Our last night in Haiti! I am sitting on the upstairs porch of the New Life Children’s Home and Guest House in Port au Prince enjoying the cool evening breeze! A recap of our day….let’s see; this morning we had a wonderful breakfast at the Guest House in Bohoc at 7 a.m. – Scrambled eggs w/peppers and spam, toast, bananas, Lipton tea and delicious grapefruit juice! Most of us don’t normally like grapefruit juice, but this is something special – so delicious! We said our goodbye’s to the wonderful cooks at the Guest House and headed off to the Deaf Camp in Port au Prince.
It took 6 hours to get to Bohoc from there, so we expected about the same to get back. The roads are almost indescribable; the best way I know to describe them would be like a dried up riverbed with huge crevices, lots of ruts and rocks everywhere. You cannot drive in a straight line anywhere in Bohoc – you have to weave your car across the road back and forth to avoid damage to your vehicle and to not get stuck. I made it about an hour and a half….had to have the bus pullover for a “breather”….my motion sickness medicine wasn’t cutting it. Ended up in the front seat after that! From that front window, I had a great view of the beautiful lake and mountainous roadways – God is such an incredible artist! So much beauty all around—especially the Haitian people. We were always greeted so warmly everywhere we went and the children would always wave and smile. We quickly learned to say “bon jour and bon swah” for good morning and good afternoon. These greetings always brought smiles – maybe it was our southern accents saying French/Creole words? When they saw our bus go by, we felt the love from them as they waved and smiled at the bus full of Americans!
We stopped off to pick up Tompy (the driver from a previous Haiti trip MLC went on) in Ouest (a county in Port au Prince) to join us in our venture to the Deaf Camp. He treated us with a cold Coke – ahhhhh! Around 1:30, we finally made it there! The Deaf Camp was a tent city (made up of 40 tents) put together after the Earthquake to help those who were homeless and deaf. Before the earthquake a few families had lived near each other and had a small community. Today, only a year later, there are 139 homes that Red Cross has built for the families there. They have a wonderful community of friends who can all communicate with signing. Most of the children can hear, but their parents are deaf, so they all know how to utilize sign language and some can even speak English! Anna knew some sign language and the people were thrilled to get to communicate with her. The kids could interpret into Creole easily from her signing—what a wonderful talent and gift for her to share!
We brought out two soccer balls and the kids went crazy! Then, some of the team started blowing the bubble wands – wow! Shouts of joy and excitement filled the air with children chasing the bubbles down. When all the bubbles were gone, they kept asking for “ball” “ball”!!!! (more bubbles!) Wish we had more with us. We broke out the crayons and coloring sheets and even the adults wanted to help color. They liked that the pictures were of Jesus and God holding the world in his hands. The kids read the scripture on the bottom and that “Jesus Loves Me” and wanted us to know they read it. They are used to deaf parents so all these little hands are tapping on you as they try to get your attention to talk to you. One even grabbed my chin and kept pulling my face over to her – same thing my own kids did to me when they were little! They all loved the attention and wanted to hear that their picture was beautiful “bel le”. Some did an incredible job coloring and one adult man wanted to know what EXACTLY we were going to do with the pictures they made. I told them we’d share with other Americans and he liked that answer – brought back 2 more finished pictures and gave those to me too!
A little before 5, we made our way to the New Life Children’s Home and Guest House where we’ll spend the night in a comfy bed. No hot water here, but it’s refreshing to shower all the dust off of you! This house is on the property with an orphanage that is home to over 100 children. Lots are in wheel chairs and they have lots of babies. We were having our nightly team meeting after a delicious spaghetti dinner when we heard such beautiful little voices singing praise and worship songs in English (Mighty to Save)! We quickly adjourned the meeting and went over to enjoy the presentation that the kids at the orphanage had put together for the visiting teams. It was so beautiful – tears welled up in my eyes as I looked around at all the happy little children praising God with their voices as they shared the worship experience with us singing in English for our benefit – one big Christian family. We felt so welcomed and afterwards got to love on some of the kids. They just come running up to you and want to hold your hand and enjoy getting hugged. Maurice gave several kids a dizzy spin around and around while David was picking up kids to be able to reach the basketball goal. It was such a wonderful evening and such a pleasant surprise – little did we know what God had planned for us for our final evening here.
This trip was one of many surprises – John said this team wins the award for being the most flexible. We all realize now that our plans never really mattered – we did what God wanted us to do and I think that was more about building relationships and trust with the Haitian peoples than about anything else. Yes, we brought life back to the clinic with new paint and a generous load of pharmaceuticals(thousands of dollars worth) and helped widen roads and fix the water supply tower, but the time with the people and children of Haiti will forever be in our hearts. Thank you so much for your part in this – your prayers and your support make you an important member of this team. We hope these updates helped you experience at least a little bit of this wonderful trip. We are so very grateful and pray God blesses you in awesome ways!!!!!
Travel day tomorrow – gotta catch some Z’s under this pretty mosquito net bed…
In His Grip – Lisa Schilling
