Cock-a-doodle-do

The rooster crowing at 5am came a little early this morning after our exciting, busy first day yesterday in Port-au-Prince. We arrived after lunch from New York to the Port-au-Prince airport and successfully snaked through the crowds in our group to find Franz and our transportation. We quickly traveled through the capital to our housing for the night. We expected to see a very impoverished place, but the amount of need and plethora of damage still present was astonishing.  We were excited to get started.

After dropping off our bags, we gathered our supplies and toys for the orphanage and were on our way! We packed Similac (baby formula), toy cars, bubbles, barrettes, books, kickballs, and lotion for the children and adults at the orphanage. Seeing the orphanage was absolutely inspiring! God is at work in Haiti and in this orphanage. Once entering the orphanage, we were overwhelmed with ambition to serve the children and Love Takes Root during our time here. The children loved our toys and the adults were very grateful for the other supplies. We experienced so much LOVE in the orphanage. We instantly loved the children and visually saw how much love the adults have for the children. The children and adults were grateful that we were there, but we were grateful that they were sharing their stories, space, and time with us! All of the kids were happy to play with us. We played with the balls, painted fingernails,  took pictures and read books together. Most of the children didn't speak English, but it didn't matter. We could still communicate. One of the most interesting things was observing that the Haitian children had the same emotions that we see children in the USA  possessing. In the end, people in all corners of the world are still PEOPLE.

The Haitian culture has been wonderful. The people are very eager to communicate with us,  even if our languages are different. We catch some stairs because of our physical differences, but after a simple wave, all of the nervousness goes away and we all share smiles or a simple head nod. We are happy to be in Haiti and we feel that Haiti is happy to have us.

Today we are traveling from the capital to Jacmel, the new orphanage site. We are ecstatic to see the hopeful place of the children's future. We have so much motivation now after seeing the children and their current living situation. We have our bags packed and are ready to see what else Haiti has to offer. We are eager to make our mark on Haiti.

We are a group of 10 Buena Vista University students and 2 BVU faculty members. We are participating in BVU's AWOL (alternative week of offsite learning) as a spring break program.

GO BEAVERS!!