So we arrived at the orphanage and we haven’t had internet to be able to post blogs or anything so I have written them before now but am posting them at the same time… Trying to get to the internet cafe tonight was an adventure in itself. We are going to be living and serving at an orphanage called All God’s Children in Fedja, Haiti for the month. We are up in the mountains and surrounded by mountains. It is so beautiful and peaceful here!!
The orphanage has about 69 orphans here right now and is currently housing refugee families as well. They hold church here at the orphanage so it is open to the community. It is nice here that all our meals are prepared for us – we don’t have to spend time going to the grocery store all the time or cooking. We are living here with the kids so we don’t have to walk so much everyday; although, we are still getting our exercise in. The first day we hiked some mountain to get to the river and we have been getting up at 6am to play basketball with the kids. The sun is VERY hot here… so that is the cool time of the day. This week we are getting to know the kids and plan for the next three weeks of sports camp/VBS. We also have different projects that they would like done around the orphanage. We are now digging a hole for them to put trash in. We will be doing some painting and whatever else we have time to work on that they need done.
We are all adjusting to being in a new culture and a new language. We try to communicate with them and our Spanish comes out! The first day was really difficult for me because I wanted to talk with the kids but I don’t know the language (this is really the first time I’ve been faced with that). Some of them are starting to learn English but mainly they can ask what our names are and tell us theirs. There are so many of them it is hard to remember who is who and the names are different they are hard to pronounce and remember. It is hard not being able to say more than that. In the DR I could communicate with the kids since I know some Spanish. I have been out of the country before but it was Central America where again I know at least the basics to communicate and Romania we always had someone with us that knew English and could translate. We do have people that can translate here but it isn’t 24/7. We are starting to learn some Creole and we are playing games with the kids that we don’t necessarily have to talk with them to connect with them.
The other thing we will be doing this month is helping out at church. We got here late Saturday/early Sunday and we were woken up for breakfast on Sunday and then had church. We get to church and they asked if anyone wanted to speak. We said we would get up and introduce ourselves and Will volunteered to share a sermon later. After we had introduced ourselves they asked if we had a song we wanted to sing. Sara said we didn’t have anything prepared… but we intend to be prepared the following Sundays in case they ask us to sing again. We will be taking turns giving the sermon though.
