seal my lips to avoid the battle
Do I live life with Love written on the tablet of my heart
And forget about wearing it on my chest?
When and where do I submit
When do I turn the other cheek
When do I stand and fight

Is submitting the real battle plan that I just don't understand?

Lord this is so confusing
There is so much to consider
Dilemma after dilemma it just keeps adding up
I feel like I have one too many boxes to lift
Too many thoughts to sift through
How do I decide which boxes to keep for myself
Or which to share with others
And what is to be thrown out and burned forever

Lord help me, This is an S.O.S.
I'm on this Island and my resources are fading quickly
How do I continue living like this?
Eventually I will run dry
Then What? Do I Die?
Im in Haiti, I need your help...

Love, Your creation,
-Daniel

p.s. - To those of you who are reading this. please do not worry. Just pray. I am blessed with the opportunity to serve here in Haiti and I absolutely love it. Some days are just hard. and I wrote this on one of those days. I love you all. More will follow.

Haiti Update - Wednesday May 12th, 2010

Alrighty, So I haven't quite finished my blog on "The Pursuit" but I do think I need to update people on what I am doing in Haiti. I had a successful trip here to Mission of Hope 4 days ago. I just received internet access this afternoon. So I am just now able post something.

Everything has been going fairly well. I am just now getting used to going to bed at 9 and waking up at 7. My college sleep schedule was a little different than this as you could imagine. I hope that I will be able to post a couple pictures and maybe a short video of where we are at now. People say a picture is worth a thousand words. Ironically, it would probably take exactly 1,000 words to describe what one of my pictures could describe for me. So I am going to wait on trying to describe in detail what the supplies look like. Instead let me try to explain what I am trying to do with the supplies. The ultimate goal is to be able to have a permanent system that can take incoming supplies, and separate them into three basic categories. (Trash, Keep, and Donate) Trash will consist of anything that is expired, or anything that cannot be used by anybody in Haiti. The Donate pile will consist of anything that we at Mission of Hope cannot use but some other clinic or hospital in Haiti could use. The keep pile will consist of anything that Mission of Hope can and will use. After that, the next step would be to organize the keeps into categories that will be easily accessible for the nurses and doctors. This whole plan seems to be simple and easy enough on paper. But that is where the pictures come in. I hope that I will be able to include a couple pictures so that you will understand how much supplies there really is. Anyways. We started by separating the big white boxes of supplies into keep and donate sides of the tent. The good part about this is that these boxes had already been looked through and the keeps and donates have already been decided and written on a list. The bad part was that when these HUGE boxes were moved from the warehouse down to the hoop tent they were put in random places and the keeps were not separated from the donates. So we spent all of day 1 (about 6 hours) moving about 10 boxes of supplies about 30 yards a piece. Saddening I know. The next day we spent building shelves out of used pallets so that when we started sorting through the random boxes we would have a place to put them. Today (day 3) we started laying out the random boxes (the smaller ones) on the ground, opening them up, and labeling them with what they contained. Tomorrow we hope to have some of the doctors come to the tent and tell us what can be used and what can not be used. We will then put what can not be used in the donate pile and what can be used we will attempt to organize (on the shelves we built) into broad, basic categories so that it is easy to find. We are starting to do all of this with the supplies that are already in the supply dome. (This is what the big, half circle tent is called) We are trying to ignore the circus tent and the rest of the warehouse of supplies. These supplies will start to be organized after organizing what is already in the supply dome. If I had to guess, I would estimate that the supplies already in the supply dome probably take up about 25% of the total amount of supplies. In summery, there is a ridiculous amount of work to be done. And the work that I will be able to do in the next 3 weeks that I'll be here is only the beginning part of the process that will probably take at least 6 months to successfully accomplish.

Anyways, I hope that I will be able to continue posting daily and I also hope that I will have time to finish "The Pursuit" soon. I will also try to get those pictures up as soon as I can. If you have any specific questions to ask you can either email me at danielwalton0@gmail.com or you can comment on here and I will try to include the answer in my next blog.

Well that is all I have time to type right now. More will follow.

