One final hello from Haiti.

As the day is winding down I find myself wishing for more time, but all good things must come to an end. At least we ended our week spending as much possible time with the girls. Today was the day that we went to the beach with all of the girls and the other group here, which I’m thankful for because handling the girls at the beach may have been a bit overwhelming. We left for the beach at 9:00 am and it took us about an hour to get out there. That hour was spent singing worship songs and cradling some of the girls that fell asleep, which were only about three or four of them surprisingly.


Once we finally arrived at the beach, it didn’t take much time for us to strip down to our swimming attire. As opposed to Lake Michigan and any other beaches back home, the water was perfect. It was warm enough so we weren’t freezing, but cool enough so we weren’t hot, although it was really easy to get hot when you had three girls hanging on you begging to go into the deep end only so they can freak out and grab a hold of you for dear life. Since most, if not all, of the girls couldn’t swim, they mostly hung out in the shallow end or hung on to people, they loved being in the water. The entire day there wasn’t a cry or a complaint to be heard. We had a short break for lunch which was spent scarfing down food as fast as we could so we could get back in the water. Who would have thought that bread and crunchy peanut butter would taste so good on a warm summer day at the beach? Between tossing around beach balls, footballs, and soccer balls and trying to teach some of the girls how to swim, everybody pretty much wore themselves out. Now the way back was spent sleeping and taking embarrassing pictures of people sleeping. It was easy to see the exhaustion on everyone’s faces.

When we got back a few of us walked the girls back to the orphanage and told them we’d see them later. Unfortunately it rained for the third night in a row, not that I’m complaining about the rain whatsoever, and we weren’t able to make it back to the orphanage. It’s our last night in Haiti and I can’t help but think about how hard tomorrow is going to be. It’s amazing what a single week can mean to a little girl, and how it can completely change one’s perspective on life. It will be hard going back to normal life, with the running water, air conditioning, and lack of mosquitoes…ok maybe that will be easy to jump back into, but not being two blocks away from the orphanage won’t. I think the hardest part is that we can’t just walk over there any time we want to play with them or just sit and watch a movie. I’ll miss walking into the orphanage and seeing their smiling faces, feeling a hand ease its way in to mine, and letting the older girls take over our cameras. I know that everyone’s been changed by this experience, and I pray that we’re all able to come back to Haiti in the future. It’s been an awesome week full of adventures, and I can honestly say that I wouldn’t change a thing.

Thank you all for keeping up with the blogs and keeping us in your prayers. We’re glad to have been able to share this amazing experience with you.

Shannon