Where Has the Time Gone?: June 15th

This week has just flown by! I can’t believe it is already Friday…it seems like there is some type of time warp here in Haiti. It feels like forever since I first got to GLA but at the same time I feel like I haven’t been here with my kiddos for longer than a few days. It’s really strange. Tuesday of this week, two of my favorite volunteers (and friends), left GLA and it was a hard day. I never thought I would come here and get so attached to not only the kiddos but the other people serving here as well. I miss them dearly but I feel so blessed to have met them and spent almost 3 weeks with them. I can’t wait to go to Canada and visit them soon :)

Anyways, my kiddos have been wonderful this week! They are thriving and I’m consciously soaking up every minute I have with them because I know that my time here at GLA is quickly coming to an end. We spend our days playing, giggling, and cuddling and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I miss them like crazy when we leave for home (at the Toddler house) at night. I haven’t been blogging as much this week because almost every night after dinner instead of getting on the computer I have been going up to the nurseries and playing with the kiddos in their pajamas before bed. It’s probably become one of my favorite parts of the day ha! I can’t even explain how cute they are in their jammies and they are all clean and smell good. I would literally spend all night in there if I could but I think the nannies would kick me out! I literally go from crib to crib and tickle, kiss, and cuddle the kids. It’s so fun and they are all laughing and standing up in their cribs waiting for their turn. They all blow kisses so before I leave I blow kisses to all of them and they do it to me too…it completely melts my heart. I really don’t like leaving the nurseries at night but I know that they have to go to bed at some point and I’m sure I wind them up so I try not to stay too late. I know I’ve said it a million times before…but the children here at GLA are beautiful, incredible, and SO loving. It is heartbreaking that their parents are unable to provide for them because I’m sure their deepest desire is to have them home with them and to love them the way they deserve to be loved. I know that God has a plan for each of these kiddos though. It amazes me when I think that even though I feel more love for these kids than I ever knew was possible…God loves them way more…more than any human could ever comprehend. They will never be alone or unloved because He will always be there with them…such a comforting truth.

Tonight I found out there is a satellite phone here at GLA and everyone was calling home so I decided I would too. It was really fun to talk to my family…I do miss them very much! It is crazy to think that next week is my last full week with my kiddos. I have such mixed feelings about going home. I miss my family and friends at home but I’ve become really comfortable here. Leaving my kiddos here will probably be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I don’t know what I will do without my hugs and kisses from them and I don’t know how my heart will feel when I can’t see their smiling faces every day. They mean more to me than I ever thought was possible. I know my heart will ache for them every day when I am home but I’m so thankful to be leaving them at GLA because I know they will be well cared for. Just thinking about leaving makes my heart hurt and my eyes well up…oh my! I’m glad I still have another week with the kids and the other volunteers. Every day I find another child here than I connect with and attach to and each evening I grow closer to my fellow volunteers. It is wonderful! I am excited to see everyone though when I get home…hopefully you will want to see my pictures and hear more stories in person! I’m praying for all of you at home and I hope you all have a good weekend!

Cinema Night: June 10th

Hi everyone...hope you all had a great weekend! We sure did here! Tonight was cinema night at the toddler house. This consisted of hanging a tarp outside in the yard and projecting a movie (Hop) onto it. We gathered all the toddlers/older kiddos around the tarp in their jammies and got to cuddle and watch the movie. It was really fun! There were of course tons of kiddos up and down on my lap and we didn't spend much time actually watching the movie. I didn't mind not watching the movie though because I loved having 2 whole hours to hug, kiss, and just watch these sweet children. They got to have a special treat (popcorn) with their movie and they all LOVE food so it was funny to watch them enjoy that! They do cinema night every other weekend which is really awesome because I know the kiddos enjoy being able to watch a movie and stay up late! I couldn't even keep track of how many kiddos were in my lap throughout the movie. I loved it though...it was the most fun I've ever had while watching a movie :) I'm putting a picture up of me and my friend (Michelle) with our group of kiddos after the movie!! The little man on my lap is so funny and his reactions to the movie were hilarious! The kids here are so different than any kids I have ever known. I've never met an older child (over the age of 6) who will crawl up on my lap for a significant period of time just because. Every night here there are tons of older kids who ache to be held and kissed! It is the most wonderful thing I have ever seen. Tonight during the movie an older boy (probably around 7 or 8 years old) crawled onto my lap and fell asleep in my lap. He was dead asleep...for most of the movie and I literally carried him (still asleep) to his bed after the movie. Such a special and sweet thing. I feel so blessed to be able to be here and experience these wonderful kiddos and receive the love they give. 

