Outline of Haiti Happenings

[Here it is: Some bits of actual writings from my personal prayer journal about my recent mission trip to Haiti. (In some kind of order). Most of it is what I wrote then, I'm sure I'll be adding my own thoughts through it. The post-trip thoughts will be in blue]

Sat.

Jan 26, 2013

Dear God, 

So this is it. The team all made it safely to O'Hare and after having a nice iced mocha from McDonald's, considering we all had to meet at 4am, I'm feeling pretty good.

  I still can't believe this is already happening. It is a blessing to know you have the body of Christ supporting us as a team through prayer. I am looking forward to seeing what God is going to do on this trip for us all. 

  We have such a great team, it's a good combo and I know You have a purpose for each one of us while we're here. I pray that we would all be open to hearing Your voice and not just that, but to act on it as well.

  We met a few people who are part of the Rotary [sp] club who are also going to Haiti on a missions trip, providing glasses for those who need them. They are from Wisconsin. Small world. The gentleman sitting with Mary and I was very pleasant to talk with.

  It's funny, the leader for their group I saw is reading "When Helping Hurts," Crazy. [This is a book that our team was reading prior to our mission trip]. They will be working in Haiti for 16 days. 

  _____________________________

  Well, we have arrived! I cannot believe how much PAP has improved since 2010. It's incredible to see so much progress, even though they still have a ways to go, You have certainly provided for these people.

  Okay, so we met Jon in Ft. Lauderdale and I think he fits great with the team. We also met our facilitator Grant once we got into Haiti.

  We took a bus of sorts to get to Carrefour, we hit some traffic but finally made it. I definitely enjoyed the ride up and the weather is fabulous! I couldn't be more at home.

  Our room is super cute, I love it!

  I have my mosquito net all put up and now after having a delicious haitian meal of chicken, spicy coleslaw [happened to be one of my favorites] rice and beans, fried plantains, very yummy type of potatoes and a side of veggies [that most definitely put my tummy at ease from greasy airport food]. I think it's safe to say that I'm pretty much ready for bed haha.

  We did have a type of orientation and worship as a team which was nice.

  Okay, well I'm going to get ready for bed.

  I love you Jesus and thank you for getting us all here safe and sound. 

  Good Night. 8:01pm. 

______________________________

Sun.

Jan  27, 2013

Dear God, 

  Today we went to church and it was great to see the worship and hearts of the Haitian people.

  Johnson, one of our translators, came into the church at the perfect moment [which I believe was Your divine intervention] and it was when one of the groups of the young people were up sharing and one of the young men said that whatever we do we should do it in love and that whatever we start we need to finish it. That really spoke to me to know that even in another country and language You still speak so clearly.

  Thank You Lord!! 

  Tonight after dinner, Marcia, Chris and I shared our testimonies and got prayed over. One of the prayers Grant said really stuck and that was that You would give me the strength to be a finisher. I thank You for that also.

  I'm looking forward to learning more from the people here. 

  The food has been great. We even had farina with almond extract instead of vanilla haha.[For dinner mind you and hot cocoa]. 

  Well I'm off to sleep. Gotta be up at five, our first work day tomorrow. 

  Good Night.

__________________________

Mon.

Jan 28, 2013

Dear God, 

  So we just got back to Grace [Grace is the unfinished hospital that served as our team's lodging] from our work day.

  We sifted some white gravel between myself, Marcia and Peter while the rest of the team left to pick up more cement. [We had picked some up before heading to the work site].

  They took awhile so we got started with the sifters and we had two little piles by the time they got back haha.

  Thank You Lord for this work day, it went very well and I got to know some of our translators a bit better. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So to elaborate on the work day a bit. We went intending to build a school. When we arrived, it turned out that the church there as a congregation, raised enough money and built the school already. Nothing fancy by American standards but there it stood proudly. This was great to see, the body working together to fill a need. This is something that churches here at home can learn from. How often does a church really getting involved and work towards a goal to meet a need? 

  Anyway, so God had other plans for us when we arrived. 

  The church that we visited for service on Sunday needed to be expanded and that's where we came in to help under the guidance of the Haitian people. Half of the building was uncovered and there were people standing outside in the sun listening to the message. There was no actual floor, just gravel really. This is where the sifting comes in. 

