Only a month before we were supposed to be hitting the Tarmac in Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture International Airport, I was waking up in a post-op bed after my second, yes second brush with cards equina syndrome.
This would be my third and my wife's first trip the Ouest, Haiti's rural communities as part of a mobile clinic with ABWE's International Healthcare Ministries. While my wife was mentally preparing herself to travel alone into Haiti, her first trip of this kind to a developing nation, I was praying daily for just enough healing to travel with her.
I had been so sure that the Holy Spirit had put this trip on my heart several months earlier. Now I was utterly confused. Just days before Elizabeth would be leaving and my non-refundable airline seat would remain vacant, I was to see my neurosurgeon. We brought photos with us to this appointment to show the condition of the roads in the area, the means by which we would travel them (mostly by all-terrain vehicle) and the harsh environment I which we'd be working.
Elizabeth listened intently as I described the trip to my meticulous surgeon, interjecting details about the trip that she thought I might be understating. She later confessed that she kind of wanted the neurosurgeon to say "No, you aren't going" because she couldn't go through another serious spinal complication.
To both of our surprise, the surgeon gave some instructions on how to protect myself and guard my back and also his blessing for this life changing mission trip to some of the poorest and most malnourished people in the Western Hemisphere.
Nerve-wracking as it was, traveling in the back of Land Cruisers, flat bed 4x4 freight trucks and ATVs, our magnificent loving and powerful Lord held me together throughout the trip as lives and souls were saved by His sovereign providence and unfathomably deep love.
