This afternoon I had the opportunity to visit an orphanage in a small village in Haiti called Titanyen. This was my second visit to the orphanage, the first being with just my team, and the second visit being with two more teams, a total of 27 people. My first visit was eye-opening and heart-wrenching, the second was no less. For some odd reason, I failed to write about my first experience, but after this visit I had an uncontrollable desire to share my experience with all of you.
First of all, the word “orphanage” may be misleading. This is not some big organization that is receiving funding to help these children. In fact, we only know about the orphanage because the man who runs it stopped us on the streets one day while my team and I were doing house visits. This “orphanage” is simply a pastor and his wife trying to take care of 15 kids. Five of these kids are their own, and the others are children whose parents either cannot or will not take care of them. The pastor and his wife care for the children the best they can. They receive donations from people living nearby in the community, but, even with this aid, they are hardly able to support the children. This is the reason the pastor stopped us on the street the first day. He needed help. During this first visit, the pastor wanted to show us where the children slept. He took my team inside his small house (by Haitian standards, not American) where everyone was living and showed us the children’s room. The pastor wanted our help finding beds so that thin sheets were not the only thing that separated the children from the slab of concrete beneath them when sleeping.
Despite these harsh living conditions, the orphans welcomed us with beaming faces and open arms. As we stood in their “school”, a small shelter made of a wooden frame and a tin roof, the pastor’s wife led the children in the Creole version of the song, “I Can Show You the World”. We then played with them, laughed with them, sang with them, learned little bits of Creole from them, and loved them as best as we could. One of the little boys, Garrison, sat in a wheelchair as his immense smile drew my attention away from his frail limbs. His joy and laughter was no indication of the HIV that was destroying his body. Another child, a little baby girl named Metushala, fell asleep in my arms as she soothed herself by sucking on two of her tiny fingers. Her petite, precious body radiated what I inferred to be an unhealthy amount of heat. The beautiful three-month-old baby girl seemed to be living in a three-week-old’s body.
After remaining with the children for some time, the children prayed over us and us over them, and then we reluctantly left. Most, if not all of us will never see these children again. All we have left are the memories and pictures of their beautiful smiles, the emotions that the children welled up within us, and the pain which originated from the realization of their suffering. I wish I could say we did so much for them; that their lives are changed forever. But all we could do was provide love, prayers, some water purification tabs, and knowledge of their existence to the local ministry. We visited the children the second time with the intention of bringing them love and joy, but we came away with much more of both than we could have ever given them. Honestly, this feeling perfectly represents my World Race thus far. I have longed to bring so much joy, love, and hope to the people I have met, but I have walked away having received much more than I could ever give.
