Haiti Day 1

Greetings! After a couple of weeks I finally feel like I can somehow put into words our expirence in Haiti. As I looked at our pictures I realized there is no way I can sum it up in one post. So, I will break it up into days. Some of our supporters are in town and we have had an opprotunity to share but I know lots of you living out of town would love to see how God worked through your prayers and financial gifts. Thank you so much. This was truely a "church" event. By that I mean a the body of Christ as a whole.

So, we got up bright and early at 4:00 a.m.! We flew in to Dallas and then to Miami. When we arrived in Miami we met up with Helen and John. Helen is the mission and project coordinator. They are part of Mission Haiti. They partner with Faith Lutheran Church in Haiti. They would be our guides through the trip. They gave us helpful instructions on what to do when we arrive.

We arrived at an airport in conditions extremely different than ours. It was like a warehouse. Going through immigration and customs was pretty easy. When the bags came in I noticed a huge difference in the people. Everyone dashed and grabbed the luggage like they were diving for gold. Weird. Once we were ready with all are bags we began to head out. As soon as we stepped outside all I saw was tons of poor people mostly beggars or police. We had to say "no merci" over and over. We had helpers already paid to help us. We had police officers escort us to the guest house (3hrs away).

We met our translators that would be staying with us. Enock and Lophaine. They both are very committed Christians. Enock lost his Dad in the earthquake. Anyway, our driver for the week Noel, loaded us up and we headed out. The guest house was only 93 miles away but it took us 3 1/2 hours to get there. The roads are terrible and there were some bad cities that we literally sped through. We even got pulled over! Thank goodness we had a police officer with us! The traffic was insane. There didn't seem to be any rules but nobody had a problem. Everyone seemed to get around on buses or motorcycles. They have what is called a "tap tap". you tap when you want to get on or off.

The streets were lined with poor housing and people young and old just standing around. Trash was EVERYWHERE! They seldom have trash pick up. So, it is everywhere.  The standing around and doing nothing was just something we saw over and over. I kept thinking, what are they waiting on? They literally had nothing to do. The unemployment rate is 80%! I did notice that the people that did have a legitimate job worked very hard. Others just focus on surviving. There were tent homes and homes made from concrete blocks. Usually only two rooms. Tons of homes with no electricity!! They will use oil lamps at night. Also roaming the streets were goats, chickens, and cows. The cows usually had a rope as a leash. Some goats had these wooden triangles around their necks. It was made big enough to block them from going inside the home. There were NO CATS. I will leave that to your imagination as to why... The average Haitian eats a full meal every other day. The water was very dirty. They will use this water to bathe, cook and drink. Enock told me they boil the water to clean it or some have filters. Some sold things out of there homes, children running around playing. Some had clothes on and some didn't. We even saw two young guys JD's age naked. Women were everywhere with huge bowls of all kinds of things on their heads. After about two hours Derek finally admitted to needing to use the bathroom. Our translator told our driver in Creole that we need to stop to go "wee wee". The whole van got a good laugh at that. Thankfully the toilets were standard toilets but the restrooms were not clean.  Once the sun went down you could smell the campfires everywhere. They were cooking or burning trash.

Killing time in the airport

Customs forms

Helen with our police escorts

Tent housing was everywhere but it was worse after the earthquake

An average street outside the capital

The van was a tight fit

This was a very big day and she was tired!

streets in Port-au-prince

Trash was everywhere

tap tap

our van for the week

A very welcomed meal

We finally reached the guest house around 11:00. It was big, clean, and air-conditioned!!We were very tired and hungry. We had very dedicated kitchen ladies that served us very well. We ate pumpkin soup and had fried plantains. Our water to drink was bottled water the whole time. They used it for our cooking and it is also what we used to brush our teeth. We divided into girl/guy rooms. After a devotion and debriefing we went to bed.