In Him,
- Daniel

At the Moment

I ended the last blog (Connecting the Dots) with starting a pursuit. I will start my next blog there. But before I do that I think it's only fair for you to understand what the last few weeks have been like for me. This might allow you to understand where I am coming from, and possibly where I am headed. (That's a BIG possibly)
Anyways...So I found out there was a possibility for me to go to Haiti this summer about 2 months ago. When the opportunity arose I immediately became ecstatic and started making plans. I was also blessed in the opportunity to take a friend with me. So I am also extremely happy to know that one if my really good friends will be able to join me as I embark on this pretty crazy adventure to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Well everything was going fine until about 2 weeks ago when I started thinking too much. I started to realize a little bit of what I am getting myself into. This occurred about the time I bought the plane tickets to get down there. I also started conversing with a few people that will be guiding me in my efforts to start some type of permanent organizational system for the incoming supplies at the hospital I will be staying at. Since the earthquake that occurred in Haiti not too long ago there has obviously been an extensive amount of supplies consistently arriving at the doorsteps of this hospital. There have been a different group of volunteer doctors that have donated one week of their lives to go and serve at this hospital. The downside is that it is hard to find somebody that can and would be willing to donate more than a week of their time to help in any sort of effort in Haiti. This has led to a different group of volunteers (mainly doctors) to go every week. As far as I know I do not believe that there has been one volunteer that has gone for more than one consecutive week. Groups arrive on Saturday and leave the next Sunday. Due to this lack of consistent personnel at the hospital, it goes without saying that there still has yet to be formed a consistent organizational system for the mass amounts of incoming supplies (random shipments of 5-40 pallets at a time) Well this is where the opportunity has risen for me to go and head up the efforts to form a more permanent solution to this problem of chaos. At first I thought it was gonna be awesome and I was more than happy to partake in this task. That is up until a couple weeks ago. I started doubting myself and my skills. After all I am only a 20 year old college student with little experience in this type of work. I started envisioning myself getting to this place and within the first week becoming overwhelmed and shutting down. (Ultimately failing) Right now, back at home, it easy for me to understand that I am going to Haiti to serve God. THAT'S IT!!! And it's easy for me to know that if I keep this mindset of serving God that the outcome of my project will not be as important. Thus, I would be able to do my work with a good attitude and do the best that I am capable of doing. BUT...I also know that understanding that concept here is a whole lot different than sticking to that concept when I am faced with thousands of boxes to sort through and organize. So I began to get scared, I was scared of failure, scared of loosing site of God, scared of failing my creator, I was just really really scared. So what did I do? I started to pray. And I grabbed my Bible for the first time in quite a while. I opened it up and started reading. For some reason or another somewhere throughout this praying and reading I became "enlightened", if you will, to the ultimate purpose of my being. Since the moment I cracked the Bible I was at peace, I was no longer scared, and the excitement rushed back into my veins. I must say that this was no ordinary comforting through the Bible experience. I literally have quadrupled my understanding of God, the Bible, and what I have to do with any of it. I started "Connecting the Dots" as I explained in my previous post. Furthermore I feel like I changed from leisurely walking towards God to sprinting in my pursuit to know my creator. In my next post I will try to explain that change, and the realizations I came to. I will say this again, and I will continue to say this. I know that I am, and always will be, in the process of learning and growing. I do understand that the "realization" I come to today has the definite possibility of changing drastically in the future. So, whoever is reading this, please know that I am not stuck in my ways. And I am always down for listening intently to a different point of view. WELL, I have to go study for my last final now. Hopefully I'll be able post the next segment, "The Pursuit", by tomorrow.
Let God's will be done,
-Daniel

Connecting the Dots

I wrote this today after spending the last few weeks thinking about a ton of stuff. Writing this down actually gave me the idea of creating this blog in the first place. I decided since I am leaving for Haiti in a few days I might as well make a blog so that people can keep up with my work there. And I went ahead and posted some things I have written in the past. And today (the first time in a while) I wrote my thoughts down. So here it goes...


