Hey, I'm back!

Greetings Greetings, I know I've been home for a few days now but this is my official entering back into blog world after going to Haiti. Several of you have asked for blog postings so here goes because I've had a couple days to sort of figure out how I want to do this. Firstly,

Haiti itself was sooo beautiful! I would say it's pretty much the most naturally beautiful country I've ever been to aside from Switzerland and the only reason being was the snow in Switzerland in the Alps is pretty much unbeatable. Haiti is filled with such a diverse culture of people with half of the population living in the nation's capital, Port-Au-Prince and the other half in other cities and in the mountains. Our team was actually located in Boukan, Haiti; a very secluded and mountainous area of Haiti about two hours away from the P-a-P airport. I'll get more into our location in another section. The people of the mountains are a lot poorer and live off the land as their source of provision for their families. The people are so friendly and you can say "bonjour" (which with Haitian Creole comes out like "boe jhoo") to anyone (which means good morning)and they'll say it back. They are so accomodating of "blancs" (white foreigners, but really just comes out as "blahs" haha) and they insist on giving us all the "conveniences" when there are any. Transportation is mostly done in public transport vehicles called "tap-taps" because there is a driver and an assistant. When someone wants on or off, the assistant hanging onto the back of the truck taps a coin or cup or something on the side and the driver stops. I had several opportunities of hanging onto the back of the tap tap because our team was so large and we could hardly fit into one of the canters (the biggest kind of transport truck) when traveling.

Okay so back to our location. We were about a good hour's walk away from the nearest road and it was definitely quite a hike. Let's just say we did a lot of walking this summer haha. Also, one of the hardest things about the summer was just the physicality necessary for daily necessities. The greatest example of this is water. Every morning we had to have our kids go down the side of this mountain (a 20 to 30 minute venture depending on the kid) with a 5 gallon bucket of water to collect it from the river in the valley and then haul it back up. This was for our dishline water, cooking water, and drinking water. (Note, all water consumed was filtered...just throwing that out there lol) We also had to go down every day to bathe and do laundry. A cold river makes a chilly bath but we were grateful as it's a lot easier than bathing out of a bucket like at Bootcamp. It also was easier to grab a rock and start scrubbing on this red clay stained jeans.

Speaking of red stained jeans, one of our main projects that we did in Haiti was leveling the side of this mountain for a future basketball court/retreat center. This was such a huge project as it including digging one corner down 5 feet and raising the opposite corner 5 feet. The whole surrounding mountain view really skews your perceptions of what level really is. We used a water level set up and string line to stake out the land. I really wish I knew just how much dirt we moved but they got it finished in their last workday and it is amazing to see the before and after pictures.

As I mentioned in my last post before I left for Haiti, I said that the work project was very much a construction based project. Well, God definitely has a sense of humor and definitely had me there for a reason, knowing I'd be fine. When we got there, we could see there were lots of cinder blocks ready to start building walls and already a start on the foundation and hole in the ground for a future cistern. Unfortunately, the missionary there already had hired masons who were his brothers in law because his wife, Mona, is Haitian. He didn't want to step on our toes or their toes so basically the kid worked alongside the Haitian masons to a point but they wouldn't even let us work ahead on anything and everything was at there pace. There simply wasn't enough work for a team that size so we asked for more projects and that's how we came up with the basketball field. All the kids did get rotated to help work in the cistern, leveling it out and pouring concrete floor. Some also got to work with rebar for building and pouring columns and then finally building the rock walls. It was hard for the kids (and even me and Tommy) to not get to work on the thing they thought they came for, but God just kept teaching us cultural sensitivity and patience. It also taught the need for flexibility which is so key in life. All in all, a lot of good work was done and I'm really proud of the team for all they accomplished. We often reminded them that God could use that basketball court for so much good, maybe more so than the actual orphanage building itself. They have plans to be able to hold retreats there as well as even concerts or anything else they can think of.

Before the summer, I felt a lot like Moses did when God called him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. I really just felt like I was to pray for my "Aaron" the mouth of Moses, and honestly pretty much just a security blanket haha. God definitely answered that prayer differently than I was expecting, because I was just thinking on the building project aspect. However, God gave me such an amazing leadership to lead with that really just kept us all going through all the different challenging aspects. Linda had so much team experience as it was her 11th team with TMI...even she said this Haiti team was her hardest yet lol. Amelia's (commonly called Amo) French became invaluable for certain times of needed translation. Haitian Creole is very similar to French and one can generally understand the other for the most part when speaking slowly haha. Tommy was what I initially thought was my construction "Aaron" but really with the project not being that difficult, I realized he was also very much a "spiritual Aaron." What I mean is, is that Tommy and I grew so close as brothers in Christ...really just being there for each other for encouragement and spiritual growth. I couldn't have picked a greater guy to lead with and he was such a blessing to me. I could not have made it this summer without his ever present smile and positive attitude. God really gave me exactly everything I needed this summer but also those stretching and challenging times that caused us all to grow. Life wouldn't be life if we weren't growing, right?