Kids Against Hunger Haitian style

Some of our girls spent some quality time with the kids in Leveque, while the rest played soccer.

Walking back from the aqueduct in Leveque. 

While packing meals in Haiti, it was great to see Kids Against Hunger Meals from Michigan in Haiti

This is the Haitian meal packing process.  Our team was amazing working alongside Haitian workers.

So, Thanksgiving’s tomorrow but we’re all so thankful we have the opportunity to serve in Haiti this week.  Amazing families and amazing dinners will be missed, but we are truly blessed to be here now!  We started our day with a goal of packing 20,000 meals of rice and beans we bought from the Haitian farmers in the village of Turpin.  We were blessed to have friends, families, students, and members of our Avondale community, who have been touched by our Kids Against Hunger food packing events, donate to purchase the food.  We were especially excited to plant trees in Turpin yesterday, visit the farmer’s fields, and learn more about the farmers’ lives and growing methods.  The bigger picture in all this is a community with an expanding economy, so they can support their families, feed their children, and send their kids to school, so they can create a brighter future.  If you know the way our team handles business, it’s no surprise we took a task that should have taken us until lunch and raced to complete it in about an hour and forty five minutes.  We packed it so quick that MOH asked us to pack an additional 5,000 meals, so they could get it out to schools and orphanages they support next week.

We traveled to Leveque after lunch and spent some incredible time in the village.  Our work project was cancelled, so we immersed ourselves in the community and the children.  After an afternoon of playing with and carrying children all over the village, walking to the local water source to learn more about the women in the community, meeting with the village champion and learning more about the community, and playing soccer, we headed back to MOH.  We were blessed to spend time with a dear friend, John Marc, who is an orphan who has lived at MOH since 2006.  He shared his powerful story and challenged our team.

Well it’s 1:15 am, Happy Thanksgiving, many great conversations tonight and it’s time to get a little sleep before the 6:00 am wake up.  Wish I could share more, but our days are quite full.  Parents, your kids love you, but sometimes they don’t want to post very much because they’re immersed in Haiti, are locked into their experiences, and are processing those experiences. 

Trees for Turpin and mountain life

It’s been a busy day and it’s awful late, so this will be short tonight.  We had an amazing day planting trees in Turpin, which is a village about an hour up the mountains.  It was a great journey with captivating views and so many enlightening snapshots of Haitian life.  It’s rare to get a chance to get into the mountains, where life and people are often quite different from life in Port au Prince or lower lying areas.  We got all our trees planted and also got another incredible perspective into Haitian life.

Planting trees in Turpin

 We also were able to spend time in the fields that grow the rice and beans that are being purchased for Mission of Hope’s meal packing program. One of the most valuable experiences was listening to and asking questions of a Haitian farmer, who is part of MOH’s agricultural program.  We stood in his fields that were tilled by hand with picks and learned an incredible amount about his life and the agricultural program. 

Our team planting trees on the edge of a bean field

Our team in Turpin with Haitian Farmer

This is the view looking behind as we headed up the mountain

Tuesday night is also a powerful evening, due to MOH’s mid-week worship service.  Tomorrow, we will pack meals in the morning and work in Leveque in the afternoon.  Bonwi (Good night)

Well, today was a great and adventurous day!

Well, today was a great and adventurous day!

Our morning started early as I woke at 5 am to the sounds of someone throwing up.  Normally the roosters provide the early morning wake up call, but this morning I was blessed with very different sounds.  After going outside, I discovered it was actually two of our team members struggling with the same issue.  Within fifteen minutes, one of our leaders came down to share that she had been struggling with the same issue most of the night, and was continuing to struggle.  Of course, ten minutes later, one of our girls could barely open her eye, because of an insect bite.  Yes, it was an amazing start to the day as I sat with our struggling team members and watched the sun rise over the mountains.  The Haitian sunrise always brings such hope and promise, despite the circumstances.

As I sat and contemplated our circumstances and how they might impact our day, I knew part of their struggle was the reality that they might miss out on our plans for the day.  They knew they would get an experience none of our teams had ever experienced- extensive travel through Port au Prince, through Petionville (a very wealthy area despite Haiti’s profound poverty, and to Kenscoff (a much more successful farming area) and the drive would be flanked by the homes of many of Haiti’s wealthiest people.  They knew it was a Haiti most people never see and another ability to gain insight into this amazing country.  Most of all, they knew the end of the long drive would conclude with an opportunity to love on precious children, see a different side of Haiti’s orphan problem, and plant trees at the crèche which would bless them in the future.  That’s right, a two hour drive up winding mountain roads with team members who awoke to terribly upset stomachs, was awaiting our team.  After consulting with American nurses and a Haitian doctor, we got some help for our struggling team members. 

As we pondered the question of “do you want to stay behind”, there was a determination that defied the struggling stomachs.  We prepared to travel, in a canter fully loaded with trees, shovels, meals for orphanages, and our team and translators.  As we traveled, a number of team members battled weak stomachs, some just from motion sickness, and battled through some unfortunate moments on the canter, yet our team shown incredible love for one another and lifted one another up, reached out with compassion, and fought through this challenge together. Thankfully, by the time we reached the crèche, the stomachs had settled down considerably and our team tackled our tree planting project.  They worked together tremendously, got those trees planted, and had a moment to catch the vision of Chances for Children’s crèche. We were able to spend time with the beautiful children at the crèche, and Maddie will share some more thoughts on that experience below. 

