It was a verse of scripture a young mother couldn't forget when the walls of her home started collapsing in Haiti. It is a verse we all must remember when earthquakes come.

January 27, 2010

The Family the Lord Saved in Haiti

A young mother in the kitchen seeing the evening dinner with pots and pans flying everywhere, the father on the couch, thrown off in a rumble, both thinking, “Where is our son, our baby boy?” And for the mother, a verse of scripture comes to her mind. A verse of scripture, all the mother could think about over and over when the earthquake hit Haiti. First then in searching for her son and then in finding her husband as they worked their way out of their home in Port au Prince that was continuing to collapse around them. What comes to your mind when your house is collapsing around you, when your life is falling apart? For the young mother, Wilhelmina Krul who’s from Chilliwack, British Columbia it was Proverbs 3:5 and 6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Welcome to Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris telling the great story that’s all about Jesus on a program called, “The Family the Lord Saved in Haiti”. Wilhelmina Krul and her pilot husband Jason with Missionary Aviation Fellowship made it through and they found their 2 year Jayden. Their lungs are still filled with earthquake dust causing them to cough frequently, but they got out as Jason goes back later this week to fly and work with MAF. In the next few minutes I want you to meet this young couple, the Krul family from a Mennonite Dutch area east of Vancouver. We’re still asking for help in Haiti asking for you to pray first and second, give smart. And remember, 100% of your gift to Haiti through Haven goes to Haiti, not a dime for Haven. Just go to our website for more details for helping partner ministries HCJB Global and their Rapid Response Medical team and also Missionary Flights International. And by the way, it’s MFI that flew the Krul’s out to safety. Just go to haventoday.org or call us at 1-800-654-2836, h.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y, haventoday.org or 1-800-654-2836 and if you want to see a picture of the Krul family, mother, dad and little Jayden, it’s there on our website, the homepage at haventoday.org. And as we begin, remember I’m reading the Bible in 90 days and I want to still invite you to join me. You can get that special NIV large print version that I’m using that gives you the start and stopping points each day or you can just download the schedule from our website or give us a call on our toll free number if you don’t have the internet and you can get the Bible or we’ll mail a copy of the schedule to you. It’s still January and you can still read the Bible in 90 days.

Song: I Will Go
Performed by: River

The group is called, River the song is “I Will Go” and this is Haven Today and the program is called, “The Family God Saved in Haiti”. Remember that verse that that young mother thought of the moment the walls came tumbling down in their house and even as she was thinking about, “Where’s my baby?” and then “Where’s my husband?” and then “How do we all get out of here safely?” The scripture text that kept coming back to her, Proverbs 3, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your path.” On the line with us from British Columbia, Canada is Jason Krul. He’s a pilot with Missionary Aviation Fellowship which is headquartered in Port au Prince. And they’re working hard even though they’re not quite flying yet and he’s getting a few days breather back home. His wife and baby will stay. Well, Jason I’m glad you’re alive and welcome to Haven Today.
JC: Yeah, thank you for having me on the show here.
CM: Jason Krul, my brother in Christ, tell us what it was like. Tell us what happened?
JC: I was feeling a little sick, several days before I had spent the day home sick and I was dealing with some bronchitis. And that Tuesday morning I decided to go to work and I put a full day’s work in and came home fairly tired and not feeling that great. So I went to the living room and lay down on the couch to have a quick nap. My wife was in the kitchen making some dinner and my 2 year old son was playing in the playroom. And as I started to drowse off I could feel myself drifting off to sleep. The next thing I remember I was laying in the middle of the living room floor. The earthquake had thrown me horizontally off the couch, 5 feet off the couch and I landed in the middle of the floor. I was quite dazed and I didn’t, had no idea what had happened as I picked myself up off the ground. And as I stood up, things were falling off of my cabinet, the TV flew off the cabinet towards me, pictures hanging on the walls were all coming down and all the ornaments on the shelving that I had were all coming crashing down. And I could feel the building swaying violently, the floor shaking violently and a noise like a freight train coming past our house. It took me a little bit to stand up and to really realize what was really going on here. And when I had realized that, about that time I heard my wife screaming in the kitchen and I ran in to meet her. It wasn’t until I had stepped outside that I realized the full magnitude of this earthquake.
