I Found JESUS In Haiti

White Sidewall Shoes

The outburst was unnecessary, but I let it rip anyway. The day had been building up to some kind of explosion, and that was it.

"You nitwits have lost my luggage! What kind of half-baked operation are you running?" I shouted. I was angry, and about 300 people in the hot Port-au-Prince airport could tell it.

Looking back on it, I know they couldn't help it. The U.S. airline had been at fault, not these people of Haiti. But I made a fair fool of myself anyhow and finally attracted the attention of an airport representative in a smart uniform. The baggage handlers could speak only their own Creole, but this uniformed supervisor addressed me with a smile and perfect English, Caribbean style, with a British accent.

"May I assist you to my office?"

I couldn't refuse. Once there, he assured me that the baggage would come through later in the day, and until then I was to be the guest of the airline at a downtown hotel in Port-au-Prince, shop for a suitable outfit to wear, and eat at their expense at one of the American-style restaurants near the palace. I couldn't ask for more.

A little better composed, I left the office. It was then I saw them for the first time, the white sidewall shoes.

Joe stood smiling at me, just outside the office, his feet encased in homemade shoes with rough canvas tops and rubber soles from tires that still bore traces of their white sidewalls.

"That was easy, wasn't it?" he said in fairly understandable English.

"I beg your pardon?"

He smiled again. "Your tour group told me to stay here and tell you that they are on a bus headed for this restaurant." He handed me a card that said "Choo-choo Restaurant."

"I'm to take you there."

He led me outside. I followed the white sidewall shoes, and we made our way through smiling Haitians, wall-to-wall blacks who smiled and went on their way.

At the curb was a tap-tap, a pickup truck outfitted in the back with two benches so people could sit in it. This one had a solid top to protect the passengers and was colorfully decorated in yellows and reds with the words, "Queen of the Seas," painted broadly on the sides.

In and out of traffic, with the roar of near-misses and the honking of horns from each and every car that came our way, including our own tap-tap, I could not keep from noticing the rough ride.

Out into the open country we went for just a few hundred yards, and then there was the quaint restaurant. Inside, it was what it said, a replica train yard, with model electric trains circling the huge tables at which the customers sat. A German trainman from Europe ran the place. There sat my two dozen friends, laughing and enjoying the colorful scenery and chugging of the model trains as they served the table.

But Joe stayed in my mind. As we entered, I asked him, "Will you eat here, too?"

Something about his face, something about his mouth, something in the soul of him showed through. "No, my Marie will be waiting." His eyes scanned the room. Somehow I knew he had never eaten in a restaurant.

I took his arm. "Tonight Marie dines alone." I pulled him to the table and announced, "This is my friend, Joe, and he's my guest for tonight." Joe protested, but I insisted. He ate in silence. The American food served by the small chugging train was strange to him.

After the meal, I was about to give him my farewell and join the tour group for an evening in Port-au-Prince's night life when I again saw something in his eyes.

He motioned me aside. "How will I tell Marie?'

I was stumped. Then he asked, "Would you come with me and tell her?" He assured me that he would pay for the tap-tap to take me back to the nightclub to rejoin my friends.

A strange feeling came over me. I told my friends that I'd join them later. Then we were off. As we rode through the crowded streets, once again in the big city, heading out to the north, I looked at the throngs--thousands upon thousands of black faces, poor, incredibly poor, but happy. Winding our way, we finally came to a spot out in the countryside that swept to close to the crowded city.

We walked down a dark, night-embraced lane with hard dirt underfoot. Then a door, a room, faces. Joe explained in Creole, and I nodded. As my eyes got used to the weak kerosene lamp, I saw that Marie and the three children were about to eat.

Joe said, "She says you must have coffee." Something in his face, something that I felt came from his soul, compelled me to accept. A few more minutes wouldn't hurt.

They bowed in prayer. Joe prayed in English. "Thank you for this kind American who is so rich. Bless his family while he is here."

I heard little else. I remembered my wife in the alcoholism center. I remembered my daughter, on parole as a drug handler. "Yes, God, if you are there, help them. And help me."

They ate, and I drank my coffee. Joe explained that his Marie worked in a cane factory, and he was employed by the Haitian Sugar Company as a helper on the train that ran to the cane fields. They were lucky. 

Then I remembered the shoes. Lucky, but not enough to buy a pair of shoes. 

We laughed, and they asked dozens of questions about America. All the white people they had seen in the three years since they had come in from their tiny village were always so busy that Joe and Marie knew little about the world outside their country. They didn't even know of the famous citadel on the north coast of their own land. 

"Why are you here?"

