Today was a very difficult day for me. We did construction work in the morning just like we did every other morning. This was our FINAL day of construction and we were all ecstatic! This was the hardest day for me because I was physically exhausted from doing all of the manual labor. I have never worked that hard in my life! I was just counting down the minutes until lunch and there was so many times throughout the morning that I just wanted to give up! What kept me going was that I was very excited for the afternoon because we were going to go out into the villages and go to two different orphanages. After lunch, I decided to take a quick nap so that I was recharged for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, after I woke up from my nap, I was not feeling so great. I took some medicine and was contemplating whether or not I should just stay in bed for the afternoon. Finally, I decided to just suck it up and go with the group to the villages. I am SO thankful I decided to go!
The first orphanage we went to was called Good Samaritan... It was actually destroyed in the earthquake so they now live on the other side of the road in tents. There are about 50 to 70 children that live in this orphanage, and unfortunately it is not run by the best Haitians. I will never forget, as we are walking into the orphanage, it was like someone yelled GO! to the children because they all started running as fast as they could toward us! We just spent time loving on the children and holding the younger ones! We played sports with some of the older ones as well..We brought flip flops to pass out to the boys and dresses to pass out to the girls. We regret doing that though because as soon as we left we found out that some of the people the run the orphanage will take what the children are given and they will sell it back out in the markets...so next time I go I am taking snacks that the children can eat in front of me and it won't be taken from them. I held this little boy, Emmanuel, for a really long time! He was about a year old and he was so precious. I will never forget the look on the faces of the children as we give them their flip flops and dresses. This part of the trip touched me the most...I can't even put it in words...
After Good Samaritan, we got to go to another orphanage called Les Enfants du Roi. We took a walk thru the villages and finally made it...This was a special orphanage because it was funded by two guys named Jeremy and Jay. These two guys are about 25 years old and they are from Florida. They have now been living in Haiti for almost one year and they raised enough money to have this orphanage built. They now live at the Mission of Hope and volunteer there! Jeremy was like our go-to-guy all week and he was awesome! All of the Haitians really love these two guys! Anyways we got to go to their orphanage and it is an all boy orphanage...we played sports and passed out gifts to these children as well and it was a lot of fun! It was sad to see because this orphanage was well run where as Good Samaritan was a complete mess...
After the orphanages, we went back to the MOH where we relaxed and played games and got to know everyone better. Once again, it rained and so it was another nice relaxing evening!
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