Haiti

So I can't sleep but for thinking about Haiti tonight. It's so far away but I do have a personal connection to it. It was 1980 and I was about to be a freshman in high school. Our church put together a mission trip for HS students along with another nearby church. I have to forgive my memory for the names of some of the places we went to. We stayed at a Wesleyan mission on an island off the coast called Ile de La Gonave. After this trip, water became my favorite beverage, and I vowed that someday, if I had a child they would have to go visit a third world country someday to gain some perspective of their life. I don't know if Lily will ever make a trip like that, but with her you never know what she is capable of:).

I still carry these images in my head to this day....

Gretchen the head of the Wesleyan mission serving us gingerbread cake with lemon sauce (now wondering if she is still alive after all these years)...my brother playing soccer out on the salt flats with a little Haitian boy...groups of Haitian kids with orange hair and distended bellies from malnutrition...hearing the voodoo drums one night we stayed there because someone had passed away...hearing the angelic voice of a little Haitian child sing in the church that we visited-- they were standing under the one light bulb in the church that was dangling from the ceiling...riding donkeys for 2 hours up to the top of a mountain where there was a historic fortress (maybe this was on the main island of Haiti?) while women followed along side us balancing wooden crates of Coke in glass bottles on their heads...breadfruit trees on the side of the road...riding in trucks up to the mountains to a bat cave where woman would come with their malaria coated buckets and pails to get water for their families -- water became my favorite beverage after that...helping build the 36th well on that island of 60,000 people...picking up a rock and seeing a hairy tarantula...trying to explain to a young man what a curb (from the street in front of my house) was and how no, I did not have any children and no, i was not married (in that order)...swimming in the ocean with one Haitian girl who was fascinated with my hair and kept touching it (I am a redhead)...being surrounded during ou lunch as we sat in our truck by groups of hungry people and not being able to give them any..having the kids beg to see "Tee fee again" -- one othe HS student who was also a gymnast perform for them...asking someone how they were and hearing the truth because no one there ever said "fine"...

Haiti to me is an island of caring, hardworking people where there is no middle class and you are only rich or poor (mostly poor) and my heart breaks for them. I read on a blog of a Haitian mission that the island is fine (see my listing of References for two sites of Haitian missions) but that they get their food from Port Au Prince so they will be in trouble with the prices of gas and food so high now. People are taking these times to profit off of others misfortune in a time like this.

All we can do from here is pray for the people there and the ones that are going there. My friend Nancy in Iowa included this prayer in her Christmas letter this year: "Do not look forward to what might happen tomorrow; the same Everlasting Father who cars for you today, will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you the unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace then, and put all anxious thoughts and imaginations." St. Francis de Sales