Monday, July 26
It’s Monday (as best as I can tell) and the trip is already tiring. Yesterday was amazing. After landing in Port-Au-Prince we had to get through immigration and customs. Both went as usual, except the luggage was pure chaos.
We then piled into the back of this large truck to go to the smaller airport. Jason Woody and I had to sit on the back as a human tailgate. My arm was looped through a bar to keep me on and every time we hit a bump my arm would get smashed against the rail – painful! After the short plane ride (which showcased Haiti’s beautiful countryside) we once again climbed into the back of trucks for a 45-60 minute ride through several towns. The ride was amazing as we got to see so many people, many of whom were in their “Sunday clothes.”
The mission is surprising in it’s capabilities. It has an orphan nursery, feeding programs, medical facilities, elderly care, Miriam center (special needs) and is involved in the community in multiple ways. During the walk-through I teared up twice. Once when the nurse told us how they routinely remove fibrostic tumors that would be routine in the US but are suffered through for years here. The other time was in Miriam Center. They have one section specifically for terminally ill children. Hearing about these children who are discarded from society broke my heart.
I can’t wait to see what this week holds. In some ways it seems God has answered my prayer: “Let my heart be broken by what breaks the heart of God.” In another way, though, I have a feeling that I’m only seeing a small glimpse of things as I’m probably not ready to see how bad things are in some places.
Afterthoughts & Notes: (Explanations that were not in my journal entry)
Spell check tells me that fibrostic is not a word. That is what I wrote in my journal and what I thought I heard but I’m not a very medically-inclined person. I’m not sure what type of tumors it was, but he was referring to ladies and some type of uterine tumors. One clarification regarding that prayer, that is a quote I read in The Hole in Our Gospel that stayed with me. I typed it onto a piece of paper and hung it on the wall near my workstation for a while.