A letter from Mark Hare in Haiti
August 2011
Dear friend,
Jenny, Annika and Keila. Keila meets Annika for the first time, the day Annika was born.
Our second daughter has arrived! Like good news that is deeply hoped for, but not entirely certain, Annika Estela (A nee ka E ste la) came fully into our lives on Sunday, July 10, at 9:28 a.m. As soon as Annika arrived into her new environment, she made herself heard, loud and clear, which brought tears and laughter for me, remembering Keila’s birth and her first strong yelps. Like Keila, Annika was born on her due date, but it was a natural birth, not Caesarean, for which Jenny and I are both deeply grateful. All in all, Annika’s birth was an entirely different experience, with incredible support from the staff at Marietta Memorial Hospital’s Birthing Center.
And now the fun has begun in earnest. Because Jenny is nursing Annika, she bears the brunt of the work right now, but I still get to change diapers, and rock or swing the little girl to sleep once her belly is full. In general, though, being a mom or a dad twice over is not something you can prepare for in any systematic way. Jenny and I have purchased several books, and family members have gifted us with two or three others. Talking him with last night, my oldest brother, whose youngest daughter is 14 months old, shared what he considers our mother’s all-time best advice, “Bruce, if it works, do it. If it doesn’t, try something else.”
July 2011, the family on my parents’ front porch in Amesville, Ohio. Annika was 3 weeks old.
Jenny and I did find a book several months ago that proved helpful with problems we were having getting Keila to sleep. One of several books written by the Sears family, The Baby Sleep Book provides a unique combination of many years of medical practice, personal experiences raising children, and good solid scientific research. I particularly like the introduction: “We’re going to start with some techniques that should help you get your child to sleep. Then we’re going to explain the theory that seems to explain why these techniques work. But every child is unique, as is every family, and you are the ones who need to observe and reflect and decide what the best solutions are for you.” I trust the people most who clearly understand my problem, can offer me new information and tools to work with, then put the responsibility for the next step squarely back in my hands.
Grandma Hare with Annika in the hospital. Jenny invited Catherine to be present during the birth, and she agreed.
I see the same process in God’s dealings with us. Jesus Christ came among us, was one of us, and came to fully understand what it means to be human. When we pray, Christ gets it. But Christ also challenges us to be the very best of who we are. To support us in our journey, our Lord provides us with ideas, techniques and strategies, through the Gospels and other Holy Texts, but also through the people and circumstances that surround us. Then our Savior carefully and tenderly places the responsibility for each new move firmly in our hands.
After raising Keila for over a year in rural Haiti, with all of the blessings of neighbors and friends who surrounded us as a family and upheld us during difficult moments, it became clear to Jenny and me that we were not prepared to raise two young children with severely limited access to reliable medical care, a reality that was also part of our Haitian context. It was a difficult decision for both of us. Jenny’s medical technology work with Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP)’s rural clinic, Mironda Heston, began showing excellent results in 2010 as the rural families around the clinic began depending more and more on the clinic’s services. My work with MPP’s project, the Road to Life Yard, has also been expanding. More people are trying out our ideas and techniques, changing them, asking new questions and challenging us, as a crew, to stay three or four steps ahead of the game. Nothing could be more exciting. And yet...
Emily, Keila’s cousin, playing with Keila and Mark in the pool at Geneva Hills camping center near Lancaster, Ohio. Playing with Keila in the water has been one of our very special joys, in Haiti, in Nicaragua and here in the States.
By God’s grace, we were able to enter into conversations of discernment with folks in the main offices of Louisville to address these competing visions of family and mission. Out of those conversations a sketch of a plan has been laid out to guide us in our next steps. One of the first is that Jenny will officially join me as a mission worker to form a mission team. This is now possible because we were successful in applying for Jenny’s legal residency this year. To begin this process, Jenny will participate in mission orientation in January 2012. After that, we will move as a family to the Dominican Republic, close enough to the border with Haiti that I can “commute.” While my work is not yet precisely defined, one element is clear: I will begin making my skills as an agriculturalist available to grassroots farmer organizations throughout Haiti, rather than just within MPP in the Central Plateau. As for Jenny, the team in World Mission has asked her to be open to working with programs of community health. Jenny has begun looking at information about some of the communities of Haitians living in the Dominican Republic, but she knows that working in community health will require her to stretch beyond her current professional skills.
So here we are, in the midst of several transitions, on the cusp of new ways of living, working and serving. There is shape and substance to what is next, even as there are many details still lacking. We walk more by faith than by sight, accepting the responsibility God has lovingly given us to make the best possible decisions with the information we have right now. Please keep us in your prayers, even as we also remember many of you in ours.
In Christ,
Mark, Jenny, Keila and Annika
The 2011 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 294
Give to Mark Hare's sending and support. [You can always give online. See the Give box in the left column of every page. —Ed.]
