Sunday June 13th- Thursday June 17th
So going to sleep saturday night came relatively easy for me.....i was on an air matress, it was a bit cooler, and it started to rain!! And the sound of rain always helps me to sleep......unfortunately I slept a little too well...
I woke up early sunday morning to find my head drenched.....immediately I thought, geez I must've sweat so much last night!! But then I realized that the rain had leaked into my tent!! I had to laugh at myself because I had never before put a tent fly on, so I guess it served me right! I had left my suitcases in the other tent with lauren and steph, and so I was hoping most of my stuff was dry......but i couldn't have been more wrong...
Come to find out, their tent was even more soaked than mine!! All of our clothes, electronics, journals, etc. were drenched!! I remember being so frustrated to the point of almost crying....my phone wasn't working, my ipod wasn't working, everything that I had written in my journal up until that point was gone, and not to mention everything smelled!! But, then I remembered what our friend TJ had said in the beginning of the week...."Choose it"......so I stopped myself in that moment, and I told myself, ok Sarah, well this sucks, but you can either get all upset and mad and dwell on it, or you can take about 10 seconds to be frustrated, and then get over it. It's not that big of a deal, and well, could be worse right?? Yeah, it could be worse, atleast I still had my camera with me and it didn't even get wet!! lol
So I chose to get over it, and well I just had to laugh because I knew that I would look back on that experience and laugh. And I was right....and I didn't even have to wait that long to say "hey remember when it rained and there was a flood and everything we owned got soaked?" lol....we were already laughing about it when we got back from church. Everything by then was pretty dry, except we had laid it all out on the ground so everything was just covered in sand and dirt and ants, but hey what the heck, lol.
After church, the whole afternoon and rest of the day Sunday was pretty chill. Some of the kids came from the orphanage to hang out with us at our beach site. That's when the hair braiding party started. lol....if you sat down somewhere and there were little girls around, they would swarm you and want to braid your hair. And well, my braids that Kim had done a few nights earlier were getting kinda loose, so I just let them go ahead and rebraid my hair. And dang, those girls are fast and man do they braid tight!!! There were a couple times when I had to clench my teeth because it hurt, but overall it felt pretty good.....I even fell asleep while they were braiding my hair! lol.
Monday through Wednesday were filled with building more houses, dancing to world cup music, eating rice and beans, playing with kids, oh, and washing clothes in the sink!! lol
On Tuesday afternoon we ended work a little early and brought all the kids from the orphanage to our beach site for a birthday party. Since none of the kids know when their birthdays are, we decided to have a big party for them, and they all turned one year older hahaha. Actually, that afternoon didn't start out so great......
We stopped working early on Tuesday and it was already decided that a few people needed to stay with the kids at the orphanage until the rest of the group could get the beach all decorated. So myself and a few others stayed at the orphanage to hang out with the kids and kind of pass time until the bus came to pick us up. I was enjoying playing jump rope with a few of the kids when all of a sudden, I realized I didn't feel my camera in my pocket......my heart immedieatly sunk.
I quickly dropped the jump rope and ran over to my bag and took everything out......meanwhile kids were jumping up and down and trying to get my attention.....but I was panicking....I couldn't even remember when the last time was that I had it. When I couldn't find it in my bag, my immediate thought was, one of the kids must have taken it out of my pocket when we got off the bus....they were always wanting to hold it and take pictures....and when they saw the string hanging out of my pocket, they would always point to it......so I thought for sure thats what happened....so I started kind of "charading" a camera and walkin around to the kids and pretending to be using a camera saying "camera?" "camera?" hoping by the slightest chance that one of them would know what the heck I was saying....lol pretty unlikely
Then I went up to a few of the women that were inside the orphanage and kind of acted out that i lost my camera.....and they spoke a bunch of Creole until one of the women said ""ahh....truck truck". "You saw it in the truck?" I said.....and she shook her head yes.......now I was pretty doubtful that that was in fact where my camera was....because I was sure that if my camera had fallen out of my pocket into to truck, somebody from my team would have seen it and told me that I dropped it.....but I had little hope.
