This past summer was amazing. I traveled to Haiti with a team of twenty-four for about a week on a missions trip, a learned a lot about the culture, living conditions and the spiritual life of the people there. I have never been more glad to have gone on a trip.
On the way to Gressier we saw hundreds of tents packed into any and every corner thus making tent cities. When we saw the area we were to be staying, there were makeshift homes up. A woman whose husband worked in America owned the place we stayed. Her house was the only one that survived the 2010 earthquake, but even so she would not sleep in her house. Her and her family that was with her refused to sleep in the house because they were scared it would collapse. Not even our translators would sleep inside.
My team and I would sleep on the roof, and the people thought we were crazy. After the first night, we thought we were crazy, too, but not because we were in the house. In Haiti the day starts at around three or four in the morning, and we couldn't get anymore sleep. There was even a man with a megaphone who walked down the streets praising, and singing to Jesus.
For breakfast we would have bland, unsweetened oatmeal. For lunch we would eat PB&J with canned fruit. We were not allowed to have anything washed or the water their because it would make us sick. For dinner we would have a traditional Haitian meal usually consisting of beans, fried meet, beans and more beans.
In the morning we would evangelize. I had two memories that stand out most. First was when we went to meet the church we were partnering with, and it started to rain. We stayed in the little church for a small time, but had to head back because if we didn't it would be to dark, and there was potential that we might get run over by the crazy drivers that are down there (I might even go as far as to say they're worse than New York drivers). We left and the people got offended. They thought we were disrespecting their hospitality, and their worry for our health. The people don't go out in the rain because there is potential to get sick, and if you get sick there is not medicine available. Needless to say we didn't do that again.
Secondly, while out with my team we stopped and met this small family that lived in a tent not larger than sixty-five inches in length. The one girl on our team who spoke Creole started to speak and a little girl who was about five years old started yelling, "Blan," which means white, over and over again. She along with most of the people in the village had never met a white person before, and now six of them had showed up and were trying to talk with her. The little girl was so scared. "It's alright," Nikki responded in Creole, "They 're my friends." "No! They can't!" the little girl responded. "It's alright, you can touch them." Nikki coaxed, but instead the little girl cried, "They'll take me!" ran into the tent and hit her head on a pole that was holding it up.
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