Haiti Here We Come!

It's hard to believe that the months of preparation leading up to this trip had passed and I was actually on my way to Haiti! It seemed like just a short time ago that I sat in my seat at church, watched a video from Operation Christmas Child (those things are killer!!), and sat forward, locked eyes with Ashley and said, "Let's go to Haiti!". By mid-day that Sunday we were both signed up and committed.

I rolled up out of the bed at 2:47 (because I wanted to get every last second of sleep) and showered, ready to head out and pick up my comrades. I was determined not to forget any of them as my dreams had indicated. I had 3 dreams in my few hours of sleep: one where I forgot Samantha, one where I got to the airport and didn't have Amanda, and the last that I was sleeping soundly when Ashley showed up at my door panicked because we only had 30 minutes to make our flight. Thank goodness none of those were indicators of our morning!

We entered Nashville International with over 300lbs of formula that we had collected for the Mother's Milk program we'd be partnering with in Haiti. We were quite nervous about our bags, hoping that all of them would be able to make it. As always, God showed up and sent Robert, the very helpful and cordial American Airlines worker who took me by the hand with all of our Nashville gals' passports, bypassed a looooong, long line of waiting passengers, personally entered all our info and got our boarding passes, tagged every one of our bags and sent them on the conveyor without even weighing them! And, because details are so important, we had to pay extra money for the extra bags: $120. Cash donations were given specifically for that. Do you know how much we had? Yep. $120. God is good. All the time.

We made it safely to Miami where we were able to meet up with the rest of our team. After our conference calls where our co-leader, Steve, was mysteriously absent yet he was continually praised and referred to as "Jack Bauer", we fully expected him to repel down from the airport ceiling or better yet, chase our airplane down the runway where he would miraculously find his way on the flight through the emergency door. Needless to say we were a bit disappointed to see him walk up as a mere human. It wouldn't take us long to realize that he didn't earn his nickname Jack Bauer for nothing. He turned out to be pretty amazing.

Smooth flight and decent into Haiti. Here's my first look:

The airport in Port Au Prince was a bit sketchy to say the least. People were everywhere trying to "help" us with our bags. We blindly followed a man with a crumpled up piece of paper that said, "Heartline" only to find out that the real person we were suppose to follow had a REAL sign. First lesson, if the sign is in pencil on a crumpled piece of paper it's probably not legit. Oh well. No harm done that time. We arrived just in time for a Haitian dinner at the guesthouse in Port Au Prince. Thus started my diet of "not much" for the next seven days. Thank goodness for rice, American peanut butter, and Luna Bars!

After a pretty exhausting travel day we turned in early. Amanda and I were separated from the group and had to room with 9 strangers and a huge cockroach. We were thankful for a bed though and were ready to get some shut eye.
I got under my net, got settled into my sleep sack and prayed for the day that was ahead.
In the morning we'd head to WellBeing Orphanage, home to about 30 precious children with nothing but smiles. Travel Day was a success but the true Haitian experience would start then. Bring on the tap tap!