A missionary blogs it like it is

Blogger Heather Hendrick is a
breastfeeding instructor and midwife-in-training at Heartline
Ministries, an evangelical mission organization in Port-au-Prince.
She and her husband Aaron, a Southern Baptist minister, have four children.

After the earthquake struck Haiti last
January, the Hendricks began to reconsider their comfortable life in Texas. "Besides
knowing all the right things to say," Hendrick posted, "our lives do not really look much
like Jesus'. . . . there are some huge discrepancies between who Jesus is, and
who I'm striving to be."

Heather and Aaron visited Port-au-Prince
last May to scope out their potential placements. She hoped to discover that
things wouldn't be as hard as she feared but instead found the situation in
Haiti to be much worse. Despite this, or perhaps because
of it, she and her family sold their house and most of their belongings and moved
to Haiti.

Once in Haiti, Hendrick had a difficult
time living without her belongings, which were tangled up indefinitely in
customs. She was having, as she put
it, "an internal sumo-style, sweaty fat fight with Jesus" about the shock
of readjusting.

Then a Haitian girl stopped by.
Hendrick's new home was a shanty by American standards, but she was chastened
when the girl expressed wonder at the house's beauty:

Whistle
blew. Wrestling match was over.

Seeing my home
through her eyes in that moment did it. In God's ever gentle way of doing
everything peace washed over my soul.

Hendrick has continued to write about
her family's experience in Haiti with honesty and humor--I rarely read her blog
without tearing up or laughing out loud. In October, she prefaced a post by acknowledging the lack of mental
health services in Haiti, before telling of her run-in with a naked man who was
out buying a Coke.

I turn the
corner and bam. I encounter the naked.

Want to know
my first thought?

"My gosh, his
butt is amazing. Uh-Mazing."

It is. Who
knew butt cheeks could live that high up on a person's legs? My cheeks would
instantly have a hard time breathing if ever forced to that altitude. Naked Man
had zero overlap between butt and leg. None. His butt ended. Full stop. Then began
his leg. Go look in the mirror. Chances are, this is not the way anyone would
describe your butt to leg transition.

Yes, fine. It
would take a very long look to make all these observations about a naked
person.

When mission organizations send out promotional
materials to potential supporters, they don't usually include a missionary's
ruminations on local butt cheeks--or such things as Hendrick's declaration that she would have gladly signed
divorce papers if an attorney had been present when their power went out in the
middle of the night, stilling the overhead fans that make steamy nights in
Haiti almost livable.

But Hendrick doesn't mince words about anything. She exposes her faith, doubt,
frustration and hope with equal courage, and the effect is inspiring and
challenging.

Here's Hendrick comparing her original commitment in Haiti--a nine-month
stay--to the gestation period of the babies in her care:

I see our life
in Haiti wrapped up in those wombs. Growth takes time. Learning takes time.
Serving takes time. Loving the Haitian people takes time. There are no quick
fixes, and thankfully God is the one doing the knitting. . . . We are staying
in Haiti. I can hardly believe I just typed that sentence. God has truly
changed my heart, and He's used expanding bellies of all things to do so. . . .
We don't want to leave right after the "baby" is born. How could we? I'm seeing
how the nine months we committed to stay has only been the beginning of so
much.