Haiti blog 2

Hey! This is Josh from the Haiti team. Today Daniel passed the blogging honors off to me so I get to talk about our amazing trip. The last three days have been exciting and extremely moving. We have all experienced God in unique and beautiful ways.

Three days ago we went to an orphanage and helped remove rubble and do repairs there. The orphanage was personally devastating and amazing. We all figured that there were about 80 children and only two people that were taking care of them. From the minute the team walked into the orphanage we were bombarded with children running at us with open arms looking for affection. The kids needed love so desperately that when the team member wasn’t working there were only rare opportunities that a team member wouldn’t be hugging or playing with a kid. It was really hard to leave the children because whenever a team member put a child down they would instantly start crying. We could all sense the kid’s desperation and need for affection and love. I was in a state of helplessness when I was there but felt God’s presence in an beautiful way when I realized, that really, the only thing I could do was love the kids and pray that they would accept Jesus; a father that will never leave them.

While we were at the orphanage we also helped remove a ton of rubble that surrounded the outside of the orphanage. What took two or three hours could have probably taken twenty or thirty minutes if we had modern machines, but we didn’t, so it was pretty much up us to move as much rubble as we could into two dump truck loads by hand.

Yesterday we celebrated the fourth of July by taking a tour of the city. It was amazing how much damage the quake has done. The Haitian palace( pretty much the Haitian white house) was destroyed in the quake along with countless homes and businesses. After the tour of the city we went to a pizza place called “Mun-Cheeze”. After pizza we went to one of the highest mountains in the city that overlooked the town. From the view on top of the mountain we could see most of the town, which was absolutely beautiful. From there we all went back to our house and I took a legit nap!

Lastly, today we went to another village and distributed more filtration buckets to help the people have clean water. The hike today was not as hard as the one before but it was really hot! In the village we got to hear the school children sing for us which was beautiful. Our friend and unofficial (official?) tour guide, Fritz, later, got an awesome Haitian dance going with the some of the kids from the school.

I hope you are all having an awesome time in Fresno. We miss and love you.