Last Day in Desire

Last days are always tough.  It's hard to say goodbye just when you feel like you are getting a rhythm going with the kids.  We were taking the first step in establishing a deeper relationship with the children.  A few months ago our church held a sponsorship drive trying to get all the Desire children financially sponsored for the next year.  This year is different from past years because we are facilitating individual sponsorship so that people from our congregation can build personal relationships with the kids through writing letters to kids.  And this morning we had the kids do art work so we could bring it back for the sponsors.

This was the first trip in which we were bringing messages from sponsors to kids.  We gave instructions for writing brief notes to kids so that we could have the notes translated into creole.  We also encouraged people to send a photo or two and let the kids know they were being prayed for.  We have two wonderful translators who worked very hard to translate over 70 notes to kids.  Pastor Jeannot passed out the notes from our congregation.  The reaction was awesome- it was like mail call when a person is anxiously awaiting news from a loved one far away.  As each child's name was called, they wasted no time opening the note and seeing what someone from Colorado had written them.

But before we arrived in Desire this afternoon we encountered heavy rain that was washing out the road we were taking to Desire.  We decided to check on another route to Desire to see if it was passable.  Because of the deforestation in Haiti, when rain falls in the mountains, the stream beds carry the run off water creating flash floods and washing away road beds in many instances.  Thankfully the other route to Desire hadn't experienced as much rain and the roads were easily passable.  There was one moment I thought our trip earlier in the morning might be our last of the entire trip preventing us from saying goodbye formally.  So praise God for His provision.  Our afternoon time was a bit abbreviated but we got to see the kids receive their letters and say goodbye.

Tomorrow we head back to the Port au Prince area and we will have a stop off at a beach for a couple of hours to take a dip in the beautiful Caribbean waters.