Today we awoke with the memories of yesterday’s visits to the home for Sick and Dying babies, as well as our time spent at Dares, a home for special needs children. Our lives and hearts will be forever touched by these children - and our hearts and prayers will be with them always. We find peace in knowing they are wrapped in God’s love.
While yesterday our hearts struggled at times with hope…today our hearts were overjoyed and overfilled. In fact, at evening devotionals, we lost count of the ways in which we saw hope.
Today we visited Grace Village and also had the honor of spending time with some amazing Elders in Titanyen village.
For those who are not familiar, Grace Village is a school, orphanage, feeding center and medical clinic for people in the surrounding village of Titanyen. It is an amazing place that is doing transformational things in the community and for children and families in Haiti - far too many to list here but one you really must see to understand. I could really envision working at this place as it’s truly making a difference in this country. This article gives a good glimpse of how it all began:
For each of our elder visits today, we delivered food and water to their home, washed their feet, spent time with them in prayer and song, and simply shared love and faith. We were able to meet family members and even hold a one-day-old newborn grand baby. What a blessing after yesterday made our hearts feel so heavy.
Each elder visit was special in its own unique way as each individual showed their character and heart to us. It would be so hard to describe them all in a short blog.
We will cherish those visits as much as the times we have enjoyed with the many other special people we have met and served in Haiti so far.
Has it really only been four days? We have met so many new brothers and sisters and formed bonds in this country. I can’t believe it has only been four days.
I will share one of the elder visits at the end of our day as she stood out to many of us for her incredible spirit. She was a 91 year old woman who lives in a concrete home with a tin roof. She struggles with dementia and memory loss but has the most beautiful spirit and was so happy to see us. She was beaming with joy from the moment we walked in, swayed and hummed to the music we played the entire time we visited with her. This beautiful woman’s spirit reminds us all that despite having what one might think is so little, her heart is still overfilled with such incredible joy.
We’ll close this blog with a wonderful bible verse shared by our Pastor Kris which was so fitting for our day:
“We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” - Romans 5:3-5
-Beth