Our kids are on mission to learn all they can and serve with everything they’ve got, despite some challenging circumstances.  They are embracing every opportunity they are given.  Everybody’s doing well tonight and eager for everything we will experience tomorrow.  Tomorrow, we travel an hour up into the mountains in a completely different area from where we were today.  We are excited to plan at least 80 trees in the village of Turpin and spend time learning more about that community.  Turpin is the area where MOH has been investing in the local farmers for the past two years, teaching them how to farm more efficiently and providing them with resources to increase their crop yields.  Tomorrow we will connect with the farmers and community of Turpin, and Wednesday morning we will pack 20,000 meals with food bought from the Turpin farmers.  Those trees and meals were paid for by donations from members of our community and friends and families of our team members. 

Maddie M

“I love Haiti. I felt so much shock being here last year but this year, it’s a lot different, I feel content in Haiti. I feel like Haiti is home. I’m so thankful for perspective; today we were able to drive through Port-au-Prince on our way up to Kenscoff, to visit Jaline and Marie Line’s old crèche. I loved seeing how different Port is from the rest of Haiti, the people don’t have that overwhelming joy about them that they do out in the villages. As much as I love Haiti and so many different parts of serving Haiti, the one thing I love the most are the orphans. Don’t get me wrong, I love all those children that we love on in the villages but at the end of the day, they go home to a family, there is just something that I love so much about those children without parents. If God’s calling me anywhere above all else, it’s definitely with those kids.

            I loved being at the crèche because those kids are in God’s healing. They’re in amazing care with proper paperwork and they’re on their way to being adopted. That brokenness that I saw among the children in the orphanage at Barbancourt was leaving the eyes of these kids. They were happy. There was one girl who had her head shaved and here hair was starting to grow back. She was beautiful. To me this represented recovery. I know that Jaline had her hair shaved off to regrow it healthy. I saw a girl who was at one point probably suffering from malnutrition badly enough to need her hair shaved off. I saw hope in God bringing this giggly little girl to a full recovery.

            Anyway, Haiti’s amazing and I have just as many bug bites as last year! Bonwi!”

Sunday in Haiti

Sunday in Haiti

We started our day with a tour of Mission of Hope’s main campus, as our MOH intern shared the history of MOH, many of their current programs, and walked us through their campus.  At the bottom of the hill, we ended up at church.  Those of us who have been to Mission of Hope before always look forward to church in Haiti and the power of the experience.  It always amazes our new team members that people whose lives were deeply affected by the earthquake and struggle through with tremendous poverty are always so joyful and so thankful.  They pour out their hearts and souls in worship and speak so often about their complete dependence upon God.  One of the things that usually has a significant impact upon our team members is how much the concerns and wealth of our world crowd out a deeper faith.  

After lunch, we traveled to the MOH’s other two developments in Bercy and Leveque.  When I first visited Bercy in 2010, there was nothing there but a vision of a property that could bring life transformation to Haiti.  It has been simply amazing to see that vision become a reality in so many ways.  Today, there is a school educating hundreds of Haitian children, a clean water source, guest homes for missions teams, the beginnings of a conference center, new housing for MOH staff, and crops testing new growing techniques.  Part of the vision is for Bercy to become a center where Haitian farmers can learn about more efficient farming methods and to receive support to increase their crop yields, which will enable them to better support their families and for Haiti to become less dependent upon foreign grown food.  This is a beautiful piece of property along the Caribbean, given to MOH by the Haitian government because of the positive impact they are having upon Haiti.  There are many additional plans for incredible uses of the Bercy property.

After Bercy, we traveled to nearby Leveque to see the community that started in 2010.  It was so powerful for our group to walk up the hill and look down upon a thriving community where the houses are mostly hidden by all the banana trees, plantain trees, and other food sources people are growing on their properties.  After learning about our team’s history in Leveque, our group was especially struck by the contrast between prior pictures and the current reality in Leveque.  In addition to the amazing progress in Leveque, the roof is now on top of a fully functioning church.  In addition they MOH has also built a school on top of the hill, which is currently educating 250 children from the community.

It was a great day to experience Haitian church, catch the vision of MOH for Haiti, and see the amazing progress MOH has been responsible for over the past few years.  We are excited to take a special trip tomorrow to Kenscoff, which is about two hours away.  We will be traveling into the mountains to work at a crèche (an orphanage for children who are in the process of being adopted).  We be planting trees and loving on the precious children in the crèche.  

I close tonight with a reflection from Tessa about an experience from Saturday:
“Hi everybody!   I just wanted to share a little story of something that happened yesterday while we were washing clothes by the river. I kneeled down in a pretty muddy area to start washing the clothing.  A women walked by and said something to the women I was working with in Creole that I didn’t understand. The women looked over the top of the bucket and saw the mud I had been kneeling in.  She handed me a shirt to kneel on, I thanked her, kneeled on it, and kept washing.  About 15 minutes later some little boys came walking by me and began to yell at me in Creole.  They were pointing at my legs so I immediately thought that they were yelling at me for kneeling on one of their shirts.  I pulled the shirt out from under me held it up and looked at them.  They began to shake their heads, still pointing at my legs. I realized that they weren’t even thinking about the shirt.  They had seen how dirty my legs were and wanted me to clean myself off in the river before I continued.  Just the fact that these children, who didn’t even know me, were concerned about some mud on my legs really humbled me.  It showed me a lot about the Haitian people as a whole.  They care so much about one another and the rest of the people in their community.  They watch out for each other.   It was such a beautiful thing to realize that from being there for only about a half hour these people had accepted each and every one of us in.  They show so much love and affection for people they don’t even know.  It’s so amazing.   I wish things were more like that back at home.”