Today was rough. It started out pretty great. I actually slept like a rock. Apparently it sprinkled last night for a bit and several girls ran back inside from our balcony, but I wasn’t aware of this until this morning…Oops! Breakfast was great though, we had biscuits with peanut butter and jelly along with hard-boiled eggs.
After breakfast I went down to fed the Miriam Center. This is where I began to get a little annoyed with myselftoday. While I was feeding one of our girls with cerebral palsy, one of the boys that was laying nearby knocked over the cup containing her food (she has to be fed out of a syringe) with his foot, spilling it all over the floor and himself. This was very dumb of me, but that’s okay. I could live with that.
Once that was all taken care of and feeding was done we took the higher developed kids to Bonneau were we played on a place scape. We I had heard of Bonneau, I always thought it was just down the street, but we actually took a bus quite a long ways and the views were some of the most beautiful I have ever seen along with coast of Haiti! This part of the day was also fun, but during the preparation for the trip we had to put shoes on all of the kids, one of the kids, Owen, who actually ended up being my buddy for the day, was given too big of shoes. Throughout our time at the park, it kept falling off, which also was irritating for me because I should have realized this at the mission. Once we were at the park it was fun to get to play with the kids and be outside with them! Owens and I went down a slide and played with a parachute with some of the other kids. We even got crackers and water for all of the kids and staff that came with us. I took one of our kids Den-Den down the slide, he fell and hit his head on the concrete getting off. Also my fault.
The park was a great time and the kids really enjoyed it, but on the way back, I had to grab one of the kids, Mark-Henry, in my lap because the bus was too crowded. He didn’t like this and began to get really upset, to which I got even more upset with myself.
However, on this same bus ride home I began to realize that during my time here, serving these kids, I am not going to be perfect. Even back home I will never be perfect. In fact, I will NEVER, EVER, EVER be perfect. But that’s okay because I wasn’t created to be perfect. I was created to love and to serve others and be Christ to them. And today that’s what I did, because even though I may have made a mess today at breakfast, I got to feed several kids who otherwise would not have eaten and I got to hold them and cuddle with them when they long to be loved on. And even though Owens had the wrong size shoe on, I was there to put it back on and re-tie it EVER single time he needed it done. And even though Mark-Henry cried when I put him in my lap, I got to wrap my arms tight around him when he fell asleep on the ride back.
Today I came to realize that even in my ministry, I am going to mess up, but that doesn’t mean I fail. The only time I fail is when I give up and stop loving others and serving them the best way I know how. And I don’t plan on doing that any time soon.
I wish I could say that may day got easier from there, but it didn’t. After we got back from the park we got lunch (where I got a coke which was a great way to re-energize myself) and after eating I went down to help feed the kids. After this I helped Autumn with outreach, where mom’s with special needs children come to get free therapy lessons so that they can practice the therapy exercise with their kids at home. This was all great, but it was during this time that the hardest part of my day, and perhaps the hardest part of my trip thus far began to unfold.
It was during the Outreach program that Stephanie and a bunch of staff came over to the bird cage (an open area that is covered at the Miriam Center) with a boy who appeared to have C.P. It turns out that this young boy had been left at the medical center by his mother all day. The last few patients at the center noticed him. Stephanie brought him over and he was crying and crying. We were able to clean him up and feed him, but it was clear that he was SEVERELY malnourished. He was even too small for the premature baby diapers we had. I have ever seen a kid so tiny in my life, and some of the kids in the Miriam Center are malnourished as well (don’t worry though, we have them on a nutrition program). But this kid was tiny. We didn’t even know his name.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that the Miriam Center is already dozens of kids over our max and this little boy needed way more medical care than we could offer him, we had to get two staff members, Stephanie and Jackson to take him to the hospital in Port de Paix. Please be praying for them, this little boy, his mother who gave him up (as the fact that she had to come to this decision had to be difficult) and the situation overall. We are hoping, best case, that the mother will agree to take him back if he can be nursed back to health, or that we can send him to the Hope House to gain more weight and then by that time, we can get him back here.
No matter what though, we know that the Lord has this little boy and the entire situation in His hands! I miss you guys like crazy and I hope all is going well!
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