Month two in Haiti ended up being a bit of a hectic, but quick month with only having a little shy of three weeks to spend there. We started out at a ministry called Mission of Hope (MOH) Haiti down on the coast in an area called Titanyen where it was smothering hot, mosquitos ate you alive, the showers were freezing but needed, and laundry was done by hand alongside local haitian women who were sticklers of the fact that if your clothes weren’t squeaking as you washed them, they weren’t getting clean enough.
We stayed on a huge property that included an orphanage, a school, staff and missionary housing, a prosthetics lab, a medical clinic, an international church, and a humanitarian initiative providing food and clothes to the needy in the community.
Our ministry included evangelism and outreach to neighboring villages where we would talk with people, get to know their stories, offer to serve them in some way, such as washing their clothes or dishes, and evaluating their access to clean drinking water and nutrient-rich food.
I also had the opportunity to go out with their medical outreach team to do home visits for kids in the area that were needing medical attention. When they heard about my physical therapist degree they lined up the schedule with children they had been planning to see for a while but hadn’t had a physical therapist to perform the evaluation. I saw five kids that day that had a variety of diagnoses ranging from extreme hydrocephlus, to malnourishment, to cerebral palsy. I was able to teach transfers and provide education to the parents on how to properly care for their child’s unique needs and make appropriate referrals to the MOH staff for further medical evaluations from other specialties. It was an incredible experience.
After only a few days there, we were asked to move up into the mountains to assist with a ministry that would soon be a sister organization with Mission of Hope called Baptist Haiti Mission (BHM). With this transtion, the staff at BHM needed practice hosting mission groups and the grounds also needed renovating to accommodate for the incoming staff and personnel to help with the merge.
When we arrived on the BHM campus, we couldnt believe we were in the same country. The dry, desert surroundings that we experienced down at MOH were now replaced with lush, green mountains and blooming flowers. The air was cool and less humid. This campus had a school, a cafe, a shop that sold handmade goods, a church, a hospital, a zoo, staff and missionary housing, and a conference center.
Our housing was a newly renovated mission house that had brand new bathrooms with hot water, couches to hang out in the common area, and bunk beds fitted with blankets for each of us which was needed when the temperature dropped even more in the evenings. We felt so spoiled in these living conditions. Our last week at BHM we actually moved again to the housing they have to host local pastors for conferences. We got really good at packing and unpacking our packs this month.
Our food was prepared by local Haitian women who had never cooked for Americans before. They were amazing and so sweet. They made us scrambled eggs, pancakes, fruit, and cereal for breakfast; salad, sandwhiches, spicy peanut buttter, Pate Ayisyens, and fresh juice for lunch; and Haitian version of lasagna and shepherd’s pie, beef stew, stewed okra, and rice and beans for dinner. We were fed so well and every now and then we would have cookies or cake for dessert and coffee was served at every meal.
At BHM we had access to the washer and dryer that the American staff used. It was such a blessing and we couldn’t stop smelling our clothes after each load we did.
We started each morning with a devotional and worship alongside the local Haitians who worked on the campus in an outdoor ampitheater. One man who attended had acquired a Virginia Tech sweatshirt somehow and whenever I would wear my Tech T-shirt, he would light up realizing we were matching and we would exchange a handshake and a cheerful “Bonjou.”
In our free time, we played endless games of Bananagrams and Spicy UNO. We held team times on the playground, specifically on the upper deck of a Noah’s Ark replica. We would walk through the zoo that housed chickens, rabbits, a peacock, goats, and a crocodile or we would play basketball on the court right outside where we lived with the local Haitian boys that hung around the campus in the afternoons.
One day we walked down the mountain we lived on, crossed the ravine at the bottom where local women were doing laundry in the creeks, and made our way to a waterfall that thundered as you rounded the corner and it came into view. Other adventure days included taking trips to a fancy resort in Port-au-Prince to swim in their pool, stopping at a grocery store to pick up sweets and hanging at a coffee shop called Papillon (butterfly in French) to get some wifi and catch up with friends and family.
For ministry at BHM, me and some other teammates with medical backgrounds got assigned to clean out and organize a medical supply closet. The supplies in this closet were donations given to the ministry to assist with stocking the hospital and medical outreach programs. However, there had been a surplus of donations and many items were outdated and unusable. Therefore, we rummaged through boxes of packaged needles, syringes, bandaids, elastic wrap, hospital gowns, and so on. With the help of the on-site missionary doctor, Chelsey, we determined what was good enough to save and what needed to be thrown away or given to locals in the community to use. It was hard to determine what was appropriate for a third world hospital to use without risking it causing harm to patients but also not being wasteful of the donated supplies. We spent two weeks in the large storage space and when we were finished we had organized, labeled and created a directory that could be referenced in order to know what shelf held what supplies.
It was a lot of work, and I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed it. It was dirty, dark, and seemed never ending. We would have rather been creating relationships with the locals and seeing the fruits of our labor for the Kingdom through salvations, healings, and miracles. However, God would soon humble us and remind us that work for His kingdom, is work for His kingdom, regardless of how it looks to our human eyes or how unfulfilled our hearts are in doing said work.
After a long 95 hour travel day, we arrived in South Africa to begin month three and once we were in wifi we got a text from Chelsey. Chelsey said that the day after we left, Haiti suffered a massive earthquake that devastated a handful of villages. Because of the work we did in the supply room, their medical mission team that came in after we left was able to quickly grab what they needed and head out to support the relief efforts for those affected. God’s timing is perfect.
. . .
I’ll miss team times in the Ark in the dark.
I’ll miss the beautiful flowers and mountain views.
I’ll miss the amazing homemade bread.
I’ll miss the hours spent in community singing worship songs, playing Banangrams and Spicy Uno, or playing would you rather.
I’ll miss the locals that worked on the campus as well as the staff and interns we got so close to.
Songs that remind me of this month are:
- New wine by Hillsong Worship
- Mercy Tree by Lacey Sturm
Want to know more? Ask me about:
- The story of the little girl that would no longer be put up for adoption after seeing her
- How good the homemade Haitian bread was
- How I used my physical therapy skills in this country