CM: What about your son at the time? I know your son Jayden figures into this too, you must have been concerned about him Jason.
JC: Yeah, initially I heard my wife yelling in the kitchen and I ran to meet her and she asked me, “Where’s Jayden? Where’s our son? Where’s Jayden?” So I spun around and made my way back through the hallways back to the playroom to try to find my, my 2 year old son. And I had, you know, a bad feeling and I, you know, was really hoping and praying that he was OK as I made my way through the building. It was incredibly hard to walk as you can imagine, the walls swaying and things falling down, the floor waving. And I had, I had these pictures of him being trapped underneath a shelving unit or underneath things that had fallen off, off the walls. And I made my way over to the play room there and I seen him laying on his back and sliding back and forth across the floor. I scooped, I stepped down and I scooped him up in my arms and I had to decide whether to hold him there and stay there. It was pretty eminent that our building was going to, our house was going to collapse soon and I didn’t think it would stand much longer, but then I decided to hold onto him and I put my head down and I made a run for the doorway where my wife was and I met her there.
CM: It’s not something you really signed up for when you became a pilot with MAF I guess, but somehow the Lord broke through and he got you guys back safely. You were coughing before we started recording. I know your wife’s been coughing. That’s one of the after effects that people still in Haiti are having to cope with, isn’t it?
JC: Absolutely. As I mentioned before, I had some bronchitis before that and I was just trying to get better from it before the earthquake. But now it’s just the, you know it was several days after the earthquake that we were, you know I was helping outside with several different relief efforts and just spending the time outside, the immense amount of dust around, settling around from the buildings that collapsed, it just affected every single person that I knew personally was hacking and coughing pretty badly. Quite a few people were wearing little masks, dust masks as they were digging in the rubble and walking down the streets. It does have a lot of effect and I feel like I’m slowly starting to get better from that.
CM: Jason Krul, in British Columbia now but from Port au Prince with MAF. You almost lost your life with the lives of your family, so many thousands have died, yet you went to Haiti knowing there were risks and it’s not the safest place in the world, not like British Columbia and your rarified air where you’re from. What do you think the Lord wants you to take away from all this?
JC: Yeah, that’s a good question and I’ve often asked myself the same thing. Being a young family as somebody else you may know or yourself. We’re a young family. I’m 24 years old and we moved to Haiti about a year and a half ago. And we were fully aware of the risks involved in living in Haiti, not so much earthquakes, but of violence and of hurricanes. We were kind of prepared for that as much as we could and we knew strongly and firmly that the Lord was calling us to this work and we also knew that the safest place for us was to be in the center of the Lord’s will where we were working. And after experiencing this earthquake, it was really an amazing picture of the Lord’s providence in our life, how the Lord protected us, protected my son. So many things could have been differently, as you mentioned thousands were killed, and there were so many areas or places where we could have been. We could have been at the grocery store that collapsed or so many places. And it was just amazing to see the Lord’s providence and his unfolding hand, not only in his sparing us but also in his provision for us as we lived in Haiti for those following days. You know, strengthening me as I worked in a medical clinic, you know sewing people up and providing medical care. So many times I can see again the Lord’s provision. And what can I take away from this? I guess, you know, a fuller realization of the Lord’s protection and care and provision for us. As I’m anxious to get back to Haiti
CM: Yes
JC: and I hope to be returning later this week,
CM: Yes
JC: I can go back knowing that the Lord will continue to provide for us and his, you know, that he’s smiling upon the work that MAF is doing.
CM: Jason, can you pass the phone over to Wilhelmina, your wife. I’ve got a couple of questions for her too. What about you? You’re a mother of a 2 year old and what was running through your mind when you just felt your home begin to shake and the walls begin to come tumbling down around you?
WC: Well, at first when I felt it I was just really unsure what was going on. Like Jason said, Haiti hadn’t had an earthquake for 200 years so it wasn’t something we were expecting at all. And just not knowing what was going to happen, that was scary. And not knowing where Jayden was, that was also really, it was very frightening. But yeah, Jason was able to, my husband was able to find Jayden and we all huddled in a doorway and I guess the realization how fragile our lives are. Realizing that God is in control, but also we make all kinds of plans for different things, what we want to do for our day, I was planning to make dinner and we’re, you know, you go day by day with all your plans and you know, that can change in an instant.
