Wednesday (Home for Sick & Dying Children / Gertrude’s Orphanage)

We woke up to yet another amazing breakfast from the Healing Haiti Guesthouse staff – pancakes, oatmeal, and so so much fresh tropical fruit!  Our team started the day at the Home for Sick & Dying Children – a Catholic hospital run by nuns.  WOW.  What an incredible experience.  I don’t think there was a dry eye in the place as we entered the first nursery.  There were rows and rows of cribs with tiny babies in them lifting their arms up to us to be held.  They all crave human touch so much, and it really struck me as to how important that really is.  To love on these kids as Jesus would, and take time to cuddle them all.  Many of the babies were a lot older than they seemed because they were so under nourished before they came to the hospital.  Most of the babies have parents, and when they are healthy, they’ll be able to go back home to their families.  That news was really encouraging!  I was so impressed by the care they were receiving and how clean the nurseries were.  It’s a total 180 compared to how dirty the rest of what we’ve seen has been.  We spent a couple hours there and got to help feed the babies their lunch too. 

After lunch, we headed back to the guesthouse for a little break and had some time to grab snacks as well.  Then, we loaded back into the tap tap and went to Gertrude’s Orphanage.  Her orphanage primarily cares for kids with special needs, but there are some she’s taken in who were orphaned during the earthquake and had no where else to go.  As we reflected on the experience later that night, it was very clear how emotionally difficult it was to visit there.  It’s so difficult as American’s (and one Canadian J) to not be able to just jump in and ‘fix’ things, as we’re all so used to being able to do, and it’s hard to know if the help that we are allowed to give is really going directly to those it’s intended for.  It was really an eye opening experience to think about the kind of care these kids would be able to receive in the U.S. compared to what they receive in Haiti.  But on the other hand, those kids wouldn’t be alive today if they hadn’t been left at Gertrude’s, and they are clean, fed, and have a safe place to stay.  

Joy shared a verse tonight during our team debrief that was really impactful that I wanted to share as it really sums up our day --- ‘Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.’ (James 1:27)  It’s a good reminder of what society views as ‘religion’ and what God truly believes religion is.  I think all of us could do even a little bit more to consciously and intentionally love each other, to help each other, and to bring some light to the orphans, widows, and others in our lives.