Kurt Iversen’s Humble Obedience

Eight years ago Kurt Iversen said yes to sponsoring a child from Haiti through Compassion International for $32 a month.

Now, as a direct result of that first yes, he lives part time in Haiti and has spent the past eight years going back and forth. What started as simple yes, when he was asked to participate, has led to a changed life – a life with a trajectory set by asking God, "what do you want?"

In 2014, after Kurt had started sponsoring a little girl from Haiti, he was there helping to build playgrounds for schools and neighborhoods. When he started his sponsorship, he'd been told that the kids have a lot better chance of thriving in the world if their sponsor visits them.

So Kurt said yes, and planned a day trip to visit her. While he was there, he kept asking God, "what are you doing?"

When he returned to Florida after that first trip to Haiti, a friend had left him some messages about helping build hospitals back in Haiti. The messages were two weeks old already, but Kurt thought to himself, "this is probably a God thing." So he called up his friend thinking the opportunity had probably passed, but in the conversation he found out that the whole team had backed out, and they urgently needed help since the hospitals were going to begin construction soon.

Kurt told his friend that he'd blown all his money on his first trip to Haiti, but she told him, "don't worry, just buy your ticket and we'll cover everything else."

So Kurt said yes.

He bought his ticket, thinking, if this is truly what God wants, he'll provide. Two weeks later, the money used to pay for his ticket was back in his bank account – which was a truly irregular experience for him. He shared in amazement how he typically would never run up a bill on his credit card spending money he didn't have. And he never brought in the kind of money needed to afford a plane ticket in just a few weeks. He called up Lindsey, who had invited him on the trip, saying "this isn't normal!" She replied, "say goodbye to normal!"

After that first trip, Kurt said yes five more times, each time being farther and farther from normal. God miraculously provided each time, duplicating the first experience and creating a way for him to go back to the island to complete the hospital. During these several trip to and from the island, he began to ask God what he was going to do about the water problem there. Fresh water was so scarce that many people on the island were drinking salt water.

On a return trip to California, God seemed to answer Kurt's question before he had even asked it. Kurt was talking with Christine, and he found out about a guy in Ramos, California who'd already built a desalinator (a machine that removes the salt from ocean water) with the intent of sending it to Haiti – the island and the hospital compound seeming like the perfect place.

However, during the past three years as they've attempted to get everything in order, the hospital compound has built its own desalinator, making the desalinators that are currently en route from California unnecessary.

Instead, they've been re-routed to the opposite side of the island – a place that Kurt calls "the moon" because of its distance and disconnect from the rest of the island. The people on the moon-side of the island also drink salt water, and barely have a way to even water plants to grow food. There is no money or local economy there, there is no way to even preserve a fish that they pull out of the water. There are no doctors or nurses or teachers.

But they've discovered all those things will be possible with ice and a fresh water source, which can create a local economy.

Though the desalinators are going to be put to good use, in an area that is actually in need of what they can provide, Kurt and his team have learned that nothing really works out if you rush a plan and try and do it your own way – "you just end up stepping on your own feet."

What has actually worked in accomplishing anything on the island, is listening.

"Instead of saying, 'We're from America, and we do it this way,' we've instead learned that we are going to do it their way and just help keep it running. We've all seen how we can end up doing it wrong in their culture, and that's been the hardest thing to figure our there. You have to do it the way it works, not the way you think it's going to work. We have all watched and thought to ourselves, why isn't our stuff working here? And the best example of that is watching water flow uphill back in Haiti. What I've learned is that if you're going to do work in another place, you better expect water to flow uphill."

Kurt has spent many patient years asking God, what are you doing and what do you want –and while those years have been fruitful in getting work done – he is now seeing some of the real fruits of those years: connection. God has shown him to look past the stuff and get to the people, because "there's the gold."

Learning to listen has brought Kurt connection and friendship on the island. His team is made up of islanders, and they've become some of his best friends. They share meals together and time with each others families. They are people who really care about the community they're apart of and are orienting their lives around that – people who are making plans to build schools and build wells, creating opportunities for the people they live alongside to thrive. Though Kurt has brought this group of people together as a team learning to maintain the hospital and other projects, he has found that they're not on his team – he's on on theirs.