I’ll be totally honest, I really haven’t read my Bible much at all since I have been in College. And even in high school, it really wasn’t much. But I will tell you that I feel like I started to finally understand the significance of the Bible in the past week or so. You might say well duh!!! ya idiot, of course the Bible is important. So, I guess to respond to that, I would say that I’ve always known how important the Bible is, I just started to experience it rather than just know it. Anyways...I started reading, and then thinking, and then reading some more, and then came more thinking. I think a lot; and I think fast. I feel like I sometimes find myself in a zero gravity atmosphere and my head is filled with tons of little extreme bouncy balls and I’ll read something that hits me in the head like a 2 by 4 and those bouncy balls go crazy. I really don’t know if that’s normal, or if I really am crazy, or if I’m really smart or something like that. Regardless, I am who I am, and I’m not complaining. Let’s move on shall we?
I have thought a ton about the different categories of concepts or ideas in the Bible. Although I am not a Bible scholar or anything close to it I do think that I have learned the skill of reading something in an unbiased way and to critically evaluate (weigh) the material that I receive against my past experiences and knowledge and my own logic. I feel that it is sometimes extremely hard to grasp certain concepts and ideas that are in the Bible. Let me explain what I am talking about.
There are the obvious ones like how big God is, how the Trinity works, and how the creation of the universe actually went down. I like to call these “bigger than me concepts”. We like to try to come up with analogies and such for items like these in an attempt to allow our minds to wrap around or understand the idea. But I feel that in reality we, in doing this, are simply shrinking the idea, which then shrinks God. And I really don’t see how that’s fair at all. So I try my hardest not to think about these and accept the fact that I will never ever ever understand the vastness of my creator.
There are also the concepts that are revealed throughout the whole Bible that we tend to pass up. These are the underlying concepts of the Bible, the foundation I would say. I feel like these certain foundational concepts are not what we think them to be. I’m not talking about the ten commandments or loving one another. I’m talking about the history, the context, and the background. I feel as if we sometimes mistake the ten commandments and such to be broad overarching themes of the Bible. But in reality they are very specific; do not steal; do not murder; Obey your parents; etc. I would prefer to look at them more as broad overarching themes of Christianity, not the Bible.
I came to this conclusion when I started seeing elements of the Bible connect to one another and form a big picture, similar to the connect the dots pictures that we used to draw as children. If you think back to when you were a child and you tried to draw the straightest lines possible from one dot to the next in order to form a more clear picture. The more lines you drew the more the picture revealed itself. Similarly the more I began to read the Bible the more the big picture revealed itself. Obviously I have not yet and probably will never see every detail of the big picture that comes out of the Bible. But it was amazing to me that as little as I read in the last few weeks, (Philippians, 1 Timothy, Titus, 1 Corinthians, Ecclesiastes, parts of Genesis, parts of Matthew, and parts of Luke) how many dots I was able to connect. The big picture revealed much more of itself to me than I had anticipated. This big picture is something that, in my opinion, we tend to overlook as individuals and more importantly as the congregation of Christ’s followers. I like to call this group of ideas as the “slippery concepts”. Meaning we tend to let these concepts slip through the cracks of the Bible. In other words, we as a church tend to focus on only one or two or maybe three of the “dots” at once and never really step back to see all the “dots” connected.
So we have the “bigger than me concepts” and “slippery concepts”. Let’s put it another way so that we might understand a little better. We have “boulders” that are really hard to pick up and definitely can’t be thrown around easily. We have “legos” that are small and lightweight, but are hard to keep track of. And we have the group of concepts I like to call the “manageable concepts” or the “baseballs”. Here is where it get’s tricky. We sometimes try to chill on top the boulders, but that gets boring and frustrating. We sometimes try to play with the legos, but we end up loosing them all before we can make any type of castle or fortress out of them. So we as the church today tend to stick with playing catch out in the yard. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it’s entertaining. We play with the same ball until someone makes a bad throw and it get’s lost in the bushes which leads to us just picking up another ball and continuing on with our play.
