This month in Haiti we are doing a LOT of different ministries. We do construction, kids ministry, elderly care ministry, evangelism, and sometimes a combination of any of them. Here’s an example of what a day looks like for us!
One day this past week really stuck out to me. The morning we were planning to help build a wall in a nearby village to keep the goats out of some farming land. It rained heavily the night before and it produced less than ideal conditions for building a cement wall. So instead of building a wall, we visited and prayed with some people in the neighborhood we are living in. Last week my team and I visited these neighbors, and one of the ladies stuck out to me. That day she was our third person to visit that day, and I was so excited to see her again.
She is an elderly lady that has absolutely no use of both legs, and one arm. The other arm she only has minimal use of, and her voice is shallow and a bit scratchy. As we walked up, she was still laying in her bed. Her “bed” was outside of the actual house, under the covering of the porch. It absolutely reeked of urine, and she obviously hadn’t moved the whole morning. We decided we would stay and get her ready for the day. We got her a plastic mattress cover from the place we’re living this month for her grungy mattress that was put outside on the family’s porch. We put her in her wheelchair, clipped and painted her nails, gave her a sponge bath, fed her and prayed over her.
We all were pretty spicy at the lack of attention paid to her. I kept thinking how bad the mosquitoes are, and how she couldn’t call for help because of how shallow her voice is. We asked our host why she didn’t live at their elderly care home for women. Turns out the family refuses to accept help. Let me tell you, it took three or four of us to change her. It made sense why she wasn’t taken very good care of, if most of the people in the family were between five and twenty. Apparently, in the culture here it’s common to not accept very much help from others.
We came back from lunch, decompressed from the morning’s ministry, and planned for our afternoon.
A group of us went to spend a couple hours at our ministry’s elderly home for men. We go once a week, and this week we decided to make balloon animals and tell them the Noah’s ark story. They LOVED it. They were singing with all their balloons, and I cried laughing so many times. The week before we made maracas out of pringles cans and beads, and they all went to find them to sing with. Even out translator was losing it, because all four of the men were cracking us up.
After dinner our host brought over the puppy from his house and told us it was staying forever. My heart could’ve just exploded. We named him Max and have been playing with him nonstop since.
Thanks for keepin up with me!
Alexis ??
