This was my first international missions trip which is a little hard for me to believe given that I have worked in vocational ministry in one sense or another for most of the last 16 years. For whatever reason, the opportunity never quite presented itself in the past, but this time I found myself forcing the effort a bit as Embrace hasn't had a consistent, ongoing effort in global missions since I started two and a half years ago on staff. It seemed like every time international missions came up in a staff setting, I was usually the one bringing the topic up and finally about a year ago I told Adam and Travis that I was willing to help get the ball rolling.
This trip was actually our second with Mission Haiti, but the previous trip was three or more years ago and we really hadn't pursued that ministry relationship since then. This, then would be our attempt to reboot the relationship with an eye toward long term partnership. The team was a vision team that was going without much in the way of specific purpose other than to see what Mission Haiti does and to look for opportunities to partner with them wherever their initiatives and our gifts and personalities match up.
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| The Embrace Team |
The initial flight out of Sioux Falls was fairly uneventful with a two hour layover in Dallas. We began to see some of the personality of the team early on, especially with Gretchen. We hadn't been in the air for more than 10 minutes when she wanted to teach us "The Plane Game." The game consisted of looking up ads in the SkyMall magazine, posing like the people in the ad, and everybody else guessing which page we were found on. Gretchen also decided to challenge us to ride the shuttle at the Dallas airport without the use of our hands while trying to keep our balance. A few stops after we started, Gretchen was bantering with some strangers from Kentucky while goading them into playing as well. One of the guys was fairly playful and the conversation got fairly colorful before we reached our stop.
From Dallas, we were off to Miami where we arrived shortly after midnight. We set off in search of a gate at the airport where we could find a promising spot to try to grab a few hours of sleep before our 6:20am check in time for the flight to Port-Au-Prince.
Pam had warned us that we would probably get bumped from the gate and sent to the main lobby of the airport which would slow us down getting going in the morning. On previous trips, teams would get chased off as cleaning crews methodically made their way through all of the gates to prepare the airport for the next day's pandemonium.
As everybody grabbed seats or a piece of floor to try to settle in, I went to the next gate over to charge devices and try to sleep. It wasn't too long before I realized that the volume on CNN at that gate was going to prove too loud (even with earplugs), so I waited until my phone was charged and headed back to where the rest of the team was in various stages of sleeping/not sleeping. I grabbed a few pictures for both Embrace's and my personal Instagram including a sweet one of Aubrey sleeping, while seated, with a pillow in her lap and her arms and head resting on the pillow.
 While Aubrey sweetly slumbered, I tried grabbing a spot on the floor and set myself up with a sleep mask and ear plugs. I quickly found that the Miami airport keeps their air conditioning set right around 51 degrees and that it was coldest on the floor. I gave up trying to sleep after awhile and most of the team was experiencing the same predicament. Many longing glances were cast at the Starbucks across the aisle which was closed and gated for the night. Conversation and YouTube videos passed the time between failed attempts to sleep. Rumors of a 4am Starbucks opening at another location in the airport led to a handful of the team going on what proved to be a fruitless expedition.
During their journey, I stacked my bags in one seat and sat in another with my feet over the armrest of a third and finally got my first 30 minutes of sleep of the trip. The brevity of the sleep was due in part to the a/c and in part because of the cleaning crew that had been working the place over. Luckily, they did not kick us out and we were able to to wait out the stay at the gate we had chosen.
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We had been well prepared for the Port-Au-Prince airport and our protocol to get through with as little hassle as possible. We had been warned that we would be offered help at every turn with the expectation of some kind of payment and our main task was claiming the 25 or so bags that Mike and Pam had packed with various supplies for Mission Haiti without having to pay anyone anything extra for doing what we were perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. Each bag was marked with a spray painted orange "X" clearly and intentionally sprayed making them easy to identify. We had six or seven carts piled high by the time we had everything and we made our way to customs.
