Prevalent destruction

Destruction is used to prevailing over preservation here. Darkness is used to prevailing over light. Death is used to prevailing over life. 

It's hard to understand how and why. "Why can't people just keep things nice?" you might wonder. 

Case in point: 

It's amazing how hard you have to fight just to be able to keep things nice. You basically have to lock them up and watch every time anyone gets them out, closely supervising their use and training people how to treat them properly.

For instance...
•  Someone donated about 20 paintbrushes to the creche. I found them in the storage room with the paint dried in the brush. From the looks of them, they were probably used once, but now they're beyond hope.
•  The kids got the markers out and wrote with them and then threw them on the floor with the caps off. Life expectancy of markers: one use (because they will be dry for the second use).
•  I found the pages of a book scattered all over the yard. Someone had torn them out and allowed them to blow everywhere. (See the above picture, where the pages are compiled and stacked up in order. This is the spine of the book.)
•  I have been playing "Memory" with the older kids. The game was brand new when I got it out, and by the end of the first round, some of the cards were creased, one had the corner chewed off, and all of them were grimy. And these are not just glossy paper cards that you could shuffle--they are like board book material; very durable and well-made. So I had to stop the game and point out the fact that "No, we do not treat our game like this," and carefully explain the difference between a still-good card and a messed-up one. The kids were very receptive to this training, but I still had to repeat essentially the same message every round for about 3 days before it started to sink in.

So pray for patience and understanding as I try not to get frustrated with what seems to me senseless and needless destruction. Destruction of things is accepted as the status quo here. No one thinks anything of it. It's so normal for things to break right away or be stolen or lost that no one bothers to fight against it. It's tiring to have to fight so hard just to stem the tide of waste and loss and maintain a semblance of normalcy.  So how much harder would it be to actually advance and prosper?

Thankfully, we serve a big God, and the darkness will never prevail against Him. When He fights for a cause, He never tires or gets discouraged.

"He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles [Haiti!] shall wait for his law." Isaiah 42:4