Impossible Impossibilities

We had our first dinner guest tonight!  He is a missionary who has been living and working in Haiti for three years, and he was both a good listener and had many "tips" to share with us.  Even better, he wants to get us connected into his network of people who live and work near us!  What an amazing answer to prayer.

While he was here, he was listening to me talk about the challenges of teaching in a small Christian school in Haiti.  He said he once heard someone say, "Haiti is the land of impossible impossibilities." I just shook my head...  I'm not sure if it even makes sense if you consider the phrase literally.  Nevertheless, it's true.  Everywhere you turn here, you're faced with this kind of situation:

You need to accomplish "X".  In order to do "X," you need to have "A" and "B."  But, you can't find "A" in Haiti and "B" is outrageously expensive.  So, instead, you could do "Y." You start down the path toward "Y," only to find out that it's going to take 10 months to get that done and the person who can help you with it is out of the country. You think about options and maybe talk it over with a few other people and someone suggests that you just rig up a "Z" instead. Yeah, that could work, you think. You gather up all the items you need to rig up "Z" and you think it just might work--maybe it does work for 7 minutes!  Then, the power runs out and you're back to square one.

Gaaaah!!!  It's an impossible impossibility!!

We shared with our dinner guest all the amazing things that God did to lay out the path for us to get to Haiti (remember my checklist?).  And then, we shared our frustration that He hasn't been making things fall into place so smoothly since we arrived here.  What's the deal, right?  Our guest (who is younger, but so much wiser) had the answer:  Satan.

See, when we were back in the States, we weren't causing any big problems for him.  We were under his radar... But, once we accepted God's call to go...we crossed the line.  Now, here we are, right in the middle of God's will with the potential to cause all sorts of problems for him.  He's not going to wait and see if we are the real deal.  No, he's gonna come at us hard and try to stop us before we really even get going! He's going to throw a whole line of impossible impossibilities at us.

So, I guess the question is am I going to back down or step up?

Ephesians 6:11-12  "Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.  For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

I'm ready to stop whining and suit up.