Totino-Grace Day 3

This morning, Jake, Eric, Natalya, Sarah, Tom, and the Haitian ladies prepared a delicious breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and spicy peanut butter… Still not sure how we feel about that one. Tom has now cracked 105 eggs. After we ate, we got ready for our day at Grace Village, only to realize we still had an hour before we had to leave. Clearly, we were full of anticipation.

After a 45 minute (bumpy) tap tap ride with singing and lots of laughs, we witnessed a beautiful mountaintop view of the blue ocean. Upon our arrival, kids were instantly running up to us and greeting us. While the boys played soccer with the kids, some of the girls played on the playground. After this, we were given a tour of the beautiful Grace Village, an orphanage in Titanyen. The wonderful long term missionaries told us the touching story of Jamesly, a two year old boy who was left on the streets and taken in by the organization.

Following our tour, half of us did crafts with the children, and the other half gave makeovers & mani pedis to the Haitian Mommys (each house of the orphanage has a Mommy). Some young girls even painted the TG boys’ nails... what real men! Then, our drivers said the famous “chop-chop to the tap-tap” phrase and we quickly said goodbye and headed back to our guest house. On our way back, we witnessed the amazing view driving down the mountain. We also sang a Haitian song, as well as belting Don’t Stop Believing and many more. When we got back, we changed into our swim gear and headed to the hotel pool. The pool was refreshing for some while others slept poolside (all the boys except Henry were photobombed by all the girls when they were sleeping!) Alani, Nicole, and Kate played a very competitive game of monkey in the middle in the pool. Tom managed to splash every single girl when he jumped into the water but no glass was broken today! Only the plate of plantain chips was soaked. After swimming, we headed back and had a delicious pasta hot dish with vegetables. We then started to wind our day down with team time and we are getting ready for tomorrow’s activities! We all journal together as a group, reflecting on our day and sharing a word of the day that we felt best applied to our experience. Some today were smiles, joy, friendly, and blessed. We also all sang (a common theme this week), as our musicians Ellie, Eric, and Kate have been learning songs on the guitar and ukulele. Tonight’s rendition was of Count on Me by Bruno Mars. Currently, we are all playing cards, making necklaces and bracelets, and relaxing.

Today’s superlatives:

Most likely to have 3 kids climbing on him: Noah

Most likely to have to do 5 pushups (and make everyone else do them too): Grace and Alani

Most likely to become famous from his one line song “Pou toujou” IN his John Lennon glasses: Jake

Most likely to be put on a leash: Kate

Most likely to get a Chaco tan:  Lauryn

Most likely to have her hair braided every day (and complain about it): Natalya

Most likely to have a deep religious talk in the top-top: Henry

Most likely to make a life long friend in Haiti: Tom

Most likely to have a gecko dropped in their mouth during cards: Nicole

Most likely to come home with a man bun: Eric

Most likely to NOSEdive because of a kid going crazy on her shoulders: Ellie

Most likely to keep her cool during a laughing contest: Sarah

Totino-Grace Day 2

Natalya, Tom, and Sarah started their morning at the mere hour of 7am to help the Haitian women in the kitchen prepare our breakfast. Sarah was awoken by the neighbors’ rooster, and the rest woke up between then and 7:45. After breakfast, we spent the morning decorating for the New Years/Independence Day party for 70 people which included the three teams and the Healing Haiti Haitian staff. We played a Haiti traditional, popular dancing game that was a mix of a dance circle and follow the leader, it was called “Ton-ton-boogie” (well, that’s what we think we were saying…?) where Eric showed everyone up with his unmatchable dance moves. For lunch we ate sloppy joes, jello, and chips. Next we made string bracelets; Jake purposefully messed his up to make it artfully abstract. We then went out and played with the Haitian neighborhood kids in the street, with kids of all ages. Nicole, Grace, Kate, Lauryn, Ellie, Sarah, and Alani played duck duck grey duck, hopscotch, and chalk with the little boys and girls. The Haitian girls loved playing jump rope with Noah. Natalya, Eric, Jake, Henry, and Tom played soccer all afternoon with the Haitians, and made for a competitive match up, but still cannot match the skills of the Haitian boys.

            We then made the short walk to the hotel down the road to go swimming. We tried plantain chips for the first time and they were devoured within seconds.

            We had tacos for dinner, then went up to the guest house balcony to learn some salsa dancing from Jean, the guest house owner. Jean was so impressed with Grace and Ellie’s dancing skills that they were used for the examples. Kate and Henry “killed it” and Henry’s porous tennis shoes came off in order to match the spectacular salsa dancing of Tom and Natalya who have determined that they are running away to start a dance studio while also taking their salsa show on a worldwide tour. Jean spent much of his time with Sarah and Lauryn, who needed quite a bit of correcting…Nicole and Eric were amazingly able to keep up with the rapid pace while mastering the dip. Noah and Alani mastered the rapid spinning, but struggled with the dip.

