Our Journey

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

Haiti the last day

Words can't express the feelings that I am feeling tonight. I sit in a comfortable and clean hotel when just a few miles down the street there are 100 children living in an orphange. It is a wonderful orphange that feeds the children healthy nutritious meals. It is the place the people send thier sick children because Chris and the others know how to care for them. Yet, in the midst of that we saw conditions that were appalling. I saw several special needs kids who were in need of services, yet in a country like Haiti this is probably not going to happen.
I was doing really well until I walked down to the toddler room that was in the downstairs of the house. There is a sliding glass door that goes outside. All the toddlers 2-6 are kept down there. They play with each other, eat at picnic tables and bath outside. Some of the children showed me thier beds, they were all neatly made. All of this sounds great, that was until I walked out back and the children started to climb me. Literally they were climbing my legs. At one point I was holding 2 children with another one crying at my feet. They were preschoolers seeking attention, affection, and love. Many of them have adoptive parents who are waiting the 2-3 year wait to bring them to the US. It broke my heart. I am not a person who cries, yet I could not help but cry and wonder why. Why was I so fortunate to be born to parents who could afford me... why did God allow this kind of action to take place. The tears rolled down my cheeks and a little boy who had put his fingerprints all over my glasses touched the tears and smiled a smile that could only be straight from God.
As Karen and I have pondered where God was today I think that God was in disguise. God was in the faces of the adoptive parents as they waited to hear where they were in the process, God was in the little smiles and laughs that i heard dispite the smells, urine and other liquids.
I continue to wonder what God desires for Stillwater to do about this situation... What is our response to this kind of poverty and abandonment. Most of the children at HIS home are children whose parents can't afford to care for them and so they have to give them up. That is an extreme love to give up your child to parents in another country for the good of a child. What is it that we are to do? Do you have any suggestions? Please feel free to comment. I would love to hear other opinions.
Blessings and Grace