It was hard.....it was SO worth it, it was so much fun!! Here I a summary of the trip, with pictures to follow in the next few days
Monday: left church at 8 am for our flight out to Ft. Lauderdale. Everything went smoothly. Landed in Ft. Lauderdale for a short layover and once again, things went very smoothly. We landed in Port a Prince Haiti around 5 pm. Loaded up three vans for what we thought was a 4 hour trip. The trip ended up being more like 6 hours!! It got dark pretty fast so we didn't get to see much of the country. We went up, down sideways through the mountains. Jenna and I (and Josh) were in one of the vehicles and I was trying to make sure Jenna would be ok. We stopped to let one of the teen girls get some air, and low and behold one of the college boys pukes!! We get back into the van only to have him throw up the remainder of the trip. Let me say he wasn't quiet about it at all. It made the rest of the trip seems like an eternity. I tried to keep Jenna's mind off of the noise by rubbing her back. The roads turned to gravel and it was bumpy and swerve....... I don't get car sick, but I thought I would then. The roads were terrible. We finally pulled into camp after midnight, unloaded our stuff and went to bed.
Tuesday: we ate breakfast as a group and then started to hit the ground running. We went to chapel at 10. We walked up a little late but I heard music to my ears......they were singing "How great thou art" It was so neat to hear them sing to the same God in a different language. It made me stop and wonder what heaven will be like. After that we had game time with the campers followed by craft time. We ate lunch and then had free time before another game time,
The rest of the week pretty much followed that routine. Some other highlights are that I actually ate goat meat (wasn't too bad) and we met an American family staying there being foster parents to some Haitian kids. They work at an American style restaurant in Haiti so after the campers left on Saturday, we did some sight seeing and got to eat American food there (I even got my Diet Coke!!) Sunday we rode the back of a pickup and went to a Haitian church. Again, it was amazing to hear them worshiping the same God.
The American family told our pastor that he thought that getting up at 3 am might not be a good idea.....if anything went wrong we would miss our flight. We drove back to Port a Prince on Monday and spent the night in an American style hotel. I think that was fun for everyone.....hot showers, food (although we still could not drink the water).
Tuesday we got to the airport in plenty of time. We checked our luggage in, got in through security and all was well. Pastor told us to find our gate before we wondered off. Needles to say we waited in another line for over an hour. In fact they were boarding (or at least it said so on the ticket) while we were in this line. Come to find out, it was another security point. By the time we got through, our plane was to have already taken off (although it was late). Once through that security, there was no place to use the bathroom or to get a drink. We were all so thirsty!! Our plane was supposed to leave at noon but we didn't take off until 2:40 (we sat on the plane for 30 ). The flight was 2 hours. We were supposed to land in Ft. Lauderdale at 2 and leave a few minutes before 5). I just knew there was no way of making it. We had to go through customs and all that extra. Comes to find out the flight was late and so began the mad dash of trying to catch our plane!! First stop was through customs. Next we had to go to the carousel to get our check ins. We ran up two flights of stairs with the check ins (mine was 40 pounds) plus our carry ons, outside, and back into another terminal. We had to re-check our luggage and then go through another security). They held that plane for us and we caught our flight!! I feel bad for all the passengers that had to wait for us, but so thankful that we got on. We were still hungry and thirsty, but thank God on the way home. We arrived back at the church around 10 pm that night.
I am so thankful for this trip. I loved it and can't wait to go back. I was so touched to see my kids just jump in and serve.....language barrier and all.