Superlatives of the day:

Most likely to break a bottle after being splashed by a cannon ball from Noah: Nicole

Most literal: Noah

Best salsa dancer: Natalya

Most likely to win guitar hero: Kate

Most likely to hide a tattoo from his mom: Jake

Most likely to be secretly reading a steamy romance novel: Henry

Most likely to wear keens after the trip: Alani

Most likely to dropped when being dipped: Sarah

Most likely to be sunburned tomorrow: Grace

Most likely to submerge himself and every food item in hot sauce: Eric

Most likely to have cried yesterday: Gabby

Most likely to “accidentally miss the plane” and stay in Haiti: Cortney

Most likely to adopt a kid after this trip: Joe Morcomb

Most likely to lead the cupid shuffle: Ellie

Most likely to get hair braided by Ellie: Lauryn

Most likely to crack 60 eggs perfectly for breakfast: Tom

Written by Alani

Totino-Grace Day 1

Today’s takeover is brought to you by Grace Kroells and Henry Exner J

With the first ring of our 3 AM alarms, our journeys began. Though we did face the wrath of the TSA employees and an angry old flight attendant (who told us she has grandchildren, so she “gets” it), Ellie walking into the men’s bathroom, running through the terminal to make our flight, we managed to sprint through the airport with just a few minutes left to spare. While we were running, Grace’s water bottle broke and spilled all over the terminal floor.

Many of us napped, listened to music, watched movies, or played games on the airplane (including a large game of airplane bingo). After 2 hours and 30 minutes, we had arrived at the Haiti airport, with bright sun and Haitian music playing as we walked in. Boarding onto our “tap tap”, our little open air bus, many of us hit our heads from the sharp and crazy turns—there are no driving restrictions in Haiti! (Don’t worry, Laurie, Kate is safe.)

Once we arrived at the guest house (we got the best one… 5 bathrooms!), Healing Haiti workers and cute dogs greeted us. Within minutes of arriving, we played street soccer with the neighborhood boys and attracted a crowd of 30 people! All the teenagers were really happy to see us and were far superior in skills. Alani had a record high vertical and came out of nowhere to head the ball to our surprise! The Haitian boys played barefoot and our goalie, who was wearing jeans, was sliding all over the place saving soccer balls. Noah was chosen by the Haitian boys for his height and was picked as the other goalie. Everyone participated and it was a lot of fun! We had a really good spaghetti dinner and the Russian crew (Henry & Natalya) cleaned up the dishes while Kate gave us a beautiful rendition of Stairway to Heaven on the guitar along with Ellie playing the ukulele and Alani on the bongo drums and Eric was playing smoke on the water. Noah is sleeping while we write this.

P.S For the first time in a while, we will not be staying up to midnight for new years.

We can’t wait to update you guys more on our journey!

Love you and miss you guys! (Henry)

I miss you both already <3 (Grace)

Bon nwit!  (Good Night!)

Meyers/Cornerstone Day 7

Good evening all!  Today was a beautiful day in Haiti.  We started off our day early today with breakfast.  We read a couple of Psalms to focus our mind on our amazing God.  We then loaded up in the tap tap and headed to Grace Church.  As a team, we enjoyed a beautiful time of worship.  While most of the service was in Creole, it was such a blessing that they had the song lyrics projected on a screen.  It was great to be able to see the words and join in when we desired.  I, personally, always enjoy worship in Haiti and am moved by the Spirit.  After church, we headed to Wahoo Bay, a resort about an hour away.  We enjoyed time swimming, fellowshipping with one another, soaking up some extra sun for reserve when we return to the cold, and just resting in His presence.  The view at Wahoo is incredible.  The mountains meet the ocean.  The white sand.  The sail boats in the distance.  The shoreline.  God is the ultimate artist who paints the picture of creation in a way we can hardly put into words!  When we returned home, we enjoyed some free time to begin packing our bags and play with the neighborhood children.  It has been fun getting to know them this week as we have played frisbee and soccer.  We returned to the guest house and ate some dinner followed by our nightly team devotions.  We spent time as a team sharing and starting the process of processing our week.  Hearts and lives have been changed.  We came to Haiti and will return to the US forever changed.  The trip has impacted us in different ways.  It is up to us to be obedient to what the Lord is asking of each one.  After devotions, we played a team game and laughed a lot!  What a great way to end the night.  Pray for the team as we say goodbye to each other, Haiti, and the Haitians and return home to the busy Christmas season.  We will all process differently.  It has been an incredible week!  God is definitely on the move!  Glory to God!  -Stephanie

Meyers/Cornerstone Day 6

This morning we started out with a bumpy ride to the Croatian Relief Orphanage. We were greeted with a welcome song and many smiles. Linda shared a wonderful Christmas story while Jonas translated for us. We than moved onto the story of Marie the Christmas pine cone, led by yours truly, Maddie and Ashley. Than we all split into small groups with the children to decorate their own Christmas pine cones. After that, we exhausted ourselves playing football (soccer), basketball, jump rope, monkey in the middle, chalk and last but not least bubbles! “Chop chop to the Tap Tap,” and we all loaded up to head to Kwadebouke the metal market. Seeing the metal workers hand craft their art work in front of their shops was amazing. After some of us (cough chough Maddie) walked around with armfuls of metal work and street art, we loaded up into the Tap Tap. Off to Dios we went. Dios is a special needs orphanage. Our tour of the facility reviled how much the care tackers loved each of these children. Especially the “Mama” who so preciously took care of a 5-year-old boy who only looked about 10 months old. When he arrived at Dios, he only weighed 1.5 lbs and has had multiple hospital stays, but things are beginning to look up for him. Playing with the rest of these kiddos was a blast. We colored, did bubbles, played hide and seek, and kicked the soccer ball. Slobbery kisses and hugs goodbye were made, and we headed back to the guest house.

               

Unwinding this evening, some of us went to the pool up the street for some pop and Plantain chips, while others relaxed back at the house. As we are beginning to prepare to return home, discussions of what the future may look like have begun. This trip thus far has changed many of us forever in distinctive ways. Others of us are still pondering what has changed in us or what will be changing when we return home. Please continue to keep our team in your prayers while we are here and on our trips home. With lots of love and laughter…Ashley and Maddie!