Haiti - Day 1 - Arriving In Haiti

I am apologizing to everyone I promised my blog to while on my Healing Haiti trip.  The blog host site (??) wouldn't recognize my computer in Haiti and I had no clue how to fix it.  I am going to do my best over the next few weeks to use this as my journal and summarize my trip one day at a time.

Aug 12th.  I didn't sleep much at all as I was up late finalizing my packing and hanging out with my mom.  I slept on and off and was up before my alarm at 1:45am.  I got ready and kissed my babies and hoped like hell that I would see them again!  I tried to eat and, for the first time, felt like throwing up.  I woke Dana and we were off to pick up a couple of my travel companions.  We picked up Jen and Amanda and this was the first time I might cry as I witnessed this sweet your woman tearfully say goodbye to her dad.  I was feeling exactly the same way!  I was so happy to have Jen in the car with me as she took this trip last year and was happy that she was going to experience this trip now with her daughter.  We were then on our way to Maple Grove to pick up Kelly - my Prayer Partner.  Kelly did not know any of us prior to late April or early May when our team met for the first time - talk about taking a leap of faith!  Next we made our way to the airport.  If was very hard to say goodbye to Dana, again, praying I would see him again!  These were my first tears, which I quickly dried to head inside to greet my team.  We were met by Tom - a representative of Healing Haiti to see us off and pray with us.  Tom meets the outgoing team every Monday morning at 3:30am to see them off and greets every team coming in Monday evening at 10:30pm - what a guy!

Team meeting up at the airport just prior to obtaining our tickets.

Team photo before heading to our gate.

Kelly, Chris and me on the airplane.

The flights were smooth, no problems and were uneventful considering we had 17 donation suitcases, 13 personal suitcases and 13 backpacks with a lay over and plane change in Miami - that's a lot to keep track of!  We landed on time in Haiti and got through the airport without any issues.  Leaving the airport was my first taste of Haiti - so chaotic and so many people.  It was very interesting getting all of us and our luggage through a maze of people out into a parking lot of sorts to our waiting interpretors and our "tap tap".  We loaded up and were off.  I am a self proclaimed back seat driver and I had to very quickly let go of those fears if I was going to survive the week.  The traffic is crazy and the driving is pure insanity.  The roads are bumpy, sometimes paved, but in mny areas are not.  Many are busted up, without diving lines, stop signs or stop lights.  Cows, goats and pigs roam the streets.  You simply honk when you are going through an intersection....going around a sharp curve or passing someone....or making a u-turn....or cutting in front of someone.  It seemed the type of honk you gave meant what you might be doing.  We made it safely to our guest house and unloaded all of our things.

From L - Sara, Kari (one of our fearless co-leaders) and Jen - fresh off the plane in our packed tap tap
on our way to our guest house (17 donation suitcases, 13 personal suitcases, 13 team members,
1 interpreter, 13 backpacks....and a partridge in a pear tree!!!

Kelly and me on our way to the guesthouse.

We didn't take time to unpack as it was time to take the neighborhood boys out to play soccer!  We got back in the tap tap and headed out.  Several boys came running, the door to the tap tap was opened and they hoped in!  We took a short drive to a large area with soccer fields.  Got out and began playing.  These kids are awesome and did not take it easy on us.  Many played without shoes and let me tell you, this isn't your ordinary soccer field - we had to dodge cow poop and concrete chunks laying around the field.  We had a blast and I was hopeful we could do this again!

From L - Justin, Kelly, Erin, Chris, Grant, Amanda, Tracey, Jen, neighbor boy,
Sara, neighborhood boy, me and Carol.  Missing - Becca and Kari! 

Carol, Sara and Kelly wondering what the heck just happened!

Me, Sara and Amanda with a few of the neighborhood boys.

We headed back for showers and dinner - this night it was tacos.  After sorting donations and meeting as a group we were all tired and ready for bed.  What an awesome first day!  Thanked God!

Our Tap Tap - what a beauty!