Day 1: Safe Arrival in Haiti!!

Hey friends and family! My name is Max Nelson, I will be a junior next year at Eden Prairie High School, and this is my second trip to Haiti! For those of you who are new to the party, this is a blog that you all will be able to follow to keep up with our day to day activities while we are down here in Haiti. It was a very VERY early morning for us. Getting up at 2:30 to be at the airport by 4:00am is not the easiest thing in the world, but we powered through. Everyone made it to the airport excited and ready to go for our 6:00am flight to Miami. (Warning: There will be plenty of pointless details in the blog J) Most of the team grabbed McDonald’s at the gate, I myself got a hash brown and a sausage egg McMuffin. The 3 hour flight went by fast, most of us caught up on sleep but I was fortunate enough to make a new friend! I didn’t talk to Yen for the first half of the flight but when I asked if she was going to Miami to visit family, and she responded with “No ingles,” I knew I was in for some fun. Me and my new friend Gramma Yen, or “abuelita” had a nice long conversation about her life. She had been in Minneapolis visiting family and she was returning home to Peru. She lives in the jungle, or “la selva” with her husband in a small town in eastern Peru that is actually in the Amazon Rainforest. Juju and Ryan also had a similar experience later in the day when they had a conversation in Spanish with some of the neighbor boys while we were playing soccer. It was super cool to be able to break the language barrier in some very unexpected ways. After landing in Miami and we parted ways with Yen, we grabbed some more food and headed for the gate to take us into Port Au Prince. The short 80-minute flight quickly turned into two hours when we were put into a holding pattern over the water to wait for a parking spot. This was a very unusual experience since PAP is such a small and relatively not busy airport. Thankfully, we got on the ground safely before we had to divert to the Dominican for fuel. Customs was a breeze and we all got our luggage and stepped out into the country size sauna that the rest of the world calls Haiti. With the “feels like” being around 101 degrees and there being little to no breeze, we were all sweating immediately. The man, the myth, the legend, Mister Jeff Gerst then brought up the idea of “Nasalstalgia.” This was the instant realization that we were back in Haiti with the wonderful smells that it has to offer. Our team brought us back to the compound and we had a brief (re)introduction to our home for the next week. There were two new baby puppies born and they are now three weeks old. S’cute! We then had some great Shepards pie for dinner and got geared up for some soccer with the neighborhood boys. When we walked over to the empty lot that they are using as a field, there were close to seventy boys all standing around watching a 3v3 soccer tournament that the boys had set up. After the last game had finished, all us young people had to have our shot at it. At the end of the game, the Americans brought it back to tie the Haitians 4 to 4. (Standby for tomorrow’s rematch score.) The team then all came back to the compound for circle time and to reflect on today’s very busy day. Tomorrow we will be heading to a special needs orphanage and the home for sick and dying children. As of writing this, the team has been awake for 18 hours and we are still going strong. Stop by tomorrow for the day two recap and the highlights from round two of the Haitian vs USA soccer extravaganza.

Glwa pou bondye,

Max Nelson

Day 3 - Buckets Overflowing

Today was a busy day for our group! After breakfast and our morning devotional we started our day with the first water stop! With our truck, full and ready with water, we were excited to start serving. Those who needed water would form a line in the back of our water truck and would have their buckets ready to go! This water come only a few times a week, sometimes less, and this is such a blessing for the people of Cite Soleil. There are so many children at each stop that want hugs, to be carried and just to have our attention!

After our first stop, we were able to tour and see the progress of Grace Church, and it was even more beautiful than we remembered it! Our co-leader Kathy was able to give us some amazing facts and stories behind the church itself, and we were even able to meet some of the kindergarten students who attend school within the church. They were so happy to see us and eager to come over and say hello.

Our second water stop wasn’t too far away from Grace Church and it is a stop that knows Healing Haiti and its mission well. Everyone was there with open hearts and immediately wanted to get to know us and talk about where we were from, what our names were, and introduce us to those around them. It was so amazing getting to meet these people and serve them as God intended us to.

Our third water truck stop was located next to a pier and was right off the water, which was amazing to see. We were able to witness fisherman, basket weavers and even some neighborhood children swimming! Once we made our way to where we would be delivering water, we could start to see the line of buckets forming waiting for us. We immediately began filling each bucket and loving on the kids that were around us.

Caitlyn

Day 2 - Helpless Yet Useful

Today our group split in ½ and the group I was assigned went to the Home for Sick and Dying Babies.  I prayed days in advance that I wouldn’t be afraid when this day arrived and as we stepped off the tap-tap, my hands shook with fear about what I’d experience behind the walls we entered.  However, as we walked through the door to the room with the sickest children, I was grateful my prayers were answered and I immediately became transformed.  The fear was replaced with overwhelming pride that I was given the opportunity to be with these children that just wanted to be held.  They would happily stay in a wet diaper if it meant you would hold them one minute longer and for a few short hours today, I felt the strangest mixture of being the most helpless and useful at one time.  Helpless there were more than 30 beds of crying babies I couldn’t hold all at once and useful that I didn’t have to do anything but give these babies my time and love.  As I was holding two children because neither would let me put them down, I knew for the first time what it meant to be loved, needed and wanted unconditionally.

