14 hours of travel actually turned out to be not so bad. I
was able to get in some great conversations with some of my squad mates,
watched a movie, did some reading, some sleeping, and just did much of nothing for
a day. Usually, being the over productive self that I am, that would have driven
me crazy, but it was nice. Granted, I only had about 4 hours of sleep that
night because we had to leave by 5am, and then didn’t get into our place in
Grand Goave, Haiti until midnight, and had to be up for church at 6am, but it
wasn’t too bad all in all.
On our way to Grand Goave we went through Port-au-Prince to
drop off some of the other teams and were able to see some of the devastation,
including the sunken in the middle palace.
There are tents for miles, there were people all in the streets (mind you this
was a Saturday night so people were celebrating the weekend), and the streets
themselves were a wreck. It had rained and so everywhere was basically flooded.
After dropping off the rest of the squad my team got in a
short bus to go to Grand Goave. Well, this short bus had to be push-started….and
we had to push it UPHILL over a CURB because of the way the driver parked. Lol,
yes, we were quite the site for a good 15 minutes trying to get as many
volunteers to assist us with this seemingly impossible task; but we did it!
Thank you to those who pitched in!
Once on our way to Grand Goave, which was only supposed to
take an hour and a half, ended up taking a good 3 hours, where car exhaust
flooded the bus while we waited our turn to essentially float through the river
flowing across the street. To pass the time we decided to sing worship songs,
which was actually really helpful and a lot of fun.
Church the next morning, which Tommy, our leader, spoke at
and did an amazing job, was great. The called us up to introduce the newbies
for the month, and then greeted us with hugs afterward. There are actually a
number of groups of missionaries here in this tiny Grand Goave at the Mission
of Hope church, and one of the gentleman even prayed for us on the World Race.
After church they took us to where we will be staying this
next month…oh my goodness are we spoiled! We are literally 30 feet from the
ocean. We are not exactly staying on the sand/rocks of the beach, because here
is a barrier around where a compound used to be before it fell, which is where
we are staying, so it is safe to leave all of our stuff out, but that does not
stop us from being in the water or admiring the ocean every chance we get.
I love it here, God has blessed us with an amazing place.
All three meals are provided, and are delicious! No electricity, but that is
alright, it is nice to go to bed early. I am just so looking forward to what
the Lord has in store for Transformers this month!
