Day 2

This is from Lena Wright's blog (one of the people on the mission)

Parkway Christian Church-you people ROCK. I went from 1 and a half bags, to SIX full bags, even at the last minute!! I sent out an email with some last minute needs, and 24 hours later, I had oodles of supplies (food stuff mostly) to bring down. And it worked out perfectly-the team had EXACTLY our 2 bags per person. You have no idea how important this part of the mission is. There is no other way to get supplies here-so your willingness to help at the last moment really made a difference.

Prayer Requests:

Pray for stamina for the team. There's lots of work to do.

Pray that we all get good sleep and stay healthy.

Pray for a few people that are feeling anxious about a variety of things.

Pray for the people that we come in contact with-that they would see that we are different and that we could impact them and show them that EACH ONE MATTERS.
Please pray that we get a DHS appointment this week, that we are able to get to it and that it goes well/smoothly to get this adoption moving on the Haitian side of things.

(Lena and her husband, Bob are adopting 2 little boys from the orphanage they are at and this is an appointment they need to get the adoption going..)
This is written by Shelby Cook and Justin Baugus:

3-9-09

Today was our first full day at the orphanage. It was interesting to see how the daily routine goes at the orphanage. I t was interesting to walk in and see only toddlers there because all of the kids were at school. Even though there are two groups of kids that go to school (younger-morning, older-afternoon) all of the kids at the orphanage go in the morning.

Today Katie started the English stations for the kids. There was a singing station, game station, and station where the kids had to make what the leader told them to make but they used play-doh to make the word. The stations were chaotic at first but it got easier as time went by. Even though it was chaotic the children and the leaders were having fun.

Jolie and Shelby stated to take the pictures of the sponsored children. They finished taking all the pictures. It was fun but a little frustrating when we worked with the school principle, Alex, to get the pictures labeled. He had a strong Haitian accent and it was hard to understand what letters he was trying to pronounce. Towards the end it turned in to fun, we were laughing and talking about each kids personality it was really fun.

The men were fixing some stuff around the house (drain pipes, barbed wire, etc.) and needed to go to a hardware store. Eric, Casey, Justin and Reggie from the orphanage, went to the hardware store. It wasn’t until they walked out that they realized that Reggie planned on walking. As soon as they got to the corner where the side street meets the main street, they witnessed a car accident. A government vehicle pulled out in front of a motorcyclist and completely cut him off. The motorcyclist, with passenger, went slamming into the side of the car at around 30 mph. The driver, not wearing a helmet, was literally a foot away from smashing his face against the car but he was able to move his head just in time to save his life. The passenger was thrown from the motorcycle and broke his arm. The driver broke both his legs, and an arm, and had to be dragged out of the middle of the road by other witnesses. Reggie explained that a “tap-tap”, which is a sort of makeshift taxi cab, would have to take the men to the UN hospital because that would be the only place for him to get care. So we (this is Justin writing this portion by the way and I’m getting tired of writing in the third person) continued walking with Reggie to the hardware store. When we got there, all it was, was a little room with a bunch of supplies drilled into a wall with price tags… no merchandise was actually out; they go into the back to get whatever you buy. I guess it’s a theft deterrent… but we ordered our stuff and all of a sudden we hear music out in the streets. I mean it was really nice sounding music so Casey starts to walk outside thinking it was a sort of parade. At that point Reggie grabbed him by the shirt and threw him back inside and he turned to us and told us to get back. So we had to hide in the back of the store. Reggie explained that it was a political protest to bring back their old president and it was better if we just stayed as far out of harm’s way as possible. It is very likely that if they saw us, they wouldn’t have done anything, but you never can be too sure and Reggie wasn’t taking any chances. On the way back, they had cleaned the guy out of the street (sounds sad but its true) and we saw his bike on the side walk, abandoned. That’s when Reggie really hit it home for me. He started saying how messed up Haiti was and how much good we were doing by being there. He said that without God working through people here, it’s hopeless. He was saying that his people say that when you come to Haiti, you leave your country and enter Hell! That’s how these people describe their own country! Just utterly hopeless without the outside help of people. The government doesn’t even help its own people. Remember the government car that cut off the motorcycle? Well, because of the state of the country and the corruption in the government, the government car didn’t even stop. It just kept going. This is why we are here. We are here to help these people any way that we can. They need it and we just hope that god can use us in a way to better their lives for at least this short time that we are here.

Here are some pics of the team in the nursery and one of the sponsership pictures: