A Day I've Been Dreaming Of

 Often when I’m in Haiti, I pray for the time in the day to be multiplied.  Especially on a day that required hundreds of volunteer hours, multiple training sessions and thousands of dollars in donations to pull off.  God delivered!

To back up a bit…..since my first trip to Haiti, my holy discontent has been that there are not enough opportunities for people to support themselves….to have the dignity of paying rent on time, having enough food each day or even paying for school for their children or grandchildren.  Then when I became ElderCare Advocate, I fell in love with each of the elders in our program.  So many of them are perfectly capable of working and every time I visited they asked for the only things they knew of….goats, chickens, candy to sell, etc.  Some of those things have been tried in the past, and I knew it wasn’t the answer.  Slowly, God provided the answer through people He put in my path, donations that came in and an amazing team that came together for our trip this week.

The day started with a talk about poverty….not just their poverty of material possession but that every person in the world has poverty of some kind.  My first trip revealed that I had poverty in my hunger and thirst for God….it was nothing compared to that of every Haitian I encountered.  So we talked about this verse:

"Know the hope to which God has called you....and His incomparably great power for us who believe.  That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead."  Ephesians 1:18-20

We talked about how Gods power was in each of us to change poverty throughout the world.  That I could help them with their poverty as they have helped me with mine.  That God can move mountains and that we can overcome!  We talked about the crafts and bread that we were going to teach them how to make.  While they started out unsure that they would be able to make these items, Brunet convinced them that while it would be difficult at first, they needed to persevere and learn from all the “blans” that had come to teach them. 

And so away we went….each elder (and some of the daughters that live with them) picked which craft they wanted to learn and we got to work:

Laura teaching Lauramise how to make rings.

Here, Michaela and Amy (and Emmanuel) taught beading…..this was the most popular craft…..and they made some beautiful pieces!

Marcy and Pouchan teaching Camisane how to make baskets.

Amy teaching Elie's daughter how to make a crocheted tshirt bag.

An unexpected surprise that God provided was that some of the older children at Grace Village were amazingly good at creating these pieces.  They jumped in as translators and helpers to our elders.  We hope to continue this in the future as a way for the older kids at Grace to have a job and serve the members of Titanyen. Here, MarieTerez is learning how to make bottle caps (recycled from the guesthouse) into earrings and keychains.

MarieDeloude, who can only use one arm because of a stroke, was able to make stamped notecards.

Meanwhile, out at the pizza oven, Ross, Calvin & Tim were teaching Pierre & Ofhane how to make bread to sell at the market.  They were amazing students and each had at lease 2 dozen pieces to sell!  (although Ofhane was trying to give away some of his, we quickly taught him that he must charge money!)

Pierre with some of his finished loaves.

At the end of the day, the elders who made crafts were paid for the pieces they made.  (And the pieces are now for sale in the new gift shop at the guesthouse!)  Some were speechless and almost in tears.  Others, like MarieDeloude, who has not been able to send her girls to school…..can now do so!  We even provided them lockboxes that will be kept safe at Grace Village, so that they can safely save their money for school or rent.  Some chose to save it all, some saved a little and some needed it right away.  The only thing we didn’t pay for was the bread, which the elders took to sell at market today.  I haven’t heard the outcome yet, but am excited to see if they sold everything!

We had time at the end of the day to deliver one more income producing item to Lindor, a man who had shined shoes in his younger days.  We brought him a brand new shoe shine kit with polishes, brushes and rags.  He was speechless and had tears in his eyes.  It melted my heart.  He invited us into his home where we got to see his old shoeshine box that he could no longer use.  What a heart melting moment.

We had heard that Marie was worried about the cracks in her home and that snakes would come in.  We brought spray foam insulation and sealed up the cracks.  Calvin even saw a baby snake in one of the cracks!

Theft has been a big problem for our elders.  Tim on our team is an industrial designer and designed a lock for their talking bibles.  He used a cable to attach Marie’s bible to the metal frame of her bed.  All the custom brackets and cables (over $1000 value) were donated by a company he works with!  Praise God for brilliant designs and generous donors!!!

And lastly, we were able to bring a wheelchair (big thank you to Ross for getting it through the airports!) to Haiti for Meme, a man who is blind and who is having more and more difficulties getting around.