In your mind right now you are probably conceptualizing what I am talking about in your own community or congregation. So you go to church on Sunday morning and your preacher does his job and preaches. He might be “throwing around” some ideas such as being filled with the holy spirit and speaking in tongues (that is if you attend a Pentecostal Church) or why we shouldn’t use instruments in our worship (Church of Christ) or how God doesn’t work in the world today the same way he did in the early church (Baptist) etc etc... The preacher is probably using small “sound bites” from different places in the Bible or maybe even a section of a chapter. You see, these are the concepts and ideas that distinguish one denomination from another. Because this is what separates us from the others, it is natural to focus on these things. In other words, these “controversial” subjects of what the Bible says are the “manageable concepts” or the “baseballs”. You might be questioning the idea that controversial subjects are the so called “easy” or “fun” subjects. So let me explain why I think this.
My entire life I have been deathly allergic to milk. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been teased and made fun of for eating things such as cheese-less pizza, lucky charms without milk, and having a rice-crispy cake for each of my birthdays instead of a regular cake. So when I order a cheeseburger with no cheese at chili’s, and they put cheese on it anyways, I take pleasure in informing the server that if I were to eat the cheeseburger my throat would swell up and I would suffocate and die. I don’t do this to be rude or unappreciative of their hard work. I do this because I am somewhat proud of the fact that I am allergic to milk. This is what makes me who I am. This differentiates me from the average 20 year old male. This makes me different, and I am proud of the fact that I am different. You see though, this is a problem in my life. I sometimes feel as if I am average, as if I was normal, as if I was the epitome of a 20 year old man. If I were to try to think of one fact about myself that set me apart from the average person, I would probably think of my milk allergy. In reality there are a plethora of characteristics that set me apart from the norm. You see, different denominations feel as if their identifying factor is whether or not they speak in tongues or whether or not they worship God without instruments. This congregational characteristic is what we tend to be proud of when we think of our own personal faith. Even when other people pick on someone or make a little fun by telling them that they have differing beliefs, one seems to stick their chest out and stand firm next to our beliefs. In reality the things that set us apart from other churches are things such as the overall quality of people, overall success in reaching people for Christ, people being truly genuine in their worship, people of the congregation actually living consistent non-hypocritical Christ-like lives etc. etc... Because of this natural tendency, the focus of today's church tends to stay on or around our “manageable concepts”. We get used to playing catch and we forget about the boulders and legos. One must admit that playing catch is much more appealing than trying to play with legos or boulders.
What then are we to do? I do not believe I have any form of authority over the area of what specifically to do, but God has given us this awesome gift of the Bible so that we may understand Him as fully as possible and thus live according to his will. Although I cannot say that I know the whole picture, or even the majority, I can say that in order to successfully understand the whole picture we have to be able to expand our focus from one category of concepts to all three categories. In doing this we as individuals will be able to “tune in” to God’s will and become one with God’s heart. This simply means that we will understand God a little more every day and thus be able to live a better, more Christ-like, life. We have to be able acknowledge the “bigger than me concepts”, figure out how to keep a hold of the “slippery concepts”, and be less distracted by the “manageable concepts”. We have to be able to acknowledge that the “boulders” are there and try not to make them smaller than they really are. We have to keep track of the small annoying “legos” so that we can successfully build our fortress of understanding. And in order to do that we must set aside our “baseballs” every once in a while so that we can have time to sit on the “boulder” and acknowledge the magnificence of our creator, and also have time to dig through all the “legos” and start putting them together so that we may understand the big picture more and more every day.
In conclusion, if you had a white piece of paper with dots randomly assorted upon it, what do you do? Well first you have to recognize the size of the piece of paper (the magnificence of God), then you would begin at the first dot, and draw a line from dot to dot till the outline is complete (understanding the framework of the Bible), and then you would take different crayons and color in between the lines (learning what the whole picture looks like so that you can try to mirror that image in your own life). We have to recognize that, because of natural human error, not every picture is going to look exactly the same as the next. But, unless you really cannot follow instructions, everybody’s initial outline of the picture should be very similar, and thus, each one of us can acknowledge our minuscule differences without drawing attention away from the whole picture. In understanding what the basic picture looks like, we then can begin to pursue God’s heart, and in doing so, understand what our creators true love, grace, and satisfaction feels like.

