Day 5:

Orphanage, Palace, and Concrete

Best day yet! We started our day at the local orphanage for boys, bringing with us a plethora of balls, chalk and other such fun things. What a blast! First of all, these are great boys, well behaved and loads of fun. While Ceola and Mark spent time with the chalk writers (boy were they good!), Adam, John, and Tom joined 5 of the boys in a game of 4 on 4 soccer showing us how talented they were and how old and slow we are getting! We absolutely made a bond with these boys, as several hugged and hung on to us as we were preparing to leave; we also discovered that they knew the words ‘God Bless You’, as they emphatically repeated it when spoken to them. Future trips: Your time in Haiti won’t be complete without a visit to this place! God is working in that place and in those awesome boys. In our devotions tonight we reflected on our day, and it became very emotional when the subject came to what we experienced at the orphanage.

We then took a quick drive-by of the Palace, stopping long enough to get a few quick shots before our driver got us out of there. There was a ton of UN security force presence in the blocks surrounding the palace, although there was no threat we could see we certainly weren’t overly comfortable being there especially considering the fact that the palace is still surrounded by tent cities. There are more buildings still in ruins close to downtown then we have seen anywhere else, the most prominent being the Palace itself. The grounds appear to be kept up, but it doesn’t look like the structure has been touched since the day of the earthquake. We drove by a couple of other sites that had meaning to Mark from when he was a boy, allowing him to rekindle some old memories of his several years there.

After lunch at Epi D’or, we got back to Duplan in time to create the cement bucket brigade to create the cement floor in the new cistern. We were all tired, hot and insanely sweaty, but truly by God’s grace and mercy we found the energy to continue on until we had finished pouring the floor. We have established such an awesome relationship with all nine of the workers there. Through the workers, we know that God provided us energy to keep going and especially the boss, Aishan.

Aishan (who we met on previous trips) provided levity and laughter to the job all afternoon with his impressions of various types of vehicles as he carried his pails of concrete to the pit. We asked him why he has been so joyful during our visit, when last year he hardly talked to us. His response was extremely powerful and heartfelt: He had found Jesus! It drove home that fact that our entire church’s efforts in Duplan are paying huge dividends in the life of the people of that community and beyond it to communities around Duplan. Aishan being saved, and others like him, is the reason we are here, and the reason we are going deep here. It’s not all about building buildings, but more so helping to facilitate and build their faith in God and develop a lasting relationship with Christ. God is absolutely at work here! Halleluiah!