Sometimes our creativity and sense of adventure causes us to be unconventional in our solutions, but that’s what causes us to rise above and find a solution. – Tony Hsieh – CEO – Zappos.com

Today we found ourselves facing an interesting dilemma.

What to do with 75 children when instructing their parents on how to use their new stoves? The solution: a conga line!

As long as I live, I’ll never forget this afternoon. After making the 1/2 hour drive Haitianville, we arrived at a new refugee camp. Our purpose was to pass out 20 portable stoves to some of the people living in this camp.

As soon as we arrived the children began to gather and before we knew it, they were everywhere. Half of our team began teaching the parents how to assemble and use the stoves while the other half began to interact with the children in the open lot next to us. Though I was keeping a close on on the 1/2 with the children, I also had to guard our stash of stoves from people that were not supposed to take them…

Out of nowhere our attention shifted to outcry of children shouting and laughing. I looked up to see Teresa, Kerren and one of our interpreters Sam, leading the largest conga line north of the equator. Following them were 75 kids laughing, singing and dancing.

From this moment forward there was nothing but smiles. Teresa, Kerren and Krisnee were smiling from ear to ear as they led the children in a giant game of Simon says and then got to pray with the children. Daron, Adrian and Justin were smiling as they got to deliver stoves to people’s tents. Those receiving the stoves were laughing, crying and hugging our guys as their cooking would now be much easier. Best of all the parents of these children were smiling as they watched their own sons and daughters getting to enjoy their childhood.

Standing their on top of our truck guarding the stoves was personally one of the greatest moments of our trip because I got to watch it all. The children, the parents and our team. Driving home that night, I realized my cheeks were literally hurting because I too had not stopped smiling.

Because of the creativity and sense of adventure caused a couple of our gals to be unconventional in our solution, not only was a physical need met but a spiritual one as well. And that is a model I see Jesus using in the gospels again and again.

By Ezra Stanton

Follow @ezrastanton on Twitter.

In March, Ezra will return to Haiti. With this, please follow back to read about his experiences. Until then, each week leading up to his trip, we will post other moments from Haiti from his last trip in November, 2010.