It was about a half hour after I lost my camera that the bus came to take all of us back to the beach. I wish I could have been more excited.....I was lookng forward to this party all week but all I could do was feel sorry for myself. I kept thinking to myself, "God, I've lost my phone, my ipod, my journal, and now my camera on this trip. You must be trying to teach me something here, because pretty much everything I value is gone." but at the same time, I felt a peace come over me....if God really was trying to teach me something, then I'm going to trust Him. Afterall, most of these people lost everything in the earthquake, including loved ones. If they can be this happy, surely I can be too. So I tried to embrace this thought....at the same time I hoped and kept praying that somebody from my team had picked up my camera.
When we got back to the beach, I immediately ran to my friend Steph and asked her if she had seen my camera. Then I asked a few other people....and when they said no, I had lost all hope. I was thinking, "God I know it's just a camera, and I don't care if I lost it, but all of those pictures and videos from this trip are gone, and it's too late to even make up for any of them....I'm going to have a hard enough time talking about this trip to friends and family back home, I NEED those pictures....." I was so upset, so I ran to my tent and immediately started crying. I wasn't feeling good either, and I didn't think I had any energy to be around anybody while being upset....so I layed down on my air mattress and cried, and then prayed, and then tried to sleep.
I was just beginning to accept the fact that I had lost my camera and trying to muster up the energy to be ok with it when all of sudden I heard Steve, one of the guys from my team, yell my name outside my tent. "Sarah, Kim has your camera!". I opened my eyes and bolted up....I couldn't even believe what I was hearing. I wiped my face and stepped outside......he later told me that my face looked like death when I stepped out to say "oh my gosh really? are you serious? Oh thank God, thank God" hahaha. I could see Kim in the distance taking pictures of the kids with the baloons at the party, and I don't think I've ever been happier in that moment. lol.....I know, I know its really lame that I got that upset over a stupid camera, but like I said....it wasn't the camera I cared about, it was all the memories that were stored from that week.....620 pictures and 40 minutes worth of video. If you know me, you know that's a big deal to me.
So that was one of the big tests I think God put me through that week......and well, I'm not sure I passed but it was another moment I can look back on and say, "remember when that happened and you had to trust God, and remember that He didn't let you down"......I've had several of those moments in the past year....and even if I would have lost my camera, God would have had a reason for that, and would have brought me through either way. Definately a growing moment.
The rest of that day was so fun....I loved playing with the kids, especially in the ocean when you would have like three or four kids hanging on you and splashing you at all times. That night was the last church service of our trip. I had two little girls sit by me....and one of them fell asleep on my lap. And as hot and humid as it was, I loved it and wish it could have lasted longer. That was really the last time we got to hang out with the kids.
Wednesday was our last full day in Haiti. Mid morning I started feeling really rundown and achy. At first I thought maybe it was just soreness from kids hanging all over me the day before....but it was more like an achiness you feel when you have the flu. That and I was just really tired. I was really bummed because the plan was to go up this beautiful mountain later in the day to see where the new orphanage is being built. But I told myself no, because I knew if I were to push myself, the ride home would have been miserable. It ended up that nobody went up the mountain, because by the time we got back to the camp I think we were all pretty exhausted and started getting into the "ok time to pack up and go home" mode. The rest of the day I was kind of depressed. Depressed because I was feeling blah, and because it was our last day, and I wasn't ready to leave. I hated that feeling, having to leave and not knowing if I would ever get to come back. The World Race team and the members of our team that were staying were talking about the next day, because they were all going back to Jacmel after dropping us off at teh airport to go to a haitian wedding. How cool.....and yes, I was so jealous. That didn't help my mood either. Neither did the fact that I absolutely dread packing, especially when its packing to go home.
That night was really cool though. It was raining really hard. So a bunch of us from our team and the World Race team took shelter under the partially built dorm building at the beach. We started singing worship songs, and once it came to be about 8:30, the generator went off so it was pitch black, and all you could hear was the downpouring rain and our voices. It thundered and lightning every so often too......and the coolest part.....we felt an aftershock! You couldn't really tell it was an aftershock, and honestly I thought it was just thunder......but it was definately a different sound than thunder....a deeper rumble, and well, it's kind of hard to explain it any further. But it was cool.