  They brought a type of limestone that we sifted to get the fine sand that they would use to mix with the cement to put down a concrete floor. The bigger rocks is what we used to level the floor before pouring down concrete. We weren't using any fancy equipment either, we had fan covers for sifters and small little buckets to fill and pass along a line of us up a set of stairs and then unto the new floor. Very labor intensive, shoveling sand and rocks, pushing wheelbarrows of rocks across the courtyard etc... even up to uprooting a huge tree to create an expansion for a future basement for the church.

  We also made stops before the work day to pick up more cement and cinder blocks for the walls. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________

Tues.

Jan 29, 2013

Dear God, 

  So we had a good dinner last night, it was pretty much Arroz Blanco y Habichuelas Guisa haha. Which mum might get a kick out of. We also had like a pumpkin fritter and a "lemonade" of sorts. 

  After dinner we met on the roof to debrief the day, Highs and lows. I think two of the lows I had was meeting this really nice gentleman named Sensalum. He said that he would like to go to school to learn better English so that when he holds a conversation with someone, he can understand everything being said but that it is difficult and he doesn't know how far he would have to go. That made me think that back home in America we take for granted that education is made so readily available to us and there's scholarships and grants. Here there really isn't any of that.

  Another low would be that I'm not as in shape as I would like to have been and you know that when we have labor intensive work I just like to get in there.

  The highs were just getting to see how well our team works together and the grace we have for each other. The times I was feeling frustrated at being tired faster, but the team was so in tune to where they would say let's take a break. We had such a great tag team. 

  That night we slept on the roof again. [Loved the roof] 

  On to today. Grant woke us up [5am] as usual "Ladies, it's time to wake up" [Haha, you ladies will get this]

  We had breakfast and we got ready for the work day. I believe we had pancakes and mango. Very delicious.

  We loaded up the truck with rebar and started to get ready for the work site.

  When we got there, I helped to get brick and keep count really since the guys pretty much had it ha. 

  I also helped to sift some more gravel so that we could get rocks to fill in and level out the foundation. That was fun. After a bit the Haitians wanted us to move rocks from where the bathroom is and under where they've been working on the foundation and building the walls. 

  We or should I say Adam and David made it into a game to knock some of the rocks over by setting up targets. It was a blast!! 

  The cool thing about today was that we got to interact more with kids that came on the work site. We blew some bubbles with them and started a soccer game as well, we didn't finish though because we had to go. Oh, I forgot to mention we had spaghetti for lunch and salad at the work site with watermelon as well. Very yummy. I loved the salad. 

  When we got back to the compound [Grace, hospital] we were told to wash up real quick because we were going to the boys home. We played soccer with them and Grant gave us the tour. We saw the church, the widow's home and the roof. The little boys had so much fun. I had one [Kethlin I think his name was] take my hand during the tour and walked with me, then he wanted me to give him a piggy back ride. Then he wanted me to carry him on my shoulders, so funny. [And exhausting after working all day haha]. Poor kid I think I got his head hit on a doorway because I couldn't see how low it was. I'm glad he was okay.

  After that it was another ride back to the compound and I was able to quickly shower and rinse my hair before dinner. We had some awesome potatoes and plantains as well as salad, peas and corn [mixed] and a type of meat that sorta tasted like porkchop. It could have been goat, we don't know. 

  After dinner we shared highs and lows and got into testimonies. [From Chris and Adam and then we prayed over them].

___________________________

Wed.

Jan 30, 2013

Dear God, 

  Okay, let me see if I remember everything that happened today ha. 

  This morning's devotion was given by Mark. 

  Breakfast was cereal [corn flakes] which I didn't have and oatmeal with pineapple. It was good. I didn't feel like eating a whole lot this morning.

  We then changed into work clothes and got ready for the work day. This time we stopped on the way to Mariani to pick up 50 blocks. 

  We also got some smaller rebar so that we could take it to the work site as well.

  We dropped all the supplies off at the church and then headed to Lambi. [Sp] There, we helped to take down a house that from what I understand some hoodlum type guys had moved into it and were terrorizing the area so the house needed to be taken down and moved. [A Haitian eviction basically...]  

