This Week's Highlights

Hey all!  I am very happy to tell you that God has been filling me up so much this week.  Thank you all for your prayers because I have definitely been feeling them.  So much cool stuff has happened, so I’m going to give you some highlights:

5) I went with my group down to the Miriam Center (children with special needs) and we sang with them for hours while the old blind Haitian man played guitar for them.

4) I had somewhat of a real conversation in Creole with a girl I met name Stephanie.

3) I went to Tortuga (yes again, I love it there…) and hung out with my buddy Wensha.

2) I took some of my group down to hand out with the moms at the Nutritional Program.  I was told that they’d probably already be gone; it was 3 and they usually leave by 1.  But for some reason, I wanted to check… maybe some of the older members of the program are still there.  They eat later.  A couple of us went with a translator, we met an old woman who was holding a little boy who was thin as a stick.  She told us that she was his grandmother and his mother left him.  The grandmother didn’t have enough money to provide food for him, and he was sick.  We told her that we were glad he was in the Nutritional Program then so he could become healthy again.  She said, “No… this just happened today.  He’s not in the program.”  So we brought her to speak to the woman who runs the baby orphanage to see if he could go there.  Now the grandmother is planning on taking him to the doctor on Monday, and once he is well again, he can enter the orphanage.  Somehow, I don’t think it was an accident that we went down there today…

1) Tonight for night devos, we sang “How He Loves Us.”  If you don’t know the song—first of all, look it up because it’s amazing—and second of all, there’s a part where you sing “He loves us!  Whoa, how He loves us!” over and over again in the middle of the song.  We sang it loud and a capella, which was powerful enough in itself.  But it gets better.  When the speaker started sharing what she was going to say for devos, all of a sudden we heard a voice from the first floor below us.  It was a child from the Miriam Center singing “He loves us!  Whoa, how He loves us!”  It was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.

I hope these stories give you an idea of what this place means to me and why I choose to spend my summer here.  I love you and miss you all so much.  On Tuesday I’ll be in Beauchamp, so I won’t be posting again until Wednesday.  Can’t wait to tell you about it!

Melissa

Creole Lesson:         “Si timoun yo ap domi nan lari, ki sa n’ap fe pou yo?”

                                “If children are sleeping in the streets, what are we doing for them?”

This quote is from “Selavi” by Youme, a picture book.  Highly recommended, Anita.  I know you like kid’s books like me.  :)