Later in the day as we drove to Apparent Project, I was amazed to see along the streets how resilient Haitians are able to make use of everything around them.  Wooden pallets American businesses complain about how to dispose of are transformed into tables, stools, benches and chairs as well as served as railing on a second story building.  Beads were fashioned from colorful empty cereal boxes cut into narrow strips, discarded plastic water pouches were sewn into bags of different sizes and broken glass was ground down into beads of various sizes.  Wheel barrows with broken wheels or no rubber wheel at all were valuable tools of transporting heavy treasures back and forth.  I was humbled by how blessed myself, family and friends are to live where we do and enjoy all the luxuries we take for granted each day.

Tracy

We started off the day heading towards the top of the mountain, which was very relaxing and fun to spend time with the team on the tap-tap. Once we reached the top we stopped at the overlook, what beautiful view. After we gazed in amazement of this beautiful country and took pictures; we began shopping. The persistency of the shop vendors made it incredibly difficult to say no, some of us were great at bargaining while others were not. Scott was an amazing bargainer considering he got 8 items for 12 dollars at the top of the mountain. After we were at the mountain we went to the grocery store which was a very fun experience for a lot of the people on our team. While we were there, a lot of our team was surprised for the fact that it was so different from the rest of Haiti. It looked like a store from the US. There was even some General Mills items in the store which was a very fun thing to see just for the fact that most of us were from Minnesota. The next and final stop was the orphanage Lalau, while it was very chaotic it's always great to connect with the kids. Sometimes it is hard to connect with the older kids but a few of our team members shared that an older girl was content with doing her homework on a Saturday. Overall it was cool to see the other parts of Haiti and as always it was wonderful to be with the kids. Time after time there are tons of lessons that we learn from Haiti specifically the kids. They continually show love, care, and joy in the way that they live and play despite their unfair circumstances. Thank you for all your continual blessings and prayers along this journey, we are excited for a final bonding day with our team.
-Avery Whitbeck and Caden Boike

A powerful day....

We woke up early to go to tent church, not technically a tent, more like an airplane hangar!  The music was very loud, the speakers blasting the amazing worship music.  We could literally feel the beat!  This service was not a typical church service we were used to back home.  The people were walking around praising God  throughout the entire service.  We could feel the Holy Spirit's presence all around us.  A very powerful service....

After the service we walked back to the guest house and got ready to drive up to Titanyen, the home of Grace Village.  We drove in the more comfortable tap-tap (with seats!).  When we arrived at Grace Village, we took a tour of the grounds.  My highlight was getting to see the school classrooms and practicing math with one of the kids on the chalkboard (which is way different than what we have in my classroom back home!).  After the tour, we went down to Fleri Restaurant and Bakery to get a tour of the new job creation initiative.  We then traveled into town to visit the elders, which was another very powerful experience.  We got down on our knees and washed feet, painted toes and nails, gave a massage, and sang worship music to these special people.  We also delivered a hot meal to them.  It was very powerful and felt like we were truly God's servants.
-Noah

Unanticipated Explorations

My word today was "sickness" because 7 of our 17 fell sick today. Therefore we had to be flexible. We were going to go to the Home for the Sick and Dying Babies, but we are not allowed there on Thursdays. We decided that we would go to the museum of Haiti history. Our tour guide was very knowledgable. We learned a ton about the history of this beautiful country. After that we drove back to the guest house, we checked on the sick and we had lunch. We decided to go to the Fluri Farms. It is a farm that was bought by Healing Haiti to help Haitians gain employment, and to divert Haiti back to one of their biggest industries in agriculture. At Fluri Farms, they grow mangoes, bananas, coconuts, limes, and cherries. All the food was delicious. Although this day was stressful in someways, we persevered through all these challenges, but we know that this was all part of God's plan, and we hope that He believes in us, and lets us be His hands and feet here in Haiti.
-Logan

Water Truck Day

My word of the day was "potem" it means 'hold me' in Creole . All the little children wanting to   be held walk around with their hands up saying "potem" They are incredibly poor, but all the children want is to be loved. When we are there they don't have a care in the world, all they want is to be held, and played with. This fun day was also very educational, we learned a ton about Hope Church and all that it entails, we learned about the kindergarten that keeps growing, and how everyone is allowed to come no matter what district they live in. The kids there are very sweet, and very cute, to get your attention they yell "Hey you!" They also love to play hand games. Both of our stops were really fun, it was an amazing day!