Haiti 2009

So I was going to send this as a mass e-mail as so many people have asked about my most recent trip to Haiti but I have been wanting to start another blog anyway as I'm off to a remote area of Uganda this summer and this seems as good a way as any to keep people updated every once and awhile and let you all know that I'm alive. :)

Thank you all so much for your prayers and interest in finding out what went on. As most of you know, I feel like Haiti is more home for me than being here in Chapel Hill so it is always hard to get re-adjusted to my life in the States when I return from these trips so your continued prayers for my focus on school and all that are much appreciated.

So here goes: I flew into Port au Prince and met up with a friend of mine, Art, who is a teacher at Quisqueya, an international Christian elementary, middle and high school there in PAP. There are some Haitian students who attend the school but mostly a lot of missionary kids and students whose parents are doing awesome work in Haiti. I got to hang out there a couple of days and meet some of the students and teachers, sit in on some classes etc., which was really cool. Then Art and I, along with another one of the teachers, Miriam, and the school nurse, Miquette, flew on a small plane to Cap Haitian and subsequently took a "taxi" to Ouanaminthe, which is in the northen part of Haiti, right on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Since I've spent most of my time in Haiti down around Fondwa and Jacmel and La Cayes, it was fun to see another part of the country. A couple of vehicle changes and two flat tires later, we made it to our destination. :) The second flat tire took awhile to remedy but it was fun hanging out with some of the locals and making ourselves at home on their property.

In Ouanaminthe, we met up with the rest of our team, 13 more people who flew in from Ohio, and stayed in a sort of guest house attached to an amazing school. Some of our people spent most of the time at the school, painting and cleaning and doing repair work- plumbing etc. The rest of us spent the week in a Haitian run clinic a few blocks away. The stories of both the school and the clinic are amazing. Specifically, we were fitting people with eye glasses. Someone far more intelligent and technologically savvy than I developed an apparatus which scans people's eyes and determines their glasses prescription. It then prints out that prescription and the number to several options of glasses which most closely match that prescription and have been donated to the clinic. There is a whole closest full of them. The team also brought down hundreds of reading glasses and sunglasses and eyedrops. As you can imagine, it was a bit choatic at times as people definitely have their preferences as to which glasses they want and some don't fully understand that they are all different prescriptions. We made it through though, with God's grace and hopefully helped some people see better. The best part for me was being able to pray with hundreds of people who were really excited about that and shared their faith with me. It's always amazing to me how close I can feel to my brothers and sisters in Christ whose lives are so different from my own. I also got to spend sometime in the actual clinic with the Haitian physicians and residents which was certainly educational and helpful for me to see in terms of how things were run. They actually had an electronic medical record system and prescriptions that printed out in the pharmacy! It seems to function quite well.

Additionally, I was asked by Hughes, the Haitian man whose vision from God brought the school and clinic about, to speak, with Miquette, in the 12th and 13th grade classrooms about medical school and nursing school. We had a good time doing that and I enjoyed sharing what God has done to bring me this far on this particular path.

The time in the evenings spent with the team were amazing. I was really challenged in many ways and was blessed by the people that I met who came down from Ohio. The precious time that I spent with some of the individuals on that team was probably what made this trip particularly special for me. I learned so much from their openness and encouragement.

One afternoon Art and Miriam and I walked over to the Dominican just to set foot in that country (and get some ice cream). Its absolutely astounding how different it is just right over the border. You can't even imagine! (As you can tell, the border is tightly patrolled :) (That was sarcastic by the way.)

I'll wrap this up a little later because I have a few more thoughts but I've got to go wake a three year old up who doesn't want to get out of bed...