Pam ran point and all of her baby ducks followed. The customs agents checked a couple of sample bags before we were sent on our way. We learned that we very nearly risked losing a bag of medicine that had been near the top. Pam said the street value of medicine in Haiti makes it one of the most sought after items for customs agents to steal. She said they occasionally will lose medicine in transit when it is discovered, but sometimes she is able to buy it back from the agents.
Making our escape from the airport, we headed across the lot to the bus where Ronald (Mission Haiti's Haitian director/kamikazee bus driver) was waiting. The bus seats 16 with a large cargo cage in back where all of the bags were stored for the trek over the mountains and through the jungles to the mission. I had hoped to grab some sleep shortly after getting underway, but Port-Au-Prince proved far too interesting and harrowing to sleep through. Signs of the earthquake were still readily visible as we passed tents, makeshift tin sheds, and countless buildings in various states of either ruin or reconstruction. Aubrey and Gretchen (who had both been to Mission Haiti previously) both spoke of how much better everything looked, which was good to hear, yet hard to believe.
The other thing that amazed me was that there were people everywhere. Here it was, mid-morning and there were tens of thousands of people lining the streets. Gretchen told us that some of the small shops we drove past (in sheds sometimes no bigger than 4'x6') stayed open into the evening when the shop owner would gather everything inside, lock up, and go to sleep in the shop. These types of shops and longer standing stores stretched for miles, only occasionally broken up by a tent community, tin community, or large public market that was simply one large, loosely organized free for all. Black Friday on steroids couldn't begin to describe what was going on on this Wednesday in the middle of February.
| As if the surroundings weren't enough, there was also the traffic. Haitian traffic is one gigantic, every man for himself, extravaganza where busses, trucks, tap-taps (mostly pickups that serve as mass transit for a fee, cars, and motorcyclists engage in survival of the fittest feats of bravery for their little piece of the roadway. Note to self: never, ever challenge a Haitian driver to a game of chicken. |
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| A true Haitian tap-tap |
Eventually, the traffic began to thin a bit as we made our way out of the city. One of the main indicators that we had made it out was that the roads grew progressively worse. We inched through sections of the road an immediately accelerated to 55mph and began bombing our way through traffic again. Every opportunity to pass, no matter how significant the odds against us, was seized with reckless abandon as though anything that delayed us was to be feared more than death itself. Thankfully, self preservation on the part of those on the road kept us from any unscheduled opportunities to partake in the Haitian healthcare system.
When we reached the town closest to Ti-Rivier (where supplies are usually purchased) we stopped at a school to make some contacts for the medical crew with another clinic and to see some new, high efficiency wood burning ovens that allow them to cook much faster while using less fuel. The ovens had just been installed and were definitely giving Pam and the team some ideas of how something similar might be used by Mission Haiti.
From there we made the last leg of our 5+ hour journey from Port-Au-Prince. We had been up and down mountain roads (where I slept haltingly in 30 second increments) and crossed to the south west coast of the island where we finally arrived at Ti-Rivier.
The bus went in the gate when we arrived at Mission Haiti on the orphanage end of the "L" shaped compound. The yard was spacious, the buildings beautiful, and the playground had a couple of towers and other opportunities for kids to play. At the end of the orphanage compound is a gate to the rest of the mission consisting of Pam's house, a large guest house, a tent where they have youth meetings, and another house where Patricko (one of the on-site Haitian leaders) and his family live. A few outbuildings, showers, a hydroponics set up, and a pump indicating the location of the well round the place out.There is another gate at the far end of that compound that serves as the main gate for those that come to the mission (and there are a lot of people that come during the course of a normal day).
When we arrived, it wasn't long before we had food served. Our steady lunch diet of beans, rice, and chicken (w/ habanero sauce for those of us with a taste for heat) began as we gladly ate our first meal since the Miami airport.
We spent a little time getting a feel fro the place before our team meeting that night which primarily involved discussing the plan for the next day when the main task would be doing photos for Mission Haiti's school sponsorship program at a couple of schools.
We were all well and truly spent, so we adjourned and headed to bed at about 7:30 after a long, long 26 hour journey.
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