Month: January 2013

A walk around our block is always a walk to remember. Sometimes I just want to forget that we live here. Sometimes I just want to do something about it…faster than it can be done. Other times I just want to walk and watch, learn and listen but most of all love however we can along the way. This was one of those walks.

We set out. The street dog that won’t leave our house because we loved it a little tags along too. The biggest pig I’ve ever seen stands in our path. A mommy goat and her two babies shuffle along beside us. We attempt to cross a patch of road covered by trash and sewer water almost stepping on a mother hen and her chicks pecking along in front of us. A baby cries loudly in the house across the way. I try not to think about why she might be crying. We hear a mother down the street tell her child to go ask the white people for some food. The child obeys and tells us he is hungry. We tell the child to go tell his mother. He looks at us confused. Then we tell him to tell the mother to come talk to us herself. The mother hears us speaking Creole and realizes we heard her before. A few kids who have been watching us curiously for the past few weeks point at us calling us the “blan hatian”. I first take this as a complement that the word “hatian” followed the usual “blan” but then wonder if the kids have labeled us real “white haitians”–as in the lighter skinned Haitians that are not foreigners like us– or if we were being labeled as bourgeoisie. Wait. Never mind.
Continue reading “A walk around our block”

Last night I went to bed pondering answered prayers. Sometimes answered prayers seem monumental and other times they are tiny nudges reminding us that God truly cares about the little details of our daily lives. While thanking God for both the big and small petitions He has answered the past year, I prayed that we will never cease to remember all He has done for us. God has stretched us and grown our faith in ways I never could have imagined. Walking by faith and not by sight is a privilege of freedom. We are often asked if we actually like living in Haiti. We and our children always answer “yes”. Then follows “why?” That is really hard to explain because our “yes” has come with experience. We experience a lot of ugly in Haiti but it comes alongside a beautiful freedom. We wish everyone could experience this freedom. But freedom always comes with a price tag. Freedom comes either after experiencing significant loss or at the expense of someone paying the price of your freedom. There are many people and things that in my heart I have felt we have lost or have been forced to let go in the past year. We gave up many things we used to feel were important when we moved to Haiti. We sacrificed many freedoms in order to give freedom to our adopted girls. We sacrificed jobs, money, friends, houses, cars, and almost everything that used to make daily life easier…not just when we moved to Haiti but as God stretched us continually after we got here. Many days I wake up and wonder how we got here. I don’t want to forget. I want my children to remember how we got here. I want my children to tell these stories to their children someday. We never want to forget that Jesus paid the ultimate price for our freedom. There is nothing we will experience in this life that compares to His sacrifice for us.
Continue reading “Memorial Stones”

Eric and Evan rode up front.
I should have sooner than I did.
This was the first time I have ever felt very car sick in Haiti.
I didn’t know if I was going to make it.
But we did!
I thought more than once, “If I never have to do this again it will be too soon”!
Then we got to the house.
And I thought…”Surely I will have to do this again.”

Never again will I let my husband pick out a house!
He sort of didn’t mention that THERE IS NO KITCHEN!

Continue reading “Kwizin and Counting”