Feeling overwhelmed?

Anyone else feeling overwhelmed today?

We've had a busy few weeks here at H2H... repairing the wall in the compound, adding an extra classroom to the school, distributing Manna Packs, gathering supplies to send south and preparing for a medical team that arrives tomorrow. 

I've also had a lot going on personally.. homeschooling Hasannah (4), keeping Jelani (3) from trouble, moving our family into our newly expanded second floor, dealing with a constant pain in my foot, struggling to communicate as I've lost my voice, and my heart is aching for my Auntie Barbara who is in the hospital battling pancreatic cancer. Yesterday I was feeling so overwhelmed that I had to escape.  I went for a walk through the compound and this is what I found the kids doing...

     
                   

When we cleaned out the medical room we threw away an old box of gloves (that ripped when we put them on) - the girls, including Hasannah, filled them with water and made dolls out of them!  Some even had hair and clothes.

The Haitian people are an amazingly resilient community and I am so grateful for the things that I have learned from living among them.  In my 10 years here I have seen them face many hardships... earthquake, political unrest, rampant illness and most recently Hurricane Matthew.  One thing that they have shown me through these tough times is that "happiness" is a decision... not a feeling that results from good things happening in your life.

Despite the stress that people are feeling they are choosing to be happy and choosing to do something to help those who are worse off than they are.  This week the church members gathered together clothes, soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, candles, matches, bleach, food, cooking oil and other items and we sent a truck full of supplies to Port Salut - a small town in southern Haiti that was hit hard by the Hurricane.

Seeing the kids find happiness in old gloves and the church members finding enough to share, when they themselves have so little, makes me realize that feeling overwhelmed is also a decision... and I choose not to be anymore!  I choose also to trust God to deal with those things that I can't control so that I can focus on what I can.

Tomorrow is a new day, with new opportunities - A medical team from Chilliwack is arriving and we will be doing 7 mobile medical clinics over 10 days.