Joe was serious. He couldn't seem to understand that people in America had enough money to afford to travel to another country just to visit and relax. I tried to explain, but they could not believe me. I must be on some business, they felt. 

"We miss the village," Joe explained. "But we have Jesus and we are happy."

"Oh, if only I could have that simple assurance of joy," I thought. 

"We will go to church tonight. Will you go with us?"

I didn't know what to say. Church? How long had it been? Ane here in this sad, poor land? Those eyes of Joe's again--they got me. Suddenly I had a longing to have the peace and joy and love that I felt in this tiny shack on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. 

"Yes, I'd like to go." Joe assured me he would get me to the big hotel that night, and I could rejoin my friends. Then we were off. 

The church was also crowded--again, wall-to-wall people. The children sat on the floor, the women stood nearby. Some of the men sat, some stood looking in, and all around there was joy and laughter. Guitars were produced. Creole and French singing blended. Nothing was in English, and I was the only white person present. But the same feeling was abroad in that place that I had seen in Joe's face. A peace, a serenity, a clam assurance that someone else was in charge, a feeling that no matter what might happen--catastrophe, physical danger, political revolution--nothing could shake the faith these people had. It was marvelous. It was refreshingly like what I remembered from my home long ago. 

Then they started singing in Creole some of the songs we'd sung when I wass a kid. I picked out "Only Trust Him" and "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder." Then they began singing "Just as I Am." My heart couldn't take it. I wept. 

They sang in Creole, and I sang in English. The words, the spirit, the total impact of that song flooded my mind with memories of my mother's prayers. I saw that old church house in the country. How long ago? Thirty years? Forty?

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Joe. "Sir, do you want my Jesus?" That was all he said. To this day the words are burned on my heart. I turned. I saw those eyes, felt them reach out. In a flash I was kneeling with Joe at a rough board altar rail. Splinters tore at my arms, but I felt nothing. We prayed. I surrended my life. 

Now, as I look back, all I can do is weep in amazement at the path God led me on that night. If I hadn't lost my luggage--if I hadn't seen those shoes. 

Nothing would do but that we all should celebrate, singing and jumping around after the service. Someone produced cokes. I learned later that Joe paid for them with nearly half his weekly salary; I still get misty-eyed at this sacrifice just so we could celebrate. Later on, we headed home. Marie was singing. The children were asleep in Joe's old truck. We lumbered along, and we men were silent. 

I was shocked out of my personal thoughts as Joe stopped the little truck by the side of the road. 

"You must decide," he said.

"What?" I asked. 

"Your plan was to rejoin your friends."

"Yes."

"And what will they do? It is ten at night?"

I thought. Then I saw what he meant. They would be in some nightclub till three in the morning. Then there would be days of drinking and sightseeing. I was suddenly a stranger to my own people and a brother to a poverty-stricken Haitian. What could I do?

"I can't go back," was all I said. 

Joe started the truck, and we went on in silence. 

"Brothers are to help," was all he said as we parked by his shack. With no explanation, no excuses, Joe fixed a place in the corner of the crude house. My bed was a mattress of cane fiber and a much-mended blanket. But I slept like a baby.

Early the next morning I awoke to busy feet all about me. Before daybreak Joe and Marie were hard at work. Joe took me with him to the steam engine, and I rode all day on the cane train. I had three glorious days of spiritual and mental freedom. I learned to know and love little Jean and Hector and Jacques. Marie was so kind, so gentle, so thoughtful. 

And Joe--nearly illiterate, poor, younger than I--Joe became my spiritual big brother. In his halting English he taught me as we rode the narrow guage rails. While the field workers loaded the train, he read to me from Paul and the Gospels. 

Soon I had to say, "Joe, today my plane leaves for the U.S. I don't know what my fun-loving tour friends think has happened to me, but I must go." I pressed some money into Marie's hands. She wept. I hugged Joe, and we both wept. Then the truck ride to the airport!

My friends were boarding the plane as I went to the gate. In one last hug of Christian love, I pulled myself from Joe. Suddenly he thrust a package into my hands and was gone, slipping through the crowd with ease. 

I stood and watched him. 

I listened to my friends curse the incompetence of the black airport workers. I overheard the laughter in the crowd as a poor man walked by with a hole in the back of his pants. A foul-smelling, naked boy brushed one tourist's leg, and he was cursed in lurid English. 

My heart was heavy for those people, those poverty-stricken Haitians. I opened the brown bag Joe had given me. I wept. Then I felt so very sorry for those sin-sick tour mates of mine. I reached in and took out a worn pair of white sidewall shoes, clutched them to my heart, and prayed for the strength and wisdom I would need on the flight to witness for Jesus to those needy, needy people.

                                                     Sunday School Beacon