Friday, December 9, 2016

Healing Haiti Blog Day 4.

By Bodie Bice.


            Bonswa! My name is Bodie and I am a 16 year-old teen from the currently chilly Waseca, Minnesota.  This is my second trip, with my Mom leading, my brother coming for the first time, and my Dad being at Grace Village working on sustainable agriculture, as the lead. At the time of writing its Day 5 (Friday), But Today I am going to be writing about Day 4 and our team’s trip up to Grace Village. Grace Village is located in Titayen, which is about a 45-minute drive from Guest House 1 in Delmas.  So if you don’t know, Grace is Healing Haiti’s kind of base away from Port Au- Prince and Minnesota. They currently have a fantastic school (WITH EVEN A BAND NOW OMG OMG OMG YES) , A family home style orphanage, Fleri Bakery, A church, and Now a full on garden. So the school has over 200 students, with a cafeteria, a huge playground, and classrooms lower on the hill, with a library/computer lab, and a band as previously stated, with currently trumpets, saxophones, flutes, and clarinets. The light purple uniforms of all the students makes them stick out really well, and they look really sharp. Schooling in Haiti is not free like it is for public school in the states, and they also wear uniforms too. The family style orphanage is also a rare occurrence in Haiti, with orphans no longer being in dorms, but in homes on campus, with Haitian “Mommies” and “Papis”.  This leads to less bullying caused by stigmatization from other students, and a sense of what a God driven family looks like once they’ve graduated on. Fleri Bakery is a bakery with about 4-5 Haitian workers and makes bread for Grace Village, Multiple Church events, and Hope Church and School in Cite Soleil.  They make bread, cookies, and these delicious cinnamon rolls that are honestly some of the best rolls I’ve ever had.  The Sustainable Agriculture is a new program coming in to supplement the tilapia tubs they have. They found some good ol Minnesota Dirt. The church was where our Elder Christmas Party, with all the elders coming to the church for some food, gifts and to see each other. It was such a rewarding experience and they had catered in food from Fleri Bakery.



So that was my day, I hope you enjoyed my description of it.