This has been my fifth year teaching Principles of Spiritual Warfare at the Emmaus Biblical Seminary in Haiti. [links: 1 2 3] I'd like to invite you into the classroom and let you experience the adrenaline rush of teaching and the outrageous Joy of learning.

It seems to happen every year (five years running now). The class starts a little slowly as I try to feel my way around to determine where the students are and what they know. But in this instance slowly is nearly catastrophic. As the first week progresses I find myself increasingly behind schedule. And the farther behind I get, the faster, it seems, the end of the module approaches.

As of now I'm at least one full day of hard study behind. I don't like being behind though not nearly as much as I dislike being ahead of schedule. Being ahead of schedule gives me the distinct feeling that my students aren't "getting it" perhaps because they're not engaging me with questions. While being behind makes me realize I'm going to have to skip something and potentially something that may be very important in the long term.

Mango's as you may or may not have EVER noticed are shaped an awful lot like hand grenades, well - at least they'd be shaped like hand grenades if hand grenades were mango shaped. If that doesn't make sense don't worry it's probably just the sleep deprivation.
I have noticed in the last six years that I never sleep in Haiti. Well ok, I do sleep a bit. I sleep for 1/2 hour and wake up for an hour and I sleep for an hour and a half and then I wake for twenty minutes... you get the picture. Laying in bed: 7.5 hours. Actual sleep: about 4 hours. That's kind of the way it runs with me here.

It's not the noise per se, I've tried ear plugs, and even Benadryl all to no effect. So I wake up and pray or quote scripture or tonight I just decided that when i wake up past about 2:30 or 3 I'll just go ahead and get up to read. It won't be easy since the power is almost always out after 10 when the generators go off. The Haiti electrical department can always be depended on to be off.

Anyway, back to the mango story. As you may know mango's are a rather dense fruit with a significantly sized pit in the middle. What you may not realize is that a mango tree can be rather tall, I mean significantly tall. In fact the Mango trees are so tall that they threaten to escape the earth's gravity. The only reason they don't is because of the enormous weight of the millions of mango's hanging from every branch.

Yesterday I mentioned that I really hadn't fallen into a rhythm with my translator Guenson. I am grateful for the many of you who are praying for this and I am equally happy to report that today was much better.

Finishing up worldview

We began with a devotional from Psalm 68:1-3 which highlights the power of God and then moved into completing the segment on worldview. After just a touch of review we discussed some specific examples concerning how the unbalanced supernaturalism of Haiti and the minimal supernaturalism of North America bring their own set of problems to our churches.
In Haiti as a general rule superstition is indiscriminately mixed with truth and trying to find the dividing line between one and the other is not often easy. The result is that some pastors think they know something of Spiritual warfare but by and large they do not; their perceptions are just as skewed as their American counterparts but in the other direction. Moreover the outright hopelessness which saturates so much of Haiti tends to transform the way evangelism and subsequent discipleship ministry is done here.

A very brief history of the demonic

Following the block on world view we delved into a very broad (and not very deep) overview of how the demonic was viewed not only by the Bible's human authors but on into early church. Tertullian for example (ca 160-225 AD) believed that everyone had a demon assigned to them; as a result it was fairly common to bring new believers through rites of deliverance from the demonic.

Thinking Like a Christian: Understanding and Living a Biblical Worldview asin: 0805438947

Thinking Like a Christian: Understanding and Living a Biblical Worldview : Teaching Textbook (Worldviews in Focus Series) author: David Noebel,Chuck Edwards asin: 0805438955

Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today's Competing Worldviews author: David A. Noebel asin: 0936163003

I bade farewell to a friend today, Bob Ewell who works with the navigators was here teaching principles of discipleship to the pastoral students at Emmaus Biblical Seminary. He had finished his two week module and was racing back home to be at another function on Friday. I pray he makes it.

