Do you ever feel like you know exactly what God is teaching you, the moment he is teaching it? Like when everything seems to fall perfectly into place and it seems that there is an arrow pointing you in the direction you’re headed.

Yeah, me neither.

But, believing in Jesus means not only accepting what he did for us on the cross all those years ago, but what he is doing for us each day.

We arrived in Haiti yesterday morning. After the four-hour drive from Port-Au-Prince to Pignon, Jean Robert and his wife Natasha had a meal waiting for us. John and I had fully expected to be making our own meals and be sleeping in hammocks, but apparently Jean had a different plan. After we ate lunch I took John for a tour of the AIM property and the beauty of the land.

We also went into town to try and get a Haitian cell phone, which proved to be a lengthy, arduous process that we are still waiting on. Then, we took a taxi back to Jean Robert’s house, admitting defeat on the cell phone ordeal. It was nice to be able to see my friends in town, but the entire afternoon we pretty much accomplished nothing tangible.

When we got back to our dorm, John and I took the hammocks we planned to sleep in and hung them from two palm trees in front of the house. From there we watched the sun set and talked with Jean Robert about our plans and goals for the week. We then learned the Jean had dinner cooked or us as well. I told Jean that we definitely didn’t need three meals a day, but he insisted.

With the sun down and bellies full, we all just went to bed. I tried to write write this, but I was too exhausted. However, when I tried to sleep, my mind was hung up on something. I can only describe it as an unsettling feeling. My heart was sad and my mind was confused. Laying awake for hours, I talked through it with God.

What I came to was this, “I came not to be served, but to serve.” That is exactly how I felt. We traveled all this way to Haiti, and on the first day we did nothing but be served food by people that had less than we did.

The next morning, we reflected on the day before and how it could be better. I re-lived the entire day, trying to figure out how we could have served. Then, I remembered the sign that was on the van we drove from Port. The sign across the window read, “PATIENCE.” Following that, we sat around in town for four hours while the street vendors argued about how to get a Digicel SIM card to work in and iPhone.

When I stopped focusing on all of the things that went wrong, I remembered the passion that Jean spoke with when we discussed AIM, and the ways God had been moving. I remembered the smile on my friend Stanley’s face when we found each other in town. Most of all, I remembered that God has us here for a reason, and if we are going to be in Haiti, we are going to have to learn some really good patience. We are seeking a long-term solution, not a short-term fix.

We are here to serve. In fact, we have plans to do just that today, but first God needed to teach me patience. Today, he will be teaching me something too. I need to remind myself that believing in Jesus means believing in what he is doing in us each day.