so after much back and forth and one sleepless night i decided that i was in fact supposed to go up to gonaives (the worst of the flooded areas from september 2008...and 2004 for that matter) with the team that came from berry college/sunny brooks marketplace....it wasn't that i didn't want to go...i just didn't want to be away from here all week...but it felt right and it was...but what a week to wait and try to blog about all at once...and it seems like old news compared to what has happened since...but we will get to that....
so on sunday after church and saying good bye to the wonderful team from new vision fellowship kervens and i headed to the airport with emory and mary and austin betz (a really great guy from wisconsin who has come to help out with the wilson's work in gonaives for the next few months) to do the hurry up and wait dance...about two bottles of water in they finally began to emerge from building into the chaos that is leaving the pap airport...no matter what you do to try to prepare and organize the process it is a lot of grapping and yelling and searching the crowd...it was so great to see those lovely familiar faces of kathy and cory and sam and kevin...and then of course the 4 new and very overwhelmed ones from berry college! after some rearranging of bags and tying everything down we piled into and onto the truck and headed for an orphanage about halfway up...it was so weird and so lovely to be sitting on top of suitcases next to kathy brooks...oh how i have missed her! but it was a little tough to catch up in the back of a truck barreling down a dusty road...a week later i still don't feel like we have really had the chance to do that...but we have gotten to do lots of other stuff so it is okay :)
we spent the night at the orphanage which meant getting to meet lot of new kids and see our precious emily marie who lives there now that she well, fat and sassy! she spent some critical time here at faith hope love and was natasha's baby...how wonderful to get to check up on her! she can even say tasha's name now! the best thing about the night for me was probably when i walked into a hallway and about 30 screaming, laughing, soaking wet, naked children came barreling at me out of a bathroom at the other end...followed by a nanny who had obviously given up on trying to keep this crowd calm amidst the arrival of a gwo machin (big truck) and lots of blancs (us)! i wish i had a picture or video...but i know i will never forget the image...it was so priceless...
in the morning we headed out again and after a few stops for haitian goodies from streetside merchan and a potty break or two we were in gonaives...a place that has rested in my mind and heart, my thoughts and prayers so very often since my last trip last june, but a place i haven't seen since the flooding caused by 4 back to back hurricances last fall. some things were stikingly the same...others completely unrecognizable...it would be a week of continuous revelations as on each outing i would see some new evidence of loss, or some new sign of life going on...
during the week the group as a whole would work on some damaged roofs, shovel some mud, visit, pray with, and treat some ill and injured members of the community and help with the daily food distribution at jubilee and raboto...one of our big jobs of the week was finding children who had been tested by an earlier group for vitamin and iron deficencies...the children who were in critical ranges needed vitamins...so we just had to find them, give them the meds, and explain to them and the crowd around why the whole bottle should be give to this one child...not all the kids in the family or the community...pa problem! it went really well though with some major help from kervens translating and some great guidance by the holy spirit...we were able to distribute almost all of the bottles and to make some great connections with the children and families of jubilee...
the feeding programs proved to be a big challenge for the group as a whole and a major place of learning and growing for us all...what a thing to do every single day...god bless the hands that have taken that on...may they be daily strengthened for the tasks before them....the big thing that i learned in that place was how much more we are saying to these children...that they get way more from us in that building every day than rice and beans...and it is really important to be concious of what i am giving the people around me with the way i live...everything communiates...what am i saying?
i also learned a lot about communal living sleeping on the roof every night...good times....
i was a beautiful and devastating time of seeing the beauty of the people of gonaives...seeing the devastation they have endured...seeing the fire and spirit with which they have endured it...there is so much to say and i know it will keep coming out as i process the whole experience...so i guess keep checking back...
one thing that was interesting and good was how ready i was to get back to my babies here in port...i missed them so much! and the night before i got home i found out we had a new baby...21 months old and 10 1/2 pounds...hiv positive...which brings me to my next story...
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