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A new law says that every orphanage in Haiti now requires for every 13 kids a social worker, a mental health professional, & a doctor on staff. There are almost 40 kids at Faith Orphanage. They are also now requiring an exit exam to ensure education standards. The orphanage is required to find & hire all of the required people. Each one of the professionals is asking for a salary of 1,000 dollars a month for only working 20 hours a month. The orphanage was given 10 days to come up with the money to pay all these people. If they don’t meet the deadline then the orphanage will be shut down & all the kids that have grown up together will be seperated into various orphanages across Haiti. These regulations are good for the kids but expecting the orphanage to come up with the money out of nowhere is unrealistic. Please pray for Faith Orphanage.
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Missing Haiti already… definitely was not at all ready to leave.
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We left the orphanage at 4 AM without getting to say good-bye to any of the kids because they were still sleeping.
At the airport in Port Au Prince. Apparently there was a miscommunication & my bag was not grabbed from the hotel. Thank God I have my passport with me at least. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about not having my prescriptions though…
It took me 22 hours of travel, but finally back home!
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Today is the 2 year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti. Please keep this thought in your prayers.
I Helped Mama cook chicken for our dinner tonight! She seriously makes the best chicken I’ve ever had!
While we were eating dinner we heard a lot of singing and praying coming from the church building. They were remembering those lost in the earthquake 2 years ago.
In the evening Karli and I went down to the well to go get water for our showers. Kalene taught us how to carry the buckets on our heads like the Haitians do! So we each carried a 5 gallon bucket of water on our heads all the way to the orphanage.
Falling asleep with the kids one last time tonight…
I got into bed & then Sadrac came running into the room & climbed up my bunk bed. Crazy little boy!
*When we go back into the states and resume our regular lives, it will be easy for Satan to make us forget all the things we experienced in Haiti. Satan can cause us to get caught up in the material world and forget everything we have seen and learned here. We must not forget.
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Another team showed up that is going to be here for the next 2 weeks working on building the new orphanage
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Everyone worked on various projects today, Shane built a cover for the talapia tank so kids wont fall in, Frank fixed up the outhouses, and a few of us worked on getting big rocks out of the garden so the soil is better.
Liz painted on the doors of one of the outhouses “Jeff Duncan’s office and library” He’s going to love that hahaha!
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It’s 5 AM & I woke up because the rain is so loud on the roof. It’s raining so hard! & now the roof is leaking over my bed. Its dripping on my leg lol
Goat for lunch today!
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Church today! Church service here is very different. Its usually 3 hours long.
We took all the kids to the beach after church & they had lots of fun swimming
I’m sleeping in the girls dorm tonight. I just saw a cockroach crawl across the ceiling so hopefully one doesn’t drop on me haha. The kids around 5 & under all sleep on cardboard layed out on the concrete floor with a sheet over it because they don’t have enough beds & matresses. Obviously bedding is a big need here so contact me if you are interested in donating any!
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4 AM….. Goodmorning Haiti!
Today Mama Milien taught me how to do laundry like the Haitians do. They fill a big bucket with water then put the clothes in it and then scrub it with laundry soap that is a bar of soap. Mama kept laughing because I couldn’t scrub the clothes hard enough so she had to help me with all of them.
I spent all day cooking with the ladies! They taught me how they make chicken, & salad, & rice, & plantanes!
Dinner was delicious. Madam Melien made so much food it was amazing! The Miliens set a separate table just cod the missionaries with way more food than we could ever eat. It was so nice of them!
In the evening Jesse and I decided to go down to the well to take our showers instead of carrying water from the well back up to the orphanage. When we got down there, there were a few of the older girls getting water also. We were soaping up and next thing we knew the girls were dumping buckets of water on us like we were taking a real shower.
I moved my stuff into the girls room today & they think its so hilarious that I’m sleeping in there because I don’t think any missionaries have before!
I’m sleeping on a rickety little bunk bed with just a very thin pad as a matress. They layed cardboard down under the matress so I wouldn’t fall through the bars on the bed. The older girls are all sleeping on beds & then the little kids are all sleeping on blankets layed on the concrete floor.