CM: What do you think the Lord has taught you as a result of living through something most of us hopefully will never have to live through, and that’s a 7.0 earthquake?
WC: It made me realize even more how intricately he’s involved in every moment of our lives. There’s so many instances, you know, like Jason said, you know, the grocery store. We were thinking about going there right at that time. And it’s completely gone. And one of the exterior walls like that runs alongside our property collapsed and my son and his 2 friends were playing there an hour earlier and that just is rubble now. The whole yard there is just covered in rubble. And God is in control of every moment of our lives.
CM: You were feeling OK. You were handling things until then you’re on the plane, you’re on that MFI plane and you finally, I guess felt like you could get sick, it was alright to be sick, but you passed out for a minute didn’t you? Tell me about that?
WC: Well I guess finally, the whole time you’re, we were in Haiti we were just going through, you know, one aftershock after another and it was just very scary, not like having, constantly keeping Jayden in my sight, and you know, keeping, you know, constantly looking where my exits are and that I can get out of the house as quickly as possible when the next aftershock hit and finally when we were in the airplane and when we were flying to Florida, I was just suddenly, I don’t know I guess I kind of felt safe for the moment and all that, the lack of sleep, the lack of food, the lack of water, everything that we’d been going through in the last days just hit me.
CM: Wilhelmina, thank you so much. Can I pray for you and Jason?
Dear Father in Heaven, you know Janet and I have been very concerned about the Kruls and we’ve prayed for them even though we’ve never met them. And we feel like we know them from reading the blog as Wilhelmina was writing and offering information and the pictures. Lord would you just protect this family and be with them? Be with Jason as he goes back, as MAF gets back up to full speed after having all that destruction at their center in Port au Prince. Just be with them as a family when they have to be separated, Wilhelmina and their 2 year old Jayden. Lord, somehow may this be a lesson for Jayden’s life even though he may not remember it when he’s grown, but just like the Exodus where you saved your people is a lesson to all of us, may their son know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, may he grow up in the ways of the Lord. And Lord for all your people that are still working, the medical professionals, the people that are doing all kinds of work right now in Haiti, would you just be with them. And may your kingdom grow even in Haiti as a result of this earthquake? We pray this now in the name of Christ Jesus, amen.
Haven Today and “The Family the Lord Saved in Haiti”. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths.” There are 2 things that I think we can learn from the Krul’s experience. First, the Lord is sovereign and I think that came through in what you heard both Jason as well as Wilhelmina say. And second, we can trust him. When the Krul’s got to the gate at the airport in Haiti, in Port au Prince, it should have been a moment of great relief. They were finally going to be airlifted out to safety and of course medical care and food and water. We have that in the United States, they have that in Canada. But they were stopped by a guard. Other teammates were allowed through but the guard wouldn’t let them through because they were Canadian, not Americans. In her blog Wilhelmina wrote what she thought at that moment as she held her little boy. She said, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Haiti it’s that God is sovereign and we have to trust in him.” When life disintegrates into chaos and desperate things are happening we can know that the Lord is in control. We can know it, we can trust him for it. As Wilhelmina said, he is sovereign, he rules, which means we can move into trust mode even at those moments of desperation when the walls of our home are collapsing around us, the Lord is in control. He can handle it. Trust in him with all your heart, don’t lean on your own understanding. Don’t try to figure out how he’s going to work things out. Just acknowledge him, look to him, trust in him, cry out to him, lean on him with all your weight. He will direct your paths. He’s going to lead you, he’s going to care for you. And in the Krul’s case he demonstrated his sovereign care for them in the very next few minutes. They found another gate with a guard who let them through and they made their flight home. But even if that had not happened, the Krul’s could still have trusted that the Lord is in control, that he had their lives in his hands and that nothing could happen to separate them from his will for their lives. The Lord rules and that realization is like a refuge in the midst of chaos and suffering. And it’s the same for all of us. Whatever happens, he has allowed it, but he is in control. And for believers, he will work it together for good. He will weave it into his story for my life, your life, a story that he’s written with love that will all turn out