Haiti Day 1 Recap
What can one say about Haiti? It is a country with so much natural beauty and incredibly hospitable people; yet so much devastation. Today was our team’s first full day at the Son of God Orphanage. It has been 10 months since my last visit to this orphanage. There are a lot of familiar faces and there is almost nothing like an orphan who you haven’t seen in 10 months come up to you and says they remember you and remember your name. Along with the familiar faces that have been here at the orphanage, there are some new faces that are equally as precious.
Mack Schutz doing what he does best - loving people.
If you have never walked into an orphanage, I would encourage you to serve at one within your lifetime. Our team brought crafts for the kids to do, planned games for them to play and thought through schedules that would help the kids learn and have fun; yet it seems that all of that was thrown out the window today because all these kids really want is to hold your hand or sit on your lap and laugh. Today I had a little boy named James latch onto me. He is one of the young kids that I remember from last summer and he is also the boy whose picture sits on our fridge at home in Ft Collins. I couldn’t put him down without him looking up at me with his big brown eyes and his arms up saying, “up, up, up, up…” He didn’t want to be set down at all. It is difficult for any of our team to walk through the orphanage without 3-5 kids holding your hand and hanging on your arms.
These kids crave personal touch. All they want is to be held, touched and noticed; honestly their innate desires are not any different than those of us who grew up with a family who we lived in proximity with. As I think of these kids I am quickly reminded by the heartbreak I sense when I think of their situation. It is all I can do to keep from tearing up when I think of these kids with no mothers, no fathers, no uncles, aunts or any other family but the other kids in the orphanage. What they crave is the attention of the teams that come through their orphanage throughout the year. One of our team members asked one of the children what made them happy and the child said (Through an interpreter) that what made her happy was that we were here to be with them.
Tonight our team gathered after dinner and I threw out the question on why serving orphans is such a heartbreaking and worthwhile effort. The thing we landed on is that all of us have been designed by God to live life in the context of relationship and the one relationship that God intended everyone to experience is the context of family. When God’s design is broken what follows is a broken heart.
These kids don’t have even a 1/8 of the conveniences that my son and daughter experience back home, yet they smile continually. Today I saw an infant go to the bathroom in her pants and without missing a beat an 11 year old girl took the little infant and washed him under the faucet. As soon as this was over the infant was set down and the girl went back to jumping rope. The sense of community here is incredible and these children are committed to one another, it makes sense because all they have is one another. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be satisfied with “one another” rather than the other things that compete with Jesus for the motivation of my heart.
Tonight we rest up and tomorrow we head to a local church for worship and back to the orphanage to serve.
Let Love Live.
