Hello friends!!!!! I am four days into ministry here in Haiti! What an incredible week it has been. We arrived in Port au Prince on Tuesday afternoon. The flight over the Caribbean was STUNNING! I don’t know how to describe the colors that we flew over. Every shade of blue, teal, and aqua you can imagine. It almost didn’t look real. We landed at the airport around noon and it was HOT!!! (Mom, you would be in heaven) The airport in Port au Prince is nothing but chaos. We paid our tourist fee, and went threw customs with out too many issues until we had to walk out with our bags. None of us speak Creole and we had a million different men speaking very sternly to us, some were having their bags searched and some people were aloud to go right threw. It was difficult to know who actually worked at the airport and who was just kind of there. When we walked out of the tiny airport there were probably around 200 men all just standing outside. Several of them walked right up to us and started pushing our bags. We were told ahead of time that they would do this and then ask for money so as politely as possible we told them no thanks and tried our best to navigate threw the swarm of people to find our ministry contacts. The bus ride from the airport blew my mind. Devastation and poverty like I have never seen. It was about a 40 minute drive from the airport to the Mission of Hope campus. Rules of the road in Haiti: if there’s open space move into it, and honk your horn as aloud as you can! (Praise God we all survived the ride!) Along the way we passed market places, villages, people selling things along the roads, children playing in the dirt, loose goats and the skinniest cows ever, and some of the bluest water I’ve ever seen beside some beautiful mountains.
Once we arrived at Mission of Hope we had some lunch and one of the staff members, Elizabeth, came and spoke to us about the vision of Mission of Hope. “as an organization following Jesus Christ, Mission of Hope exists to bring life transformation to every man, women and child in Haiti”. And Jesus is doing exactly that threw this organization. They are working towards having everything be run by the Haitian people. They want to empower them to be self sustaining and self reliant. Our first day of ministry my team and I helped clean out the soon to be medical super clinic. MOH helps so many Haitian people by providing medical care. The stories of the medical miracles I’ve heard since being here are incredible. The work they did during the earthquake of 2010 is AMAZING (ask me about some of the stories when we chat). Also, in Haitian culture, if you are missing any limbs you are immediately outcast because they believe you have nothing to contribute. So, MOH has a prosthetic workshop where they create prosthetics for adults and children so they are still able to live and contribute to their communities. And when I say workshop I mean a non air conditioned building where one man named NoNo works tirelessly building these AMAZING limbs by hand.
Day two we went over to another MOH campus and helped move pavers….ALL DAY. Hundreds of them!!! It was one of the most exhausting things I’ve ever done!!! (Mom and Dad, I am now qualified to fix the pool deck when I get home if you haven’t done it yet!) We formed a giant assembly line and passed them down one by one. It was a long day but, we were literally on the beach looking out at the Caribbean water all day one side and the mountains of the other. Gorgeous!!! I consider day two a day at the beach 🙂
MOH has 11 villages they are working in right now. Yesterday we went to the “Transformation village” to meet local people and love on some kids. 5 minutes after getting there we had children hanging all over us. Here we were complete strangers to them but they were just as excited to see us as Alex and Taxi would get every time I came home to visit. We walked from house to house talking to villagers, building relationships, singing with them, laughing, and dancing. We prayed for people and listened to their stories. The conditions these people live in are amazing to me. It almost doesn’t feel real to stand outside in the dirt with them, trash everywhere, chickens running around, kids with no pants, no shoes, nothing but a tattered shirt on and know that this is their every day. After a full morning of piggy back rides, and being a human jungle gym I was exhausted, sweaty, and honestly never felt more disgusting in my life. A little girl named Madelyn pulled me by the hand and sat me down. She started pulling off my head band and took out my bobby pins and hair tie and starting pulling my hair in every directing, twisting it and wrapped it into some kind of side ponytail. She put my headband back on all cooked. She then walked around bent down in front of me, and with her face right up to mine, wiped all the beads of sweat from face and whispered “belle” to me. Belle means beautiful in Haitian. She melted my heart. These people in the middle of what seams to be absolute devastation still have joy, beauty, and laughter. Yes their lives are hard and broken, but come on, whose isn’t??
These people and this island are beautiful!!! I can’t wait to see what God as in store for this month!!!
We leave Haiti on October second and will head back to Miami and then we are off to Bolivia!
