Home from Haiti...wrap up & some photos

I've shared some intial impressions while we were in Haiti, but thought I'd give more of an overview of the work being done there, what was accomplished on this particular trip and where we go from here...

T & I arrived on Saturday afternoon (7/24) w/ Scott Vair, VP of projects for World Orphans. We did some basic preparation @ the guesthouse, for the full team to arrive the next day.

  

In Haiti the time is the same as it is here in TX, CDT. However it is east of the US, so the sun comes up @ 4:30 am!! In order to beat the heat, church services begin @ 6 am. We were invited to a beautiful church service, by the Haitian OVC director, Ron, & were the only fair-skinned worshippers present. The service was in Kreyol, with a rare sentence or two of English thrown in (I assume for us).

 Sunday afternoon, we did a little shopping for the guesthouse, and made airport trips to pick up the other WO staff members, & Phyllis Kilborn, an expert on childhood emotional & crisis trauma, and the rest of her team.  

The main objective for the week was to hold a 2-day training session for up to 70 Haitian pastors & church workers that are caring for the children in their OVC program. Culturally, the Haitians "press on" & don't deal with their experiences.

But the pastors repeatedly expressed their thanks in being given knowledge & "tools" to help the children cope with what they have experienced, as they see it coming out in many unhealthy ways. Some admitted that they were glad for the information, and planned to apply it to their own family's trauma & grief.

The second day concluded with the entire group writing down something they would like to leave with God & put in their past in order to heal.

They placed it in a balloon, & released it over the city... 







In the afternoons, on the back benches of our sessions, there always seemed to develop an entourage...of kiddos.
                                                       

"Stevenson" drawing on my notepad, became quite an attraction, kids appeared from nowhere wanting a turn. He also became quite the little photographer:

( Me w/ Scott, Kate, & Erin - the WO crew!)

Once the conference was over, we put on our hiking shoes.

Wednesday we spent the entire day traveling from home to home to visit with families of children that various churches have identified as the most "vulnerable" & enrolled in the OVC program. All of the children are at least single orphans, some double (no living parent) and are being cared for by extended family who love them, but have no means to provide. Typically these children would be out on the street, or dropped off at an orphanage due to sheer poverty.

World Orphans' model realizes that it

is best for any child to stay with someone who loves them...

especially in times where they have already suffered so much loss & insecurity.

So, they have organized a framework of partners in order to provide these children with 1 good meal a day, schooling at the participating local church, appropriate medical care, and trauma counseling. Most importantly, this is all provided by their local church, whether they attend there or not. This ensures that the program will be ongoing, culturally appropriate and supports the Haitians in caring for their own. Each of the participating churches does have an American partner church to lift them up in prayer, provide finances to administer for the orphan care expenses, & to visit in teams for further encouragement and hands on support.

As we are talking about the most vulnerable, you can imagine that most of the homes we visited were in the tent camps. It was over 100 degrees out, there was no shade other than what tarps provided. The tents have little ventilation, and by mid-day were well over 120F inside. We asked a mom how they live in the heat & she replied "we stay outside, walking around most of the day", they just go there to sleep @ night. Some had a makeshift bed inside that typically wouldn't hold the # of people that were living there.

In the photo above this is the grandmother of two little girls in the OVC program, the younger, Lorena, I carried out to her home. She & her grandchildren have no bed. All 5 of the makeshift tent inhabitants sleep on a piece of cardboard with a sheet over it on the ground. The night before it had rained, the ground was damp, I took note of gaping holes in the tarp "roof" of their home. However, this was the stop where we pulled up, & when Lorena's older sister saw her grandma from the bus window, she bubbled up & began calling out with delight to see her!! Both of her daughters were killed in the earthquake, she takes care of their children, as now they have only each other.

 Holding little "Lorena" on my lap, as we visit her home.

So, you can see how important this work is...

It is often much easier to just set up a big home & start filling it w/ children, to feed & clothe & protect, but that's not always what is best for them, certainly not permanently.

Thursday our stay came to an end, we flew home with our heads & hearts spinning about the work being done. How might we step in & fill the gap with running the guest house for teams coming to support their partners, freeing up Ron for his main responsibilities, and walking alongside the churches & families as they endeavor to meet the needs of these precious little ones?

Next step?? Nothing we saw or heard in Haiti told us that it was "undo-able". Difficult? Absolutely...but worth stepping out of our "comfort zone". In fact, our love and admiration for the Haitians has grown. It is clearly a time of greater need than ever in Haiti. From what we saw it will take years and a lot more support (in every form) than anyone can imagine, for them to find their country recovered & we pray, blossoming with faith & hope!

Life goes on in Haiti, despite the destruction...

Please continue to keep HAITI in your prayers! While you are at it, you may want to lift us up a little more too. We'll spend a few more weeks in prayer ourselves, discussing things further with World Orphans, sharing details with the kids as they start arriving home next week, & ultimately make the BIG decision!??  

Day 3 in Haiti - I have NEVER ...

