Totino-Grace leaves their mark.

Our school wide theme this year is “Make your mark” and that is exactly what we did today when we traveled to Cite Solei for 3 water runs, all of them different from the one before.  We left our guesthouse around 9am and after a short time stalled in the middle of the road, we were able to finally get to the water delivery site and wait for our truck to fill up before we headed into the heart of Cite Solei.  Here we were greeted with what seemed like hundreds of young children, yelling “Hey you” with their arms wide open waiting to be picked up.   There was a definite language barrier since the spoken language is Creole, but the smile and hugs that we were able to give them broke down any walls we may have had.  It was incredible to drive through this city, to see the conditions that these people live in.  Never have any of us experienced poverty in such a way.  Shack upon shack, garbage everywhere-yet these people seem to live each day asking for little beyond food and water.  Many lessons for all of us today.   After  the third delivery, the tap-tap ride home was pretty quiet.  Dinner was even more so as we all tried to put the sights, sounds and smells of the day in perspective. 

After the third water truck delivery, our team made a stop at Haitian Initiative Soccer Fields. Several of these young teens traveled to Minnesota last year for the Schwan’s Cup. We were fortunate enough to challenge their team to a game. Keep in mind that these teenagers play soccer every single day! And we… well we have Danny. Other than him, really the only other time that our team made contact with the ball was when Hannah was the target of a powerful shot in the side while dodging out of the way from one of the boy’s kicks. But hey, we only lost 0-2, so we would say we did pretty well.  Oh yeah-Joleen did the splits trying to kick the ball.  It was quite a sight!  That’s why Hannah plays lacrosse and Joleen plays tennis. 

In all, we would say this day far exceeded any expectations any of us had.  There will be a lot to talk about tonight during prayer and even more for us to reflect on in our everyday life. 

Thank you everyone for the prayers, notes and thoughts that we know you are sending our way.  Know we are all safe and sound and are excited for an even better day tomorrow!

All our love-

Colleen and Hannah (the lacrosse player).