I however was just starting out today. People here keep asking how the first day went and my answer is rather consistent: I'm not sure. Nothing went wrong, that's for certain but I haven't really clicked with my translator Guenson either. I will soon, I'm certain of that. I've worked with him before and he's very talented. The first day for me is a bit staccato. First there are brief introductions, then we go over the syllabus and eventually we try to start the class while I ask some questions and try to get a grip on where my students are at.

For the first portion of my Spiritual Warfare classes I start with some basic world view principles. North American Christians typically have a more naturalistic or perhaps I should say, minimally spiritualistic world view. Haitian Christians however have grown up in a culture that is saturated with spiritism. The reality of the matter is that North American Christians think too little of the demonic while Haitian Christians think too much of it. Neither is Biblically balanced and I try to fix that during the course.

Good Morning?

Today started out very early. I don't typically mind getting up early by normal standards but this morning I had to rise at 4:30 local time (3:30 AM back home) so I could get ready and be at the MFI airplane hangar by 5:30.

In the lobby I met up with Pastor Tim Schoap from Signal Mountain Bible Church in Signal Mountain Tennessee near Chattanooga. He was part of a medical missions team heading to Grand Basin to finish a clinic there. He had an entire team with him and I hope to post some pictures eventually but for the moment I foolishly forgot a cable to connect my camera to my laptop.

Flying with MFI is a great experience. It's a ministry, the pilots, mechanics and anyone else associated with them are "missionaries who serve missionaries." I helped load the baggage onto the plane. I watched them tow it out to the tarmac and I had a few brief moments to talk to one of the mechanics (Mr. Campbell). I had stayed with his son Jason on my first trip to Haiti but that is another story.

They have a few small planes but the workhorse is the Douglas C-47 DC3 "Gooney Bird". It is a wonderful aircraft. It has something that many planes miss these days legroom! I can get up and walk around and even take a picture of the cockpit. For that matter I was able to stand just behind the pilot and co-pilot and watch them work the controls and gaze out the tiny windshield. Try that on a domestic flight and you'll be in irons (or more likely plastic zip ties) before you can say "But I just want to watch."

The long way around

Well here I go again. This year I'm taking my sixth trip to Haiti - that means I've gone often enough to get used to it and yet not often enough not to be a bit reticent.
My reticence this year is born of the food riots taking place in the western hemisphere's poorest country. I forget when I go to the grocery store and complain about paying twice as much for eggs and milk that the price of food in Haiti has dramatically increased already. It's not unusual for people to skip meals in that beautiful country; but not because they're fasting for spiritual renewal - they just can't afford to buy two cups of rice. So in massive protests the people in Haiti are burning tires, blocking roads and ... well... rioting. Mind you I think most of the rioting is actually happening in Port Au Prince. I've been in communication with a few folks that should know if there is a problem and I really do not have anything to worry about.

Today I've already had the pleasure of a slightly turbulent end to my last flight of the day and my back hurts. The first time you get on a plane it's exciting every time after that... not so much. There are few things I like less than just sitting still waiting for the next thing to happen. But when you're strapped into an airplane and sitting on the tarmac with absolutely no control over when you're leaving it can make a moderately spastic preacher get fidgety.

It's that time again. I'm making plans for my 2008 return to Haiti. I'm not leaving until April but that doesn't mean there's time to rest. On top of daily duties I'm revamping all of my Spiritual Warfare study notes (and redoubling my prayer effort). I welcome any prayers as it seems without fail that anytime I embark on this trip and these preparations the enemy attacks. Thanks be to God the victory is in the blood of Jesus Christ!

I've made this trip a number of times already, and I'm looking forward to meeting and praying with (and hopefully encouraging) the missionaries I serve with in that part of Haiti. They need as much encouragement as anyone if for no other reason than that they are human. My trip is relatively short it's over in three weeks but these folks are gone for a long time. If you know any missionaries why don't you stop right now and say a prayer for them.

Blessings.

This is what I came for, to teach, test and train my students

This is just the railing in the Vaudereiul church

Pastor William, Pastor Christian and Pastor Tom. I'm honored to stand with these men!