Trip #31, April 2023
Some of you can relate to this…
Many of you who have been to Haiti with us have had this experience: You go to a new place – a village, a church, an orphanage, whatever – and there’s the one special kid who, for whatever combination of reasons, just steals your heart and you seem to make a special connection with them. And you always have this overwhelming feeling that it’s not you who chose them, but rather they who chose you.
That hasn’t happened to me in a while, but it happened twice this past week – first with a little girl who came out to the See Him Ministries campus to play one afternoon (photo below), and then also with Lika, one of the little girls at the St. Michel Orphanage (photo at top). Even though neither of them had ever seen me before, both of them latched on to me as soon as I arrived, and stayed pretty much attached the entire time I was there (which in Lika’s case was at church Sunday morning, at the orphanage in the afternoon, and back at church Sunday night). For whatever reason, they both apparently decided that I was their blan (Creole for “white person”).
Last Thursday in the village of Dumas – the kindergarten class at our friend Sonel Dorsainvil’s school:
Wanted to again say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who donated toward our food distribution efforts on this trip – it never would have been possible without your incredible generosity.
The way we had designed this, no one had any idea that they would be receiving anything from us. But in three of the poorest villages – Dondon, Birel, and Grand Bassin (where they prayed over the water bottles we gave them – see previous post at https://thehaitifund.org/2023/04/27/one-of-those-jolting-reality-moments/) – for the people who had come out to listen to us share a simple gospel message with them, after a full day of teaching we were able to surprise them at the end with a month’s worth of food staples – rice, spaghetti, beans, and cooking oil.
On Friday and Saturday our team conducted a two day seminar for preachers in the village of St. Raphael – about two dozen ministers from local congregations were in attendance:
Sunday was a definite highlight of the trip – we were SO excited to be back in St. Michel again, after three-and-a-half years of being unable to visit!
It was literally “standing room only” at the St Michel church when our team came to lead worship – the singing was absolutely breathtaking, as always. At one point in the service I turned to say something to Johnny and I couldn’t even speak, I just started crying – it was SUCH an emotionally overwhelming reunion with so many people we know and love.
A few of the kids from the St. Michel Orphanage – if they look happy to see us, it doesn’t even come close to how happy I was to see them!
We were also super-excited to visit the St. Michel Orphanage for the first time since we finished construction and the children moved in last fall:
(For those of you not familiar – the St. Michel Orphanage is our orphanage in Haiti, which we are the sole supporters of)
There’s still a lot of work to be done, but considering where we started from this is absolutely phenomenal – again, HUGE thanks to all of you who’ve continued supporting our efforts to care for the children in St. Michel.
And lastly – another highlight of the week – our visit to the village of Birel.
Birel was the place I told you about in my previous post, where we had prayed for rain (see previous post at https://thehaitifund.org/2023/04/27/oh-man-this-is-so-cool/).
A few photos:
(I hope to have some singing videos to share soon as well, it’s just going to take me a little time to collect them from the other team members and edit them – stay tuned!)
More than anything else, I just want to thank ALL of you once again for all your support of our efforts, and ESPECIALLY for your prayers both before and during our trips – we can definitely feel them every step of the way, and they are a huge blessing to us!