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Madam Milien, Kangine, Karli, & I all went to the market to buy ingredients for dinner tomorrow. The market is basically just blocks & blocks of tents & tables & tarps on the floor all crowded together selling everything you could imagine. People who sell merchandise use tables with everything spead out on them. People who sell meat, vegetables, & fruits use tarps that they spread on the floor covering the sewage water. We passed some interesting vendors such as a few booths of voodoo supplies (voodoo dolls, spices, oils, candles, knives, nails, etc.) We also went to the meat section of the market & that consisted of tables & tarps piled high with fish, goat, pig, cow, horse including all of the body parts of each animal, even the heads, intestines, feet, legs, everything. One table even had a giant horse head just sitting on it. All the heads eyes were rotting out too.
When we got back to the orphanage we found out that the orphanage had received 2 more kids while we were gone. There mother dropped them off because she said that she loved them but was unable to take care of them. I think that takes a lot of courage to admit even though its very sad. She dropped off a boy around 6 named Woodson & a 9 month old girl named Medgi.
I spent a lot of the evening helping Madam Milien & some of the older girls prepare ingredients for tomorrows dinner. We had to take all the beans out of a giant pot of seed pods. It was so much fun laughing with all the girls even though they liked to make fun of me because I couldn’t take the beans out as quickly as they could.
On our way back to the orphanage after dinner at the hotel, our tap tap got a flat tire. Oreb called his dad & told him what happened & his dad called his friends who are police officers to pick us up. They came zooming up to pick us up with their lights flashing. We all piled in the bed of the truck because the backseat was full of guns. & Haitian police have big machine guns.
We had a great night playing with the kids. Sadrac is the most hilarious kid. He was running around doing all sorts of silly things until he finally got dragged off to bed.
I can’t wait to help cook more tomorrow & see what its like to live as a Haitian woman.
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There’s a leaf bug on the ceiling & it is making funny noises while slowly crawling towards me
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We spent the night at the orphanage last night. We pitched our tents outside of orebs room. The night is so loud here. We fell asleep to the sounds of dogs howling, a strong wind, & loud drums that we later found out were coming from a voodoo celebration. I guess there are a handful of voodoo temples in the neighborhood. There is a voodoo holiday going on this week so they are celebrating it. Its crazy to think that voodoo is such a dominant religion here. Oreb said that he has seen temples that are filled with cages of animals both dead & alive. We woke up at 5 AM to roosters crowing from all over the neighborhood. The kids get up at 5 AM so we thought we should try & do the same. The kids only eat 1 meal a day in the afternoon so I want to try & do the same. Frank have Mackenson a new wheelchair today! His old one was way too big for him so he wasn’t able to wheel himself around. He had to rely on other people all the time. His new one is the right size for him so he is able to move himself around. He is so happy! Kangine & I walked down the hill from the orphanage to the bus stop to catch a moto. We needed bread to make the kids lunch so I needed to catch a moto to take us to the store. Kangine translated for me & we both fit on the back of some guys moto. For VBS today we chose to tell the story of David & Goliath. A few of our team members cut out a bunch of shields & swords out of cardboard & used them to do a skit with the kids. They loved it! Falling asleep to drums & dogs again tonight.
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One of the new girls at the orphanage got sick. She has only been at Faith Orphanage for about 2 weeks. She was sick to her stomach a few days ago and today she just fell off her bed and went unconscious. Jeff and I, along with the Miliens, went to the hospital and they hooked the girl up to an I.V. and had her rest. The hospital was just a tent and a small section of the building that wasnt destroyed in the earthquake. There were only about 5 hospital beds and just a few nurses and a doctor. The hospital beds seemed to be made up of stuff they just had around. I saw a lot of people gathering outside the tent outside so I went out there to see what was going on. I overheard someone saying that a man had been in a motorcycle accident. A man was laying on a cot covered in blood. He was coughing up tons of blood and the whole floor underneath his bed was a pool of blood. Someone had just thrown some paper towels under there to attempt to soak some of it up, not like it was making a difference with so much blood there. I went in the tent and asked the nurse if I could pray for the man. She was skeptically at first but then said I could. I went over to the man, stepped over the pool of blood, and layer my hand on his right leg. I prayed out loud for the man, making sure his soul would end up safe in heaven. When I had finished praying, the man coughed up some more blood and then just stopped breathing. The doctor declared him dead. They placed a sheet over the mans face and I left the room.
