my trip to haiti

A brief summary of my trip.

Flew out of PIA on Sunday, stayed the night in Miami and then flew out early to Port Au Prince. Got there but luggage didn't. We were told we could wait around for the next flight and it may or may not be on that one. Chose to wait. Got the luggage..Praise God. I had all my clothes w/me but the rest of the team checked their stuff.....silly rookies.

My bro-in-law "Tim" met us at the airport and off to the first church we went. I think about 5 hrs drive. Driving thru port past the tent cities, and rubble was eye opening. It's so sad to think that there are still people's loved ones under all that rubble. Haiti will never be the same.

Got to the village of the first church on Monday night, set up army cots and sheets and blankets, & shared the out houses w/several inch and a half long roaches. On Tuesday we put a roof on a 70 ft long church, built & varnished 10 pews, handed out food, ate goat, took "showers" (this involves a concrete block stall outside, a big tin bowl, and a gallon jug of cold water).

We finished that church by Wednesday mid morning and had some "interesting" goat soup, then we packed up and we were on our way to the next church way up in the mountains by noon. We drove about 3 hours and then blew a tire out on the trailer, found out that the spare was flat and the other spare wouldn't fit. They finally rigged it so we could continue up the mountains w/just 3 tires on the trailer. After another hour we reached the church. It was a good thing because we were running out of road...I think it was more of a donkey trail by the time we quit. Just as we pulled up one of the truck's tie rod broke.
We were met by lots of the villagers who were so happy to see us they carried all of our cots, luggage, and supplies up the rest of the way. Lots of them were barefoot walking up the rocky trail. This is a very remote area w/no water (except what they carry from the river) and no electricity.

We set up cots, bedding, ate some more goat, bathed in the river, & went to bed sharing our room w/some huge...and I mean HUGE flat spiders and a few jumping crickets. While we were lying in bed we could hear the sounds of a RA RA band echoing off the mountains. This is kind of like a chanting/song service that some of the locals who practice voodoo have....it's pretty eerie sounding. The next morning (Thursday) we got to work and had the roof on and the pews built by noon because this was a much smaller church. We ate some more goat & took another dip in the river to wash off once we were all done. Thankfully by then one of the haitians that was on our team was able to take a motor taxi and get the tie rod welded and it held all the way back to Les Cayes but just barely.

We stayed at the guest house that night and then Friday the girls on our team headed up to the clinic to work w/some of the earthquake victims and the guys headed to my sisters to help w/some odds and ends there.

Friday night it began to rain and on Saturday it was still raining but we were planning on heading to the beach so we went anyway. We swam in the ocean while it poured down rain. After awhile it cleared up for about 45 minutes so we were able to get a little sun and dry out.

On the way back to the guest house we saw that the roads were starting to flood. There was lots of mudslides, and water everywhere rushing over the roads and right into peoples houses. We saw lots of people carrying their kids & belongings. We found out that night that 3 people drowned when their car flipped over.

The plan Sunday was to go to church, however the local church was flooded and then Tim got a call that the handicapped home had to be evacuated the night before and could we please come help shovel out the mud and help them clean it up. So instead of church we put our grubby clothes back on and went to work.

The rest of Sunday was spent touring around Les Cayes and then that night we had a Bible study on the roof of my sister's house.

Monday morning we were up early and flew out of Les Cayes about 10:00 am. We got back to PIA at 10:25 pm.

I know parts of this summary probably sound like I'm complaining but I'm really not. I'm just trying to explain as honestly as possible what it's like to go on a work team to haiti. We had a great team and had awesome discussions and laughed soooo hard. It was a super trip!

If I can get some time I will try to get a few more haiti pics up on my Haiti Gallery in this next week.

Now back to real life!