...been so sweaty in my entire life!
...been kissed on the cheek by each & every one of a crowd of curious children.
...had a little girl climb boldly onto my lap during church in order to scrutinized my white skin right down to the freckles!
...met a little boy before that didn't know how old he was.
...seen the face of a 10 yr old Haitian girl light up with sheer delight at the opportunity to brush my hair into a ponytail.
...witnessed a cloud of balloons filled with paper notes being released on the wind over Port au Prince by local pastors & church leaders signifying the start of their own healing process in preparing to help the orphans deal with theirs.
...dreamed of praying with a vivacious young Haitian-American woman while she fully accepted Christ as Lord of her life, in the midst of a mighty work that He has begun in bringing her back to her homeland.
...shared ministry with such a humble, but tour-de-force woman, as Phyllis Killborn who has done mission work with children in over 50 countries in her lifetime.
...ever calculated the long-term affect of a widespread lack of childhood trauma counseling on a country devastated by natural disaster & severe poverty.
...seen such servanthood and gratitude in "brothers & sisters" for receiving the tools they need to deal with psychological trauma.
...felt so at a loss as to the magnitude of healing needed in a country, or as sure that God alone could provide it...

until I came to Haiti.

Adventures in Haiti - day 1

at the close of our first full day here in Haiti...

Initial impressions:
-It's HOT...no surprise there
-New best friend - the fan in our room!
-Our neighbors sleep in a tent on the second story of the remains of their home. My window looks out on their bedroom & theirs on mine
-Woke to the smell of charcoal smoke & roosters crowing @ dawn (4am).
-Went to church @ 6 am (to beat the heat). Amazing service & a glimpse of the multicutural heaven we will live in one day.
-Intrigued with the fact that Haiti is east of the US, but still in central time zone.
-Grocery prices are higher than @ home, yet most people live on $2/day
-The Haitian's are beautiful and so joyful despite the circumstances.
-The "tent cities" are heart wrenching, collapsed homes at every turn...no words to describe.
-Spoken Kreyol, it's musical, we're both enjoying it. The Haitians however, are greatly entertained by OUR attempts!

We didn't get a chance to respond to all of the notes of encouragement & support many of you sent us off with last week. What a blessing we have in the love & prayers of family & friends...

off to bed - long day tomorrow - children's trauma counseling training with the OVC church leaders. Outdoor church. Forcast 101.

Unable to post photos yet...more to come.

Yikes - We're going to Haiti!?

Hospitality happens to be one of our spiritual gifts. Yep, each & every one of our Barlow crew has it running deep in their souls. It is one of our favorite "common bonds", bridging age, gender & bloodline in our woven family tree, and providing some of our most cherished memories.

While hospitality is one of my personal gifts, prophecy is not. So it surprised me when the two came hand in hand in writing this post. I was updating my blogsite earlier today which required editing a couple of old posts to adjust the text for a new format. One of them happened to be from May 21st. As I read through the first paragraph of the old one and considered the fresh topic at hand, a chuckle rose...in sharing that day, the news of my pending surgery and the risk of finding cancer, this is what I wrote:

"I wish I could announce that we're beginning a new adoption journey, or heading off to do orphan work in Haiti, but that's not what God has in mind this week."

...this week?? This WEEK? LOL God's timing and sense of humor just cracks me up!

THIS week, T & I are trembling as we announce that not only are we in the process of renewing our homestudy for the possibility of adoption, we are indeed leaving for Haiti in less than two weeks!!!

If you are new to this blog site, then it may be that particular announcement that has led you here. As some of you may know already, this trip to Haiti is actually part of discerning a larger call that God has on our family. It began as early as the process for our first adoptions over 12 years ago, was refined through years of "bonding & attachment", renewed each time we encountered children without forever homes, and made clear this past year as we took on an orphan care leadership role.

Bill Hybels came and ministered to us this weekend at church, and I'm pretty sure that it was meant just for us! He spoke of the "Power of a Whisper", the whisper of God, of course. Well, in our case God is pretty "with the times", because His whisper actually came to us in the form of a Facebook post! On June 3rd, World Orphans posted a postion seeking managers for their new "guest house" in Haiti. It is part of the OVC (Orphaned & Vulnerable Children) initiative developed by HORT (Haiti Orphan Relief Team). It is a program to address the substantial increase of orphans and children at risk since the earthquake in January.

Though God had been directing us to open ourselves to more full time ministry lately, we were blown away as the five of us here at home responded in unison, to the post - "wow, that's totally for us!" A whisper? More like a "shout"!! So, while the kids are away on their summer mission trips T & I have been pouring ourselves out before God and seeking more deeply whether that is where He leads us.

Until we have a more "official" family website, I will continue to post the latest on our "Journey to Haiti" here.

Knowing it is nothing we could ever do on our own, we cherish your prayers and support. If this is one step toward a longer term ministry there, we will need our family, our friends & others with a heart for God's children, to partner with us in seeing it through.

May you be deeply blessed-
Rebecca, for us all