July 4th & 5th Adventures

By Becci Powers-Johnson

Our 4th July...

We started out visiting Grace Village. This is the Orphanage and school that Healing Haiti built. It was truly "amazing"! My word of the day, "amazing"!. The Aquaponics (fish and plant) system is one of the largest. Cathy LeVahn, on our trip with us, is working on this project!  It is an amazing system.  She is an amazing individual.

Then we visited 5 elders that are sponsored by Healing Haiti. Charitable, Maricia, Elie, Felozia, and Nick (to learn more, go to www.sponsor.healinghaiti.org).  Another amazing experience. We sang to them, brought them lunch and gave them shoulder, hands and feet massages.  It was an incredible serving opportunity.  One women, her name was Bonita, followed us after we sang to one of the elders and asked us to pray for her and her mother that lost her house.  Phil shared an awesome prayer.  It was just Mike, Heidi, Phil and I that remained outside because we all couldn't fit into the elder's house we were at.  We definitely made an impact.

Our last stop was Isaiah's. He is amazing in what he has done. He grew up an orphan with his brother. They started bringing food to Cite Soliel when they earned enough to get by... All their extra money went to help hungry families.  After the earthquake, he went to check on families he helped with food and found kids crying in the street. He and his brother went home to pray. They prayed for four hours, returned to the city and loaded up 16 kids who lost their parents. He knew God would provide for him and the kids. Long story short, but now Isaiah's lives on as an Orphanage with those 16 kids from age 6-15. Healing Haiti provides funding to Isaiah. And these kids all live now as one family with Isaiah as their father figure.  These kids are amazing.  We brought them 16 beach balls and played catch with them for almost two hours. We all had a great time!

July 5th...

While most of you reading this are "at the lake" or recovering from picnics and late night fireworks, we are just trying to cool down.  We had a "Haiti-time" day.  Here is a collection of our words of the day:  Positive, Carefree, Natural, Comfortable, Bond, Test, Disappointed, Longing, Joy, Partnership, Excitement, Simplistic, Question, Choice, Conflict, Go-with-the-flow.  

We left at 9:00am with all intentions of making two water stops in Cite Soliel.  However, a water truck mechanical issue caused a minor delay and then the line was over an hour long.  Needless to say, we waited at the water filling station for nearly two hours!  The filling stop is right next to a tent city... And what do we do when we are together, we serve God by playing with children.  New pictures include us playing and giving shoulder rides with some amazingly happy kids.  It was really fun and carefree!  Then we got to our waters top. It was in the Four Coffins district of Cite Soliel.  There was a really long line which means the demand was greater than the supply!  But we served as many families as we could with clean water.  And these families were amazingly tight.  The mothers and siblings handed us their small children so they could get water.  And they never lost site of their children.  The children pointed out mamas and papas and siblings.  It gave us all hope that there was a strong family connection in this district.

We came back to the Guest House... Some showered, others went to swim next door.  Then we went to see what the women of Haiti make at the Apparent Project.  This project supports single parents and teaches them how to survive.  They make beautiful beads out of cereal boxes!  Awesome jewelry!

Our next plan was to go to a Tent City and pick up a Tap Tap full of kids to play soccer.  However with the days delays and the heat, we didn't have the energy, so instead we bonded more as a team and decided to make care packages for each of the 16 children at Isaiah's with all of our snacks we brought for our lunches.  It was really fun and we are really excited to share these tomorrow with the kids on our way back from Grace Village. Then we planned our Faith lesson that Cheryl prepared for the kids at Grace Village.  

Tomorrow, our first stop is the Mass Graves. Then Grace Village.  Then Isaiah's.  our week has flown by and I feel so blessed to be here with my daughter, Kelsi and with this incredible team!