Whew, what to even say....
I'm back in the States now, super broke monetarily, but rich beyond measure in every other way possible.
The theme of the DTS I was attending was "transformation."
Coming back to LA and seeing all my friends from the other teams (and even - especially? - my own) after their two and half months of adventure was crazy. These were NOT the same people I had met 5 months ago. These were my brothers and sisters and they had new hearts and new dreams and an entirely new view of the world and how they ought to be living in it.
The final time in Haiti was definitely interesting.
A few days after my last post we were heading out to do food distribution in the Cite Soleil tent city we'd been working with (which I'd mentioned below was one which was a tent city of about 6,000 who were not currently receiving much aid, so we were sooo excited to finally be able to share something tangible with our new friends!) when Melissa discovered that $2,000 dollars of our team money had been stolen from the safe room - which not only annihilated our plans of actual ministry/debrief, we no longer even had enough money left to stay in our tents on the base!
That night the ywam pap staff held a meeting about it, and took an offering for us so that we could at least maybe get enough money to stay on base (to continue with our present agenda, we would need $1,500). In about 5 minutes we had $1,450, the other $50 given by the morning, enough to continue with everything! Yeaa-aaah!! And this wasn't coming from some huge, rich benefactor, this was all between two smaller teams from Mexico and Pismo Beach and the few SOS/Haitian Staff, who were all also there on support. We definitely all learned a little bit about God's faithfulness and provision that night.
The next day we did food distribution at the palace... so as far as food distribution goes, we've seen better.
An example of a well run food distribution (Cite Soleil - feeding 6,000):
An example of the type of food distribution we ended up doing at the Palace:
The Palace area has been turned in to yet another of PaP's 1,300 tent cities, but this one has no leaders, no orders, and no way to really properly distribute food. While we originally started out getting out of the truck and personally handing out food and then relocating before the crowd got too big, very quickly we found ourselves in mob-like settings and had to run back in the truck and take off before it got out of hand, or before we lost one of ours.. ha.. (I would like to note that no matter how aggressive it got, many of us always felt a few anonymous Haitian hands helping boost us quickly in to the truck or offer other assistance in escaping the scene safely)
Soon the only option we had left is what the video shows, just driving around, giving a bit out, and rushing off. I definitely don't think it's the most beneficial route, but it's the sort of problem you run in to a lot in Haiti.. there is almost never an easy or conventional way to help.
The next day we got to go to the mountains... and it was SO good! I didn't understand how oppressive Port-au-Prince was/is/had felt to me until finally being freed from the environment.. and I really mean freed. I had no idea the weight it had until we were finally away from it, to the extent that I almost felt bitter when we had to return the next week, to once again just feel that hopelessness and anger and fear and hatred and apathy, to have my personal freedom taken away once again... all amidst trash and rubble and crushed lives and fumes - it is such a dark, tangible feeling... and just being there after the contrast of the beauty, joy, freedom, innocence, and life we'd seen in the mountains felt like we were going back to prison.
That was when I only had another two days in Port-au-Prince... my "need" for personal freedom is completely sobered when acknowledging the fact that millions of people spend their whole lives in that environment.
But yeah! The mountains were great: full of slight mishaps like showering in the rapids and getting carried down the river, only to be rescued by Haitian children as you hold on to some branch on the bank, haha, sleeping in flooded tents, or performing one of our skits only to have the sound go out and looking like awkward semi losers for the embarrassing silent duration, but it was definitely an amazing week, with lots of love poured out on to some really awesome people who haven't gotten much lately.
This is (some other people doing) the aforementioned skit:
(...I was Satan..Thanks team. ;p)
Umm.. I'm trying to not make this update super random and long, but I think I've already failed both so I'm going to stop now, heh. That's basically the wrap up of the end of my time in Haiti. I'm going to try to continue to update on things I find out about Haiti, and probably use this blog for my next adventure, too. .. so thanks for reading, thanks for supporting me, and please, please, please, don't forget about Haiti!!!!
Love, love, love! Sara
