1 John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I leapt without looking last December.  And landed in Haiti.

Throughout the week I felt generally unsafe and mildly afraid. And day after day was filled right to the brim with sorrow over what I saw and experienced. Every day my heart was increasingly broken. And yet, I’d do it all over again. In a heartbeat.

The needs in the area where we were serving run deep. Very, very deep. Utter poverty that you simply have to experience to believe. Many basic needs for life are either missing completely or at best, seriously lacking.

One day we had the privilege of visiting elderly individuals sponsored by our program. We took each of these precious souls a meal and a drink, washed their feet and hands, and asked through a translator what their greatest needs were. Then we prayed to the One Who sees, for them and for their needs.

I left pieces of my heart all over Haiti last year but I left the biggest heart-chunk in the village of Titanyen. At the feet of a lady named Rosette.

Amusingly when she told me her name it sounded like “Wozette”. It mattered to both of us that I get her name right and so we persevered both saying “Wozette” back and forth until finally I said “Rosette”? and she nodded in approval and relaxed back into her wheelchair.

Rosette couldn’t walk and I learned that she has been in a wheelchair for three years. It appeared as though she was malnourished and it was suspected that she had suffered a stroke. Her living environment was a cross between horrific and appalling.

So when I knelt in front of her in the dirt with my hand on her bony knee and asked her through the interpreter what she would like prayer for, of course we all expected her to request something relating to her poor health or impoverished living conditions. Rosette didn’t look at the interpreter but locked her big brown eyes to mine as she spoke in her own language. To my pure astonishment I was told that she asked for only one thing. 

She asked for me to pray that God would forgive her sins.

In the midst of total poverty with a broken and hurting body, Rosette got it. Her greatest need was not going to be met by me or the team that had come to serve her.  With tears in her eyes and a heart softened and summoned by God, this precious elderly woman in a remote Haiti village clearly understood and articulated her truest need, forgiveness through Jesus.

Rosette asked for a healing not of her broken body, but of her broken soul. She asked for a cleansing not of her dirty feet, but for a cleansing from all unrighteousness. 
Truly the sweetest and most privileged minutes of my entire trip to Haiti were those hallowed moments praying with Rosette. Holding her hands which were now clutching mine and looking deeply into her eyes, I promised Rosette that I would see her again one day, in Haiti or in Heaven.