USELESS

(I wrote this about a year ago one random afternoon when I was bored. I rarely feel the desire to write. But when a lot is on my mind it helps to take it off my mind and put it on paper.)


If you really look at each and every one of our lives as human beings you see that each person has his or her own qualities...some good, some bad...As a Christian I believe that God, the creator of all things and all people, has a love for every one of his creations just like a carpenter has for everyone one of his crafts. A skilled carpenter puts time and care into his work. Once he is done he has no choice but to care for it. A carpenter also creates each and every piece of work to serve a specific purpose. whether it be a chair to sit on...or a house to live in...or something that people can just look at and admire...I think God, being the ultimate craftsman, has created each one of us for a certain purpose. In the Bible God tells us to go out and spread the good news (of His son Jesus) to all the world. Yes that is sort of an overall purpose of being a Christian. But I do not believe that He means for each and everyone one of us to become world missionaries. Each one of us has to find what our specific purpose is. I don't know about you but for me that's not that easy to do. How do we as people do exactly what God wants us to do. In the Bible Jesus says that we must take up our cross and follow him. I'm pretty sure the people that he was talking to were pretty darn confused at that point. The cross at that day and time had the sole purpose of putting one person through the most agonizing death that one could imagine. So for someone to take up his or her cross meant that they were to follow Jesus into death and experience it like he was about to. That seems sort of crazy to ask someone to do. In today's world you can look around and see that most people go about their lives totally wasting the gifts and talents that their creator has given them. They are not using the things God gave them to do what they were supposed to do. We all do this, whether you like it or not, we are all sinners and we all screw up. We all at some point in time use God's gifts to go against God. So how exactly do we succeed in serving our own purpose that God has given us. How do we know what the purpose is. I think that everyone underestimates God's ability to work through us to do spectacular things. I think this underestimation is somewhat fair seeing as we all know deep down inside that without God we would be totally useless. Since the gifts and talents are God assigned, it seems like its possible for God to easily take them away. In other words God can totally take away what he has given us. So why does He let us screw up over and over again. Why does He give us chance after chance to use what he has given us for it's original purpose. The only answer that I can come up with is that the outcome of us using our gifts to their full extent is far more life changing than the little screw ups that we partake in. But that still leaves most of us with the question, how do we get on the same page with God. What initial step do we have to take to start allowing God to use us for our original purpose. Isn't that the hard question. One of my favorite story's in the Bible is the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand people with a just two loaves of bread and some fish. If you read this story from John's point of view you notice that Jesus doesn't just pull this food out of his pocket. It says that a small boy offered up his bread and fish to Jesus. You see, Jesus could have just done the miracle himself and fed everyone their without any help, but instead he used a small boys lunch offered up to him to feed a mass amount of people. In the same way God could just make everyone love him. He could make the world perfect. But instead he uses our gifts and talents to make life interesting. So about that initial step that we have to take to succeed in our purpose. We are all minuscule on this earth. We are all useless without God. Just like that small basket of bread and fish could never feed thousands of people. We can hardly do anything that could really matter unless we put our lives in God's hands. If we wake up every morning and try to imagine ourselves giving God our useless life, maybe then we can become useful....

Why?

I wrote the following little tidbit in my 9th grade spanish class (6 years ago) and have kept it with me. I won't lie, I do not know where these words came from. I was sitting there and simply started writing.


Jesus Christ, the most extravagant being in this universe, extends his unconditional love and unheard of grace towards every person on this spec of an earth. Without Him, you, as the person next to you, would not have acquired anything you have; you would not have accomplished and will not accomplish anything. Jesus Christ, the son of the one and only God, has an unbelievable care for you. Considering all of this, i present to you one question. WHY? in this God forgiven world, do we walk through life absolutely ignoring the extravagant love of our creator. I also present to you one goal. Instead of living a life of the norm, look at life through a different lens. Picture every nuisance an opportunity, every accident a lesson, every sunrise another reason to praise the creator, and in everything that we see or do an obligation to worship the Lord.

First Blog

This is my first Blog. As said in the heading the purpose of this blog is to update my friends and family and whoever else that cares about my trip to Haiti. I am leaving this Saturday May 8th, 2010 and will be returning June 3rd. I will be working at a compound called Mission of Hope located right outside of Port-au-Prince. Mission of Hope contains a small developing hospital, a church, and an orphanage. My job will be managing the overwhelming amount of incoming supplies while I am there. (mainly medical/surgical supplies) Another reason why I created this blog is so that I can have a place to share my thoughts and views on random things that consume my mind. I have written a few essays for fun in the past and will be posting those right after this post. Hopefully I will be able to continue writing down my thoughts after returning from Haiti and continue posting them on here. If you read any of my blogs please remember that I consider myself still young and learning. Therefore, anything I say that you absolutely disagree with, please let me know. I always try my very best to weigh each argument presented to me regardless of my previous beliefs. I do not by any means consider myself closed-minded and thus am open to hearing anybody's and everybody's thoughts and opinions. I do ask that if you do disagree and would like to share with me why, please do so in a respectful way.
In Him,
-Daniel Walton