Morning in Haiti

November 2

I woke at dawn to listen to the early song of Haiti...mourning doves calling to one another and a dogs quiet bark in the distance. The air feels clean and fresh after another downpour of rain before bed.
Once again, my heart is filled with so much gratitude having had the opportunity to serve in this beautiful country of Haiti. I once had a card with a photo of a hand, in the palm of the hand held two doves. The caption read "we give love and we take love...sometimes at the same time"

Kathy H.

A Busy Day in Haiti!

Hello from Port-au-Prince!
Yesterday (Thursday) was quite a busy day for our team. We started off the day with a trip to a metal market called Croix-des-Bouquets. We walked through all the little shops and snagged some awesome finds. It was really cool to see the artisans sitting outside their shops pounding and painting their metal artwork. After a few hours of shopping, we headed out to Grace Village and got a tour of all the facilities. It is an amazing place that has constant projects underway aiming to better serve the community of Titanye and the Grace Village members. We were able to see the new family homes that the orphans have moved into and also saw the construction of a library and additional classrooms. The way Grace Village works with Haitian families, children and elderly is truly life changing and it was inspiring to see it firsthand. After our visit to Grace, we headed down the road to visit an elderly couple Pierre and Lauramise. They were a beautiful couple who lived in a tiny one room house with their children and grandchildren. We were able to pray and sing with them and they were so thankful for our visit and all of their blessings despite having so few material things. Our last stop of the day was Juno's Orphanage. We brought t-shirts for them to paint and they happily got right to work. When they were finished with their fantastic creations, we sang and danced on the front porch complete with our staff member Patrick's guitar accompaniment . The best part of the entire day was watching these children jump, dance and sing at the top of their lungs for Jesus. It was one of those moments that will stay with me forever, a perfect moment of pure worship. We then said goodbye to the kiddos and headed home to the guest house. This was one of my favorite days here in Haiti. It was filled with so much joy and love and left me In awe of God and His people.
God Bless,
Nash

Scott Hartzell's trip to Haiti

I am having a great time in Haiti. I played with children a lot and they loved being picked up and held. They were always happy to see us. We delivered water two days and they came running after the truck when they saw us. They never wanted us to leave, but always had huge smiles on their faces. We are taking an orphanage group of children to the ocean tomorrow. They have never seen or swam in the ocean before and we are all excited and looking forward to a wonderful day together. We'll let you know tomorrow how it all goes.
Scott H.

Team Photos

Our amazing team at Cite Soleil 17.  A great day of water truck deliveries!

                                    A few of the beautiful children we met delivering water!

The children were so proud to show us their room at Juno's orphanage.  They broke out in a dance party.

Nick at the water truck. Smiling bucket after bucket!

Water Truck Day!

Today our journey took us into the poorest city in Haiti, city soleil. As we arrived to each of the three water stops we were greeted by smiling children waving, and yelling "hey you," words we soon learned were their adorable and trying to get our attention and basically saying hi. As we got off our truck the children swarmed to us wanting to be picked up and loved.  We spent many hours holding them giving each of them a little piece of ourselves and it felt amazing!  We brought a jump rope and the children laughed and played sometimes trying to jump ten at a time (it never worked but they did not care and neither did we).  As the water truck turned on to fill the many buckets that were lined up a greater appreciation for the simple things we have (like clean water) came over the team. These Haitians needed this water for their families, what we were providing was their bathing water, drinking water, and the water the cooked their meals with.

The city itself was hard to take, the devastation was heartbreaking. The streets were covered in trash and yet the children played in it many with no shoes. They walked around many with little or no clothing and happy for what little they did have. The houses that the people their live in we're not houses at all. They were broken piles of rubble with tarps and randomness holding them together. Will I ever complain again about trivial things like my house being to small or my furniture not being new enough?  I pray that I never forget how lucky I am and just how much I have. I will be leaving a piece of my heart in Haiti

Dawn

First Day Out And Already Learning About Prayer

Our team finally met for the first time today! God took charge pretty much immediately with my trip by letting me practice trusting in Him. For the first--and hopefully only--time in my life I went to the wrong airport. I found this out when American Airlines' staff thought I was crazy and told me LGA meant La Guardia and not JFK. I had to speed my way across Queens! Thankfully La Guardia and JFK are closer than I thought and God proved that he had control over traffic too. And probably put the thought in my head that I should leave even earlier than my normally paranoid punctual self would have left. Surprisingly I didn't even panic--just prayed and appreciated His sense of humor.

But everyone arrived safely in Miami and the sky was wonderfully blue when we stepped foot in Haiti. It was definitely the opposite of a New York winter. We saw our tap tap (painted cage truck?) for the first time and it was really cute, with "Healing Haiti" painted on the side to show us it was our very own truck.

The guesthouse is beautiful, with colorful walls and these sink-inable sofas. And dinner was amazing for our bunch of weary souls! We ended the day with Word of the Day which is when we think of one word to summarize our feelings and thoughts for the one day. Mine was Trust.

So good night from Haiti! I hope we learn more from God every minute here.

Gillian W

A Fall to Remember

Welcome to our team blog!!

  Fall is my favorite season of the year, the beauty of the trees, the crispness of the air and the anticipation of the Holiday season to come.  It is with much anticipation that I await my return to Haiti with another amazing team!!   In less than 2 weeks, our team will be embarking on a journey to remember.

My co-lead is my amazing daughter Kristina DeMuth who has led many trips as well as served as a long term missionary in Haiti for a year.  Two of my three sons will be joining us for their first trip to Haiti, Scott and Nick.  We have several Healing Haiti alumni joining us including Kathy Hartzell,  Scott Hartzell and Nash Anderson from Minnesota  California alumni include Anrea Rupp and Sonia Gomez.  New Healing Haiti team members include Lily Lauzon from California, representing the Big Apple is Gillian Wong and from the great state of Michigan is Dawn Cook.

Please pray for us as we prepare our hearts and minds for this amazing journey and follow us as we follow in the hands and feet of Jesus and allow our hearts to be broken wide open in serving the beautiful people of Haiti.