Thursday, March 25, 2010

More Work, Less Vacation...

Today's writing definitely calls for some orange - my favorite color. Yesterday I spent some time driving in the car with some "first-timers" (they had never been to the D.R., let alone a 3rd world country). It caused me to think, trying to remember what I felt when I first visited here in 2007. These two women who were in the car with me were asking all sorts of questions that I thought were really weird, but then it brought to mind - I wonder what kind of silly or weird questions I asked when I first arrived. It's amazing to think about humans adaptability... what used to be odd to me is now just the "norm".

After I dropped them off and headed back home I spent some time trying to recall "un-normal" things. Chickens running around all over the place, unreliable electricity, loud music and vehicles everywhere, crazy driving, lizards, random wandering cows and horses, I'm sure the list goes on but I'm having trouble remembering more.

Yesterday evening we received some very exciting news, all of the staff who are interested get to go on a very short mission trip to Haiti! I am so excited. There is a man in our town, Samuel, who is partnering with an organization in Haiti to help. So we are going to lend our assistance. Lowell, Cheryl, Nate, Maggie, and Samuel just got back yesterday from a "vision trip" to see what we can do to help, especially since we are only going to be working with them for 2 days. There is a tent community of 200 families that we are specifically going to work with. I can tell you briefly what I know now, and fill in more detail later. Our dentist is coming and will work on people's teeth for free for 2 days; Maggie, Cheryl and I are going to teach the woman how to bake bread, this will then give them something to eat and sell; there will be a team to play with the kids (these people literally have nothing, no toys, no balls, no clothes, no dishes, no entertainment), so for these kids it will be a huge blessing; I'm sure about the other teams yet, but will learn more tomorrow in the meeting. Besides the day activities we are going to show a movie one evening (we just have to find one in French) - we will bring a generator and sound system (there is no electricty in this tent city). I'm SOOO excited!

At Bible study last night we had a Haitian guest speaker who shared about the history and culture of Haiti so that when we go we'll have a better understanding of the people. Haitians speak Creol and many French as well, but no Spanish or English, so the speaker is going to come back and for 2 hours teach us a little about Creol. Neat, eh?

1 comment:

Cristine said...

Good luck to your Haiti trip. Hope that the people there are friendly. Take extra care. God bless!