This is where I (Ben) usually start my day. After five years of moving my study to wherever there was space and table in the house I finally have my own study. I can still hear the kids at school or running around the house, but the door can be closed and with headphones on it is pretty quiet. I am grateful to have a desk where I can leave everything at the end of the day and just pick up where I left off. But today I am out of the office
Since my day will take me to Port-au-Prince, this is my ride. It is hard to express how thankful I am for a reliable vehicle. The Nissan Patrol has given us 23,000 problem free miles since we were able to purchase it in 2009. It is comfortable, has working A/C and I am amazed how much stuff you can pack inside. On the good highway the drive takes an hour or so. Every time I pass lots of broken down vehicles on the road - trucks, cars, buses.
Besides church meetings and teaching a class, I am also picking up a new bed for Elijah and getting groceries for our visitors who arrive on Friday. Generally the traffic in Port-au-Prince is terrible. Too many cars and trucks on too few decent roads. Some of the traffic lights work and some don't. When a vehicle breaks down it just stops right where it had the problem. Many times I drive by a broken down truck in the middle of the highway with a guy underneath diagnosing the problem - no worries, we put a rock and small branch as a warning to oncoming traffic!
Today my ten-hour day away from home involved about 5 hours on the road. The grocery shopping and other errands are done. It is time to head to Adoration School where the church plant meets. Almost every Wednesday I meet with Pastor Octavius Delfils and we meet to discuss church and mission matters. We pray together and make decisions about things like translation projects and church services. After our meeting about 10-12 folks gather for our class on the Westminster Confession of Faith. Lots of good questions and a productive time of teaching.
It is now 5PM and I am on my way home, trying to get home before dark. Earlier I received a call from a friend who said the highway was blocked in Titanyen. The people were demonstrating for some unknown reason and the road was completely blocked. Thankfully as I pull up to the village it is clear. A few more minutes down the road I call Heather to tell her Titanyen was clear. Literally two minutes later I see the red lights of stopped vehicles in front of me. Oh, oh!
And sure enough I am spending the next hour sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. There are lots of people around, streaming up and down the road. It is not apparent what was happening but the road was blocked. Once it got blocked everyone is trying to get their vehicle to the front. I know the market in Arcahaie is the bottleneck. You have four lanes of traffic going north and four lanes of traffic going south all facing off against each other. Until someone gives ground nothing is going to move. So for a while we slowly move. As I near the market things seem to be moving until I find myself behind another broken down truck. Rat, get around, keep going!
I should have arrived home at about 6:00PM. It is 7:30PM by the time I pull into our driveway. Unload the groceries, get the bed out of the truck, have some supper. I am glad this day is over. Just another day in Haiti, full of the unexpected and the interesting. I wouldn't trade it for anything but am thankful for God's grace to deal with it all.
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