in the end to have a perfect plan for my good, your good and for his glory. He’s sovereign. We can trust him. We’re called to trust him. Trust is what he’s looking for from us. As Paul the Apostle says in Romans 8:28, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” It’s not just Paul who tells us that God is sovereign and that we can trust him. The entire Bible shouts that message from beginning to end. He’s accomplishing his plan for his world, working in and through the actions of those who think they rule. But he isn’t sovereign only in the big things. He rules in the little things too. Every molecule, every moment ruled by the Lord. Not a sparrow falls from the sky as a result of arbitrary circumstances. That’s what Jesus told us in Matthew 10:29. Everything that happens, happens with the will of the Father. The Father is sovereign. He rules over his world, even over the death of a single sparrow. So Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid. You’re worth more than many sparrows. The Father even keeps track of the hairs on your head.” I love that because I don’t have many left. The Bible is full of examples of people who trusted in God’s sovereign control over their lives, trusted in him at those crucial, desperate moments like when the Krul’s trusted in him at the airport and when the earthquake first hit. The story of Joseph in Genesis is a wonderful example. You remember, he was sold into slavery by his brothers and then wrongfully imprisoned and eventually elevated to a position of power in Egypt second only to Pharaoh. Was his life a series of random events? Listen to what he tells his brothers when they’re terrified to find him still alive and in such a powerful position. Genesis 45, “Do not be distressed and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me here because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. It was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.” Understanding that God is in control not only allowed Joseph to trust in him through years of suffering, it set him free to forgive his brothers. Here’s another example, the very best example of all. Jesus. Jesus beaten and bound, standing silently before Pilate, John 19:10, “’Do you refuse to speak to me?’ Pilate said, ‘Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?’” And in verse 11 Jesus answers, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.” Jesus knew that his suffering was not random. His father was in control still. Pilate thought he was sovereign over Jesus but Jesus corrected him. “You only have power because it’s been given to you from above. My Father, the Heavenly Father, God Almighty is in control.” The Lord is sovereign. He works all things together for our good according to his love, according to his grace so we can trust him. We’re called to trust him, to hide in his sovereignty like a fortress, like a tall tower and find our peace even in the chaos of life, whether it’s Haiti or where you live, Jesus reigns. You’re listening to Haven Today and the program is called, “The Family the Lord Saved in Haiti”. Didn’t you appreciate hearing them talk? Here this young couple has just started their life together, but a life in Christ. The Lord has given them a beautiful little 2 year old boy and then he saved their lives, but he’s not through with them yet and he’s not through with you either. Well, what are you going to do about Haiti? We’ve been asking you for, what 2 weeks now since that earthquake first hit? We’ve been asking you to pray first and give smart. Be careful how you give. And may I implore you to pray about it but then give through some organization that isn’t just going to be giving a cup of water but they’re going to be helping with relief work or transportation in or whatever, they’re going to be doing it in the name of Jesus. Well, that is important, I think for all of us. Go to our website, make your gift securely. 100% of your gift goes directly to Haiti, not a dime for Haven. So tell us when you go online at haventoday.org. You’ll see, it’s clear there, how much you want to give to Haiti, how much you want to give to Haven. Yes, we are a listener supported ministry but we just want to be helping in this work as well. So thank you for what you can give to help this wrecked nation. Thank you for what you can give to Haven as we end January together. H.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y and you can also call us, the toll free number is 1-800-654-2836. And also, are you going to join me in reading the Bible in 90 days? Plan’s there on the website, you can download it there. You can call us if you don’t have the internet. But you can also get this special large print NIV Bible that I’m using. It’s a hard back and it tells you the starting and stopping points every 12 pages. If you’re one of those who’s only dreamed of reading the scriptures all the way through, why not read it cover to cover in 90 days. And believe me that will encourage you to go back and study more deeply. I’m Charles Morris and I want to thank you for joining me and the Krul family. Would you come back again tomorrow when we do what we do every day, share the great story? It’s all about Jesus here on Haven Today.