Tender Tenacity: DUSTEEE

It's amazing what you can find when you venture out of this dry and dusty area here in Titanyen.
Saturday morning I went to church with the Hope Village Kids and Rachel and Abby. To be quite honest, it wasn't the best service. There was a kind of unnatural feeling of chaos in the place. Usually the worship, while often seeming chaotic, is actually beautifully covered in a sense of joy and the praises are sweet and overflowing with the Holy Spirit - living water in action: singing, dancing, clapping, shouts of praise. But last Saturday felt somehow dry.
Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was in a stuck or dry place.
Anyhow, after church we walked up for lunch and then a group of North Americans on a team were heading into the mountains to a place called Saut Deau. There is a waterfall there and teams are often taken up to enjoy the place.
When I was invited to join I turned the offer down - I was feeling tired and maybe stuck in that dry place mentally - but one of my roommates persisted (Megan is a gift to me!) and I decided to go with them.
It was about an hour's ride in the back of a canter truck (picture a cube truck or small U-haul with a screen door on the back... for air flow) up into the mountains. UP in to the mountains.
Did I mention how dry and dusty it is here?
After about 15 minutes I tied a towel around my face to shield me from the dust. I was sitting at the very back of the truck so that I could keep an eye on the horizon and try to prevent motion sickness. The result was a fine coating of Haitian dust on every exposed area. Even the inside of my sunglasses needed to be wiped off every 20 minutes or so in order to see anything.
But see things I did. Though the road remained dry and dusty, the landscape began to change. Lush growth covers much of the mountain areas. Farmers are working successful crops. Small villages and towns were active with children playing, women chatting together or doing laundry, men walking around town or working on projects at their homes. There were big shade trees, fields of sugar cane, cattle and horses here and there.
The air changed too.
And when we got out of the truck and paid our $1 and walked down some stairs to behold a hidden waterfall... Well, despite my coating of dust, I didn't feel so dry anymore.
It's easy to think of this land as desolate and barren and desperate and dry. But it wasn't always and this waterfall in Saut Deau is, I think, a glimmer of what this land used to be. It reminded me as well of the hope in God's promise of restoration. Restoration of dry and dusty and barren and desolate lands, okay, but of our desperate souls even more so.