Haiti - The idea and how it came about

I have been so surprised by the interest in our trip to Haiti and I was so surprised at how much I gleaned from the whole experience, not only while there, but the craziness leading up to it and even today, the opposition I faced after the fact.  It's so much that I decided I would blog about it.  First a disclaimer on the blog itself.  It's super old, I got the brilliant idea to begin blogging and quickly found it is NOT for me.  I don't enjoy it at all.  Most of the previous posts are from when Adiya was a baby and I was basically just blogging for the family.  So don't say I didn't warn you, they will be boring.  But I think the blogs about Haiti will hopefully inspire and incite you to action, if nothing else to get you praying for the country, the people and the work being done there.


So back in April, Mike and I decided we wanted to do a second honeymoon somewhere.  We had been looking and considering locations and one night, while packing some small gifts for the children we sponsor, out of the blue it popped into my head that we should try to visit our child that lives in Haiti b/c she is 17, about to age out of the program I assumed.  It was like God spoke to both of us in that moment and we were like, "yeah, let's do it!"

We looked into it, found we needed to give 3 months notice.  Guess what, we were 3 months and two days out from the dates we had set aside for our trip. We knew the organization (World Vision) would only take care of us in country while we were actively visiting our child but wanted to make a trip out of it and spend several days there, since it was birthed out of a desire for a second honeymoon.  We contacted a few of the missionaries my parents knew that work in Haiti.  The basic gist of their responses were that they don't recommend us coming if we don't speak the language or know the country.  It is a very difficult and quite dangerous in places country to navigate.  I figured as much, which was why I wanted to get some advice from them and find a local contact.  None of them lived in the area we would be going to so we continued praying, not feeling we should throw in the towel.

About five weeks from our trip date, we discussed it with my parents and decided that if we didn't have a local contact that would be able to help us get around and kind of keep tabs on us, it probably wasn't very wise to go.  We didn't feel comfortable proceeding with the trip, but yet I didn't feel like I should just give up and tell our World Vision that it was not going to happen.  So we waited.  We made the decision on Saturday and I remember sitting in church on Sunday and something that was said in the message jabbed at my heart, as saying it wasn't over yet, even though it basically looked impossible, or if nothing else, foolish for us to proceed.

That afternoon, my dad calls me all excited.  He says as he was sitting in church that morning he got a message from one of the missionary families in Haiti.  They hadn't given me their information b/c the wife and daughter had been recovering from an intense bout of Typhoid and a few other illnesses. Well, she was fully recovered and was contacting my dad asking when they were coming to visit.  My dad mentioned they wouldn't be able to come for a while but that Mike and I had been looking into coming.  He also mentioned that our trip was going to be quite complicated b/c we had heard back that in order to see our sponsor child, we would have to make an additional trip, but this one by boat to cross 14 miles of ocean to see her b/c she lives on a small island off the coast of Haiti.  Guess what!  The missionary guessed the island we had to visit.  Turns out, she lives right next to the port we would have to go to catch the boat.  And they had a place for us to stay and would love to pick us up at the airport (and hour and a half away) and help us get around.  CRAZY!!!  And more "non" coincidences kept appearing.

So it became quite clear that God was in this trip.  We started connecting with the amazing missionary couple (ok, just us wives, you know guys don't do that sort of thing :-P) and were able to fund raise hundreds of cloth diapers for a couple of the orphanages there that don't have anything, the kids literally just pee and poo on themselves.  That shocked me how many of you guys gave and still want to give, cuz I know cloth diapers aren't cheap!  We were also able to get lots of clothes donated for the children and some toys for the babies, which are really non existent in those orphanages.  So we were all loaded and ready to go.

ONLY ONE PROBLEM!  I hadn't heard back from our local World Vision contact that was coordinating the visit with our sponsor child.  The logistics seemed complicated and the US office recommended I call him in Haiti since we were getting a slow response from him confirming logistics.  So I did. He was awesome, but we had a bad connection.  He told me to begin emailing him directly.  So I did. And that was the last I ever heard from him.  So here we are, a week out, tickets bought, bags packed.  But thankfully, we had our missionary couple we had been connecting with over messenger that had stepped up to help us out while there.  So we weren't too worried.  We would go and hope the wheels were turning on the Haiti side so we could meet our child.  I will blog about all the craziness that went down with trying to get a hold of the visit coordinator and how the visit ALMOST didn't happen!  We really couldn't believe it!