The Denouement

I write this sitting on an actual bed, in a spacious room in a massive guesthouse overlooking the beach, surrounded by all kinds of tropical trees, the sound of the Carribean sea crashing against the shore in the background. This, ladies and gentlemen is the finish line, a beautiful notion called debrief. It’s four days to do absolutely nothing but sleep, swim, tan, and process all that happened these last two months. It’s our reward for making it through all the ups and downs of outreach. Which means (though this has yet to really sink in for me) that outreach is in fact over.

Our last few days in Gonaives remind of me the final chapters of a novel, where we were fortunate enough to wrap everything up semi-neatly and bring closure to a lot of our various ministries.

We visited the local orphanage, home to probably fifty children ranging from infants to seventeen-year-olds one final time to say our goodbyes. While I realize I have not made mention of it before, this orphanage was one of our key ministries in Gonaives. We visited it at least once a week, ministering to the kids through bible stories, games and the universal language of football J Last week, we made our final visit out there to say our goodbyes and to give the children the soccer ball we had used as our primary means of communicating with them. It was sad to have to say goodbye, but the children were amazing examples to us of joy, their smiles never wavering despite the knowledge that they might never see us again.

I said goodbye to Iselanda and Tagina, two 10-year-old girls I had gotten to know first through the youth group we ministered at once a week, but really connected with once I offered to help them with their homework in the afternoons, during my lunch break. They started coming by a few days a week and I got to put my years spent in the French education system to good use as I helped them primarily with their French grammar and their math. As we worked, they told me about their families and I told them about mine. They were both uncharacteristically hard-working for 5th-graders and seemed to have a genuine love for Jesus that made them fun to be around. I will probably miss them the most out of all the people I met during my time in Gonaives.

We walked a few blocks to the house of our dear friend Olmise, who I believe deserves at least a paragraph in this blog (possibly even her own entry at some point). We met her on one of our prayer walks through the neighborhood. We had asked God to lead us to the people He wanted us to meet and we set out with no particular agenda other than to follow the guiding of the Holy Spirit. I felt led to stop at this one house where I saw a young girl I recognized, to talk to her and see how she was doing.  As we stood there, her older sister walked up and much to our surprise, spoke fairly good English. She introduced herself to us as Olmise, 22 years old, living in Port-au-Prince, “though I’ll be moving to Boston in August to go to University”. Surprised, I asked her which University (not that my knowledge of Boston colleges is that vast…) and she matter-of-factly replied “Harvard”. As it turns out, since she was a child she has wanted to go to medical school, but not just any medical school- the best school in the world. And as she put it, “I realized that my father is the King of Kings. I am a very important person! He can get me into Harvard and He can pay for it.” So in August, she will be attending Harvard on full-tuition scholarship. Until then, she will be working personally with the newly elected President in laying the groundwork for his time in office (definitely an answer to my prayers that God would place someone who deeply loved Him in power, to lay foundations of righteousness for this new era in Haiti’s history!). She even spoke at his inauguration ceremony a few weeks ago. Meeting her was such an encouragement and a blessing to us and while we will miss her, I have a feeling our paths may cross at some point…

One of the more difficult chapters we had to close was that of the hospital. While it was an optional ministry, we all opted to visit it one last time. For me, though I wasn’t sure how, I knew I had to find some sort of closure. In the hours leading up to our visit, I began dreading the thought of having to pray for people, my faith still hurt from the last time I had tried that. When I got there, I got the chance to speak to the head nurse and ask her some questions. I found out that a total of 9 nurses work there under the supervision of 1 doctor who comes by once a day to check on things. They have very little of anything: no sterilizing equipment, no disinfectants- not even rubber gloves! Not to mention defibrillators, oxygen machines or an operating room. The more I spoke to her, the more I realized that people didn’t come here to get well- they came here to die. When that realization sunk in, I knew what I had to do. I wasn’t there to try and convince God to keep these people from dying, I was there to make them smile, to keep them company, to show them that they weren’t alone. Because I could be the last person they talk to. So that’s what I did. I stopped trying to be the holy, woman-of-faith missionary I had been trying to be and I just hung out. I played tic-tac-toe with a boy with an infected leg wound, I chatted with a lady whose mom had a hernia and was on her deathbed, I talked with an old man with a respiratory illness… Everyone I talked to just seemed happy to have someone to be with. They didn’t need me to get a word of knowledge for them or pray some beautiful faith-filled prayer. The just needed me to sit with them. Which is what Jesus would have done.

Our last day in Gonaives, we climbed the mountain overlooking the city (which I could see from my bedroom window… pictures are forth-coming as soon as the internet allows) and had a time of intercession for the city of Gonaives and the country in general. From the mountaintop, we could see the whole city from the beach, home to the second-largest port in Haiti to the Catholic church in the town square, by far the largest structure in town. As I looked out over this place I had called home the last four week, I realize for the first time just how much I would miss it.

My time here in Haiti has been one of the craziest, most stretching, amazing times of my life. While I can’t wait to be home, a part of me will always belong to Haiti. I will never forget all the things I’ve seen here or all the things I’ve learned. Thank you for going on this adventure with me.