The next day was bittersweet.....I was excited to be going home, but definately not excited about leaving my friends or the haitan people. I was looking forward to ice in my glass, but not excited about not being able to enjoy haitan cuisine everyday! Anyway, the plan was to leave our beach at 6am so that we could drive around Port au Prince awhile and see some more of the destruction....but since we were on haitian time, our driver didn't arrive til about 7:40am.....it was a bummer that we didn't get to see more of the capital, but there's always next time :)
So we got to the airport around 9:30am.....the trip seemed a whole lot quicker on the way back than on the way there.....probably because it was daylight, and I wasn't completely overwhelmed by everything. lol......we got to the airport and it was time to say goodbye to our friends. It was weird, because although I was saying goodbye, I didn't even think about the fact that they weren't coming with us, and we wouldn't see them for two and ahalf weeks. Nope, that didn't hit me until I was in Miami, and I got really sad lol.
Going through security and customs went pretty smoothly...Kelly, a girl from our team was the designated leader and was in charge of getting us through the airport adventures....she did a great job tho!! We went through the whole customs/ getting our boarding passes in about 45 minutes...not bad at all. And the holding area was air conditioned.....and we were so thankful!! lol......We got into Miami and had to wait on the runway for about a half hour because of some sort of delay due to the bad weather......we had minor delays with both of our flights due to weather. When we got to Miami it was so crazy to see all the restaurants and luxuries that we had been missing for the past two weeks in the airport......everything we take for granted all in one place. All that was going through my head was trying to imagine what it would be like for a Haitian to come to America for the first time and what would be going through their heads and what they would be feeling as they entered Miami airport. I can't even imagine.
The first thing everyone wanted to do was eat American food.....so we split up to go different places......some of us, including myself, went to Pizza hut while the others went to Starbucks. Not gonna lie, it was sooo wierd to be there because the last time we were there was before Haiti and it was like deja vu......i didn't like it. lol I was jealous of myself because I was like awwww the last time we were here we were all excited and pumped to be going to Haiti!! So we ate our food and yeah later I regretted it.....
Then we just hung out and waited around.....played cards, charged our phones, etc. oh, and listened to the Oh Africa song on someones phone lol. We made friends with this girl named Emily who was traveling back from Spain, she was there for three weeks tutoring English to two little girls in a family over there.......she is a Christian too so she saw us do the devo and thats how we all met her. That was cool.
Our flight from Miami to Detroit was delayed until about 9:45.....so we got in around 12:30 and got back to Akron close to about 4am.........longggggg 24 hour day!!! Not gonna lie, it kinda sucked not having my phone the whole time because people were calling their friends and families the whole time and I had to borrow someones phone to call and tell my parents what was goin on but I couldn't talk to them for very long. I just needed to tell someone about our trip so that I could verbally process......but that wasn't possible for me until we got to Detroit....and then my friend Haley, who picked us up in a chapel van got an earful on the ride home!!! lol. We got back to Detroit and it was a blistering 65 degrees......and we were alll freeeezing!!! lol
That basically sums up the trip. It was such an amazing experience. Kind of hard to put into words actually. To be honest, as much as I want to share my experience with everyone, the number one question that just makes my skin crawl was "how was your trip?" I hate it because theres so much more to it than just, oh it was good! But, I know that most of the time when people ask that question, they aren't really expecting a novel, so "oh it was good" is all they want. But I wouldn't being doing the trip justice if that is all I said.....so its definately frustrating to try and explain to people my experience......the experience, was amazing.....but the state of the country is devastating, but the people are incredible.....see, it's kind of a bipolar explanation. But God is definately at work in some crazy remarkable ways, and it was so cool to be a tangible part of that, and hopefully I am fortunate enough to be able to return to Haiti sooner (rather than later) and continue to rebuild and be amongst the Haitian people once again!
