The Earth Shook in Haiti Last Night...

The Earth shook in Haiti last night. After more than 24 hours of travel by car, plane, and motorbus, I arrived in Jacmel, settled into my home for the next week, only to be jolted out of a a sound sleep by an earthquake. I think I will probably have a lot of those under my belt by the time I leave here. We are seriously thinking of dragging our blankets to the roof tonight and sleeping up there for the rest of the week...One because the weather, while humid, it very nice here; but two because of these damn earthquakes!

Our journey wasn't completely disaster-free. Most of the team(C-Tine, David, Ben, Allison, Josh, Katie, Shane, Renee, Basil, Ayo and I) met in the Nashville airport at 4:30 am Saturday morning. Theresa got me squared away with all of my leadership duties and we were off. We had a 4 and half hour layover in Miami where we were to meet up with Pastor and 2 other team members (Deb from MN and Danelle from Buffalo). While there, we got the opportunity to talk with some really cool people who were also heading to Haiti. Most of them were relief workers of some sort. I talked to a couple of paramedics from the Dallas/Fort Worth TX area. Katie and Deb started to chat up a woman who turned out to be a former Prime Minister of Haiti! Crazy! Anyway, It became clear the Danelle might not make our flight because of the connection time so Pastor and I went to work on a contingency plan. After much work and pretty much sending Ben all over the Miami airport, it turned out that Danelle's bags made it on our flight, but Danelle did not. She would have to come on a flight in the morning. Again, thank God for Ben who volunteered to take that 6 hour round trip bus ride to and from Port-au-Prince to go collect her Sunday morning. I was too go since I am the "leader," but we ultimately decided that is wasn't safe.

On a side note, C-Tine, the Tinnius's and I are all big LOST fans and we had some really in-depth discussions about our theories of the show during our lay-over. On the flight from Miami to PaP, we decided Haiti was going to be our LOST island (and in reality, everything here is exactly like the show...scenery, eerieness, wierd things happening), and our team would be the cast of the show. They voted me as Jack since I am the reluctant leader of this trip. C-Tine is Kate. Josh and Alison are Sun and Jin...and the list goes on. More on that in future blog posts I'd imagine...

Port-au-Prince's airport was much different than last time. We not longer got to get out of the plane "presidential-style" and walk to the terminal. In fact, the terminal was damaged so they took us off the plane and loaded us immediately onto a bus that took us to a make-shift warehouse-type building. Customs was a breeze to get thrpugh, but then we were herded into a large area where the airline workes just came and dropped the baggage and it was a free-for-all to find your bags. Thank goodness our bags all had the same tags on to make them easily identifiable. We didn't encounter anyone trying to help us for money until were were ready to leave the airport. Then men at the gate didn't want to let us out until we paid them. Pastor, Jean Marie (a Jacmel native), and some other dude (more on him later) who had come to collect us broke bad on them and the finally let us through. We loaded up one bus completely with our luggage..we even had to rope some bags to the top which was concerning considering all of the twists and turns through the mountain we would be taking. All of our team members and the guys who had picked us up (15 in all) piled into another motorbus and began the 3 hour drive through PaP and over the mountain on the way to Jacmel.

The images in PaP are just as you have seen on TV. There are American military ships and a Mercy Hostpital Ship anchored in the bay. We drove past the Presidential Palace which is almost completely collapsed. Many of the streets are only wide enough to pass one car because debris is piled up in the road. In three seperate areas, I even got my first smell of death. Once by the palace, once near an area of completely collapsed buildings, and again near a cemetery. Definitely not a smell I want to encounter again. I will post pictures on facebook of some of the images from PaP...or at least steal some from C-Tine and Katie who are taking way more than I am The images are heart-wrenching, yet the people are resilient--just going about their daily lives more or less because they have to. The rest of the ride over the mountain was uneventful. It was almost familiar to me even though it is just 2 hours of winding road literally on the side of a mountain oin the last hours of daylight, but I could still pick out the familiar places...the place where the road had washed out during the hurricane in '08. The place where the mud slide stranded us for 4 hours on our last journey home. At one point, we must have come arcross the fault line of the earthquake (which did happen directly inbtween Jacmel and PaP). There was a place where it literally looked like the mountain was cut in TWO. It was eerie, but I never saw a more beautiful sight than when we rounded that last turn and could see the lights of Jacmel nestled next to the bay.

