After we had a wonderful lunch with our student and her family, our week took a slightly different turn.  You see for the last several years during spring break some of the Sonlight Staff puts on a 3 day conference for our junior high and high school students.  The conference is called “Break Out,” and this year the theme of “Break Out” was “Inside Out.”  Usually each year at Break Out, one of the staff preaches each of the three days, the staff puts together a praise band, they play all sorts of goofy games, and they have break out sessions (45 min topical discussions) the students can attend to learn more about God …

Lorraine and I committed to help with Break Out, but we certainly didn’t know what to expect.  My (Kyle) commitment was to help out with the praise band by playing the bass guitar, and to teach 3 different break out sessions on the spiritual disciplines.  Lorraine’s commitment was to help out with a couple of the skits and dramas, and to also teach 3 classes using a passage from C.S Lewis’ book “Mere Christianity” dealing with discipleship.

Even though we didn’t know what to expect and the thought of having resposibility and being with our students during our break seemed daunting, Break Out actually went very well.  The students were really excited to be there, and they seemed eager to learn more about God.  Lorraine had some very positive responses from her classes and I am pretty sure that my classes learned practical application for the spiritual disciplines that will help them for the rest of their lives; or at least that is my hope.  After the last session of Break Out ends, there is usually a picnic that officially closes out the conference.  During the picnic, we serve hot dogs, brownies, pringles, and soda, and they usually have some sort of contest or game.  Two years ago they had a dance contest, but this year they had Olympic athletic events between the classes.  Every one seemed to have a really good time, and I have to admit it is really great getting to see our students outside of class.  Sometimes it is hard to build relationships with the students when they only see you as their teacher, but when they see us in a different way through events like Break Out, is establishes a personal trust that is not always given to simply a teacher.

Break Out ended on Friday, but I knew that it was not the last of my responsibilites over spring break (using responsibility and break in the same sentence still does not make complete sense to me).  The last thing I needed to do was to finish preparing a sermon to deliver on the last Sunday of spring break.  One of my Bible College students, Henock, had actually asked me to preach last year at this time at his church.  However,  I had already committed to another student and so I had to turn him down; and so when he asked me this year, I knew that I needed to say yes – even if it was during spring break.

Henock attends a good-sized Baptist church at the other end of town, but that is about all that I knew, and so truthfully I had no idea what to preach on.  What I felt God wanted me to talk about, though, was the resurrection.  This seemed rather strange to me considering that the previous Sunday was Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday, but I felt like I needed to be obedient to the Lord in it (Some thoughts that were used in my sermon can be found on the Devotional Page of this blog).  So I finished prepping my sermon on Friday and Saturday and got set to preach on Sunday morning.

What I wasn’t expecting was to wake up Sunday morning running a fever, and in pain; I felt absolutely awful.  At that point, I have to admit that I really did not want to go and preach, especially in a situation where I was on the spot; however, I knew that I had made promise and that to cancel last minute would be completely unfair to them.  And so I prayed for abundant strength and headed to church with my student.  When I got there, I saw a church that worshipped God passionately, and a church that was excited about me being there even though they did not know.  As the service continued on I was slightly perplexed because I had no idea what was going on, but I also gradually felt more and more pain.  When I got up to speak, though, I truly believe that God gave me the strength that I needed to present his word in a truthful and meaningful way.

When I got home from church I truly felt terrible.  I was in extreme pain on my right side and in my right shoulder, and I was still running a fever.  I decided to take a nap, and hope that this would just go away, but it didn’t; and instead it got much worse.  I was in extreme pain all afternoon and all evening, and I woke up Monday morning with the same pain.  Now I will say that the pain lessened some early Monday afternoon, however, by Monday evening the pain had reached a pinnacle.  It truly felt like every bone in my body was broken, and at this point I decided that I needed to see a doctor on Tuesday.

Fortunately, a few of my Bible College students are doctors, and so one of them was extremely excited about being able to help me out.  This doctor, Remonville, came to my house Tuesday morning and then came back and took me to the hospital on Tuesday afternoon.  The hospital was defintely not up to code, but I had someone that I trusted taking me around and taking care of me.  The doctor and I suspected Kidney stones, and so I had to schedule an ultrasound for the next day.  The ultrasound machine is the pinnacle of Port-de-Paix medical technology, and there is only one of them.  This makes scheduling very difficult for them, especially since the don’t run them on the weekends.  After finding out I didn’t have Typhoid or Malaria, I went to get my ultrasound and Remonville made sure that I was the first one to be seen.  During the ultrasound, they discovered that I did have a few small kidney stones.  This was slightly disappointing, but also very affirming that I actually knew what it was that was bothering me.

Remonville told me that he would come over Wednesday evening with his wife to tell me what I needed to do in response to my diagnosis.  Even though Remonville speaks English, his wife previously lived in the United States for seven years in Marietta, Georgia; and so her English was very good.  During their visit, we all had a wonderful time and we were able to talk to them about some of the issues in Haiti to get their perspective.  Our conversation was very stimulating and informing, and it helped reenergize me despite all my previous pain.

Well this more than concludes our spring break, because my spring break actually got extended; however, the circumstances by which it was extended were certainly not ideal or fun.  I guess that’s just the way it goes!