Nov. '08 Haiti Trip, part 1

I have never been on a missions trip where I was as impacted as I was on this one. I had the opportunity to travel to an orphanage in Haiti with a team of 11 other people. Compared to a one month trip I took, these four days seemed like several weeks. The purpose of the trip was to love on kids in the orphanage(sponsored by a mission's organization here in the U.S. called Hopegivers) and to paint a couple of "rooms." To keep this "short," I'll refrain from details about how I ended up going on the trip, facts about Haiti being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and other incomprehensible, saddening facts etc. I will skip straight to the parts of the story where my heart was grabbed. This is my personal story with my personal feelings, however cliche they may sound at times. I will leave out a lot that I have shared with my Father in heaven on numerous occasions in order to get through the stories without my emotions drowning them out....

While checking out the different rooms in the orphanage, I was on the bottom floor looking out through barred windows at a group of kids from a nearby village. I noticed a little girl probably 6-8 months old who was naked and dirty, bent over crying on the ground. Any human instinct would be to go pick her up and wipe her down and attempt to offer some comfort to this baby. So that's what my best friend and I did. She was soothed and resting in our arms when it was all over with :). I have no clue where her guardians were and assume one of the kids around, none most likely over the age of 8, was carrying her around for the day. That is a picture forever engraved in my mind. One of them..

After looking at land purchased for a new school, we walked to a nearby village full of mud huts. The kind you see on the discovery channel or those commercials that don't seem real. We walked up to a hut the size of a living room here in the States, a home to 10+ people there. Some clothed, some not. There was a little girl, without any clothes anywhere from 1 1/2 to 3 years old in the distance standing in a field crying. Everyone else was standing in between two huts with other children around. The children were so thirsty, they would sheepishly point to the few water bottles we had and we would pour it into their mouths. As we started walking back to the truck, the Lord broke my heart to the point I was crying. It was at this point, I was plagued with both guilt and thankfulness for living in the U.S. The Lord continues to graciously work out these feelings. :)

Those are just a couple of stories that gripped me. This last story I will share was rather traumatic, but a privilege to be a part of, as it helped increase my faith and reliance upon the Lord tremendously. About 20 minutes after crossing the Dominican border and arriving at our hotel, Willeo, the guy over the orphanage and school, came walking viciously up to us(a good friend and I) saying two of the kids had been hurt badly. He said they might even be "near death...."