When we arrived at the Loving Light hotel, Rodrige greeted me with a big hug and his usual sweet-talk! We unloaded baggage, settled ourselves into our rooms and headed to the roof for dinner. Fedonay had a chicken and beef boullion prepared for us. There were a bunch of familiar faces waiting for us on the roof and it felt almost like coming home as they all welcomed us. As we ate dinner on the roof, Pastor introduced us to the "other" man who had come to pick us up from the airport. His name was Walter and he was a "security" man. Apparently, people had been stopping busses in Gonnaviase (A neighborhood on the souther bay in PaP) and demanding money from the occupants. Pastor thought it best that we have an "escort" for our time here in Haiti. Since this announcement, we have been referring to Walter as a "translator" (picture me doing air quotes).

After dinner and prayer, I headed downstairs to take a much needed cold shower (because that's all we have) and go to bed, only to be jolted away by an earthquake sometime in the early hours of the morning. I had taken my anti-malaria pill at dinner which in the past has caused me to have "vivid" dreams. I thought maybe this was one of them because Christine didn't wake up for it, but I pinched myself, and the dogs outside started going crazy so I knew it was real. I didn't sleep much the rest of the night. When I woke up for breakfast, everyone was talking about the quake in the morning. What a way to start our trip.

Sunday morning began for me on the roof bymyself, reading through some CS Lewis and praying. The streets here in Jacmel aren't as populated as they used to be. Somthing like 70% of the city was leveled and most of the buildings around the hotel are marked with the very familiar circle with a dot inside which means the building is unsafe to go in to. In between the car horns and motor bikes passing by, I could hear people singing praises to God in the background towards the river. It was an awesome sound to hear.

Breakfast was french toast. I was hoping for spagetti for breakfast, but not today. I put in a good word with Rodrigue so maybe tomorrow. After, we all piled into the tap-tap (And YES, Gerard, is our driver again! So excited to see him and sing my tap-tap song about him every time we go somewhere now) and headed for church. Again, driving though Jacmel in the daylight reveald a lot of destruction that we were not able to see in the darkness the night before. Many many building here are inhabitable and there are many people living in make-shift tents and outside.

Church was much the same as usual except for the fact that the soccer field in front of the church building (the one where I got my awesome injuries last summer) are not covered with tents that are serving as several families homes. Childrens' church was so much fun. Sooo many familiar faces of kids, and so many of them have grown so much since the last I saw them. James in practically a little man. Jemica is talking now and has just as much personality as ever! And I even found Saincia...one of my sponsor kids. She was unsure if I remembered her at first, but when I waved at her from across the tent, she ran up to me and gave me a huge hug and kiss. Myt heart lept! I can't wait to spend more time with her as the week goes on. Her English has gotten so much better since she started going to school again! Alison and Josh came up with a great Palm Sunday skit. We gave all of the kids palms made out of construction paper and we reinacted the story of Jesus entering Jarusalem and later sang praises to Jesus waiving them in the air. It was kind of strange because all of the kids seemed to know who I was. I wonder if Pastor had shown them a picture or something because I can't imagine they remember my face from almost a year and a half ago. Many of them kept pointing to me and when we finally sat down for songs and prayer, about a million of the little ones all came and piled themselves on top of me, fighting to sit on my lap and/or just snuggle up next to me. I had forgotten how much they just want to be touched. After, the adult church service lasted about 4 hours (which is short), the team introduced themselves, and we worshipped with the people. After we visited with people from the community and had lunch. Lunch was (of all things) hot dogs, fried plantains and coke.

Now we are back at the hotel for an afternoon off. Some of us took naps. Most of us are on the roof now, playing cards, Josh is flying a kite, a few of the Haitian teenage boys are hanging out with us practicing their English, and I am blogging. Ben and Danelle just arrived which is a huge worry off of our shoulders. There is another church event tonight...and tomorrow we have a long day of work which will include rebuilding a wall to the church, and visitng some land we will be purchasing for the furture sight of our new school! Yay! Hopefully, I can get a good night sleep...no more earthquakes! But yes, the earth is shaking in Haiti...in more ways than one. Greater things are yet to come for this country, for sure!

I'll write more soon...

<3 Joyful

ps. Andrea and Barb...I delivered your gifts to Ezekial and Michael today. The rest will go soon...

pss. I'm learning Creole fast...theblogspot website is all in Creole and I can't figure out how to change it back to English! AHHHHH!