  That was hard loosening screws ha. "Cross-fit training in Haiti" as Peter said haha. 

  We had so many good sayings today.

  

  I got to see Delva's house. [He was a gentleman that the team from last year had started to help build] and he has a beautiful home!! I told him it was "tre belle."  

  We kinda napped before lunch and then after that we headed back to Mariani to work at the church. We threw some more rocks over and I got to help in a cement assembly line. The floor is already looking so gorgeous, "bien travaillé." 

  After that we came back and all four of us ladies took showers. We then had to put on skirts for the girls home we were visiting.

  We played jump rope, duck duck goose, red rover, and a haitian chasing game. I taught some of the girls a little chinese jump rope.

  I also got to play "Pepsi Cola" and a new haitian hand game that I don't remember ha. 

  After that was dinner so we had to say goodbye. The girls were wonderful. 

  After dinner it was sharing time and David led us to give Grant a break. We shared things about each other that were encouraging. The group time went well, testimonies as well and I'm falling asleep. 

  Thank you for today. 

  Good Night. 

________________________

Fri.

Feb 1, 2013

Dear God, 

  So yesterday was a bit different because not all of us went to the work site. A few of us went to pick up more block to take to the work site and Mary, Bonnie, Chris, Chuck, Peter and myself stayed to take apart the house pieces [that we took down in Lambi from the haitian eviction] to put in a room up in the lobby. We got that finished completely once the rest of the guys got back. We had extra hands to carry the metal rods up and over the balcony.

  Once all that was finished, we headed out to meet Mike and Annie and Roland at the Jewel School. The kids there were fun. We blew up some balloons and played with them. Bubbles and hand games. 

  We then walked some kids home and prayed over families. 

  Praying over the families was amazing. I'm hearing people praying in French, Creole, Spanish and English and just to know that we are all praying to the same God and that You break through all barriers and that we are all speaking the same language spiritually. The Holy Spirit was really moving. Thank You for that. 

  After we finished ministering out there we went back to the school and prayed for Roland [the teacher of the jewel school] Mike and Annie. [The couple started the school]  

  Went back to the compound, showered and we had dinner and debrief time. Worship as well.

  Friday was our last work day. Pretty sad. We took out the huge tree that was in the back of the church. Dug out more rocks.  I got to use the machete for a root. Beast haha. 

  At 2:15pm we were done and the truck was there to pick us up. We went to the beach, swam, jumped in, skipped stones, Adam found me a blue bottle, I used the sand to help scrub off the algae and rinsed it in the water. I also have a cool shell that I brought back from the beach.

  Went back to Grace, had dinner, heard Madame's story, had our debrief time, last testimonies and worship. After all that I was able to shower ha. Then I heard rain coming down hard. The guys got soaked haha.

  We woke up at 4:30am, breakfast [I didn't eat much] and off we went to PAP. Got checked in and boarded the plane. Landed in Ft. Lauderdale, said good-bye to Jon and Grant [sad] and Tim was off to Indy.

  Everyone else stayed at the airport while Mary, Chris, David, Adam and myself took a cab to the Hollywood Boardwalk. We ate lunch at a Tiki Bar to get sushi but it turned out that the fish came in late so we would have to wait another 45 minutes so we decided to change our orders. I got a buffalo chicken breast sandwich. We all shared calamari. So good. We saw needle point fish after eating. 

  We then walked the boardwalk, found a spot for David to finish typing up his sermon. Mary and Chris went swimming while Adam and I walked around looking for iced coffee. We had a coffee smoothie. It was okay. We both had ideas on how it should've been ha. 

  We met up with Patrick [a member of our church back home who happens to have a place in FL during the winter] he treated us to ice cream and shakes before we got our cab back to the airport. 

_______________________________

So this was the trip in a nutshell. I will be posting another entry in more detail of what I really experienced personally on the trip. This is just an outline of what our days looked like. If the writing seemed rushed, it kind of was. We were doing so much in a day that it was hard to keep up in writing, let alone be awake enough to write legibly and that made sense. 

Stay tuned.