Love Heals: June 7th-8th

Hi everyone! I thought I would tell you about a little girl that I started working with this week and the amazing progress I have seen in her. There was an orphanage in Haiti that was closed by social services last weekend because of severe neglect and possible abuse. 23 kiddos from the orphanage came to GLA…most of the children were over the age of 3 so they went to the toddler house to receive intense nourishment and care. 2 toddlers and a baby were brought from the orphanage to the baby house. The children from the orphanage were all malnourished and many of them had respiratory and skin infections. They are all as sweet as can be and they adore being loved on.

Over the past week we have really gotten to know most of the new kiddos at the toddler house but the 3 at the baby house were “isolated” in a separate nursery so we hadn’t really even seen them until this week. Dixie (the founder of GLA) asked us (volunteers) to start gradually bringing up the two toddlers from the isolation room. My friend and I brought the two girls up for the first day and the littlest one (the one I picked up) cried when I picked her up and arched away from me. It was so sad...she was afraid. The only adults she had ever known had not protected and cared for her but had neglected and hurt her. Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to never have anyone to trust…especially as a small and innocent child? It is heartbreaking. I can’t imagine how hard her life has been. After that day I became determined to work with this beautiful little girl every day and help her to trust and feel loved. The second day I brought her up to the balcony she cried but for a shorter period of time and then she nuzzled her sweet little head into my shoulder and wrapped her arms and legs around my body and I just held her. I sang to her and just talked softly to her…hoping to calm her fears. After about an hour of holding her I put her back in her crib and as I was leaving she smiled at me! A small and tentative smile but a smile nonetheless! Last night I went into the room to visit her again and I got to feed her dinner! It was really sweet because she sat there with wide eyes, expectantly waiting for her dinner. I would give her a spoonful and she would open her mouth and eat it right up and smile. It MELTED my heart. She probably is still getting used to consistently having meals here at GLA as compared to her previous experience at the other orphanage.

After she ate dinner I was also able to rub lotion on her and give her a little massage which when I asked her if she liked it she nodded her sweet head and smiled. I’m in love with this girl…she is beautiful and perfect and I don’t understand how anyone could ever neglect her. I’m thrilled to be able to work with her for the remainder of my time here at GLA. I really hope I can make her feel safe and loved (for what may be the first time in her life). I am always tempted to just take her back to the toddler house with me and keep her with me every minute because I know she needs that kind of one on one attention…but the nannies here are working with her too and I know it is best for her to stay with the other children from the same orphanage. Please pray for this sweet baby girl…pray that her pain from any wounds (external or internal) will be healed quickly with the love, care, and protection provided here at GLA. Pray that she will open up to me and that she will begin to trust me and other adults here at GLA. I know that God brought her to GLA for protection and for a purpose! I will post a picture of her as soon as I can…she is so incredibly beautiful! Love you all.

The Best Kind of Heartache: June 4th-6th

Hi everyone! I hope you are all having a wonderful week. I feel 100% better this week…my sickness is completely gone and my energy level is higher than it has been throughout this entire trip. Praise God! Thank you again for all the prayers, love, and support. I can feel His hands on me here and I know that it is because so many of you have lifted me up in prayer. I love it and all of you so much!

My kids are amazing…thank you all for praying for them as well. Watching them grow, trust, love, and learn is so beautiful. My little man who started walking last week is really starting to get the hang of it now. He has walked across the balcony a dozen times and he totally knows how he just decides when he wants to do it! I love the big smile he gets on his face when I clap for him and hug him after he has walked…it never gets old! He loves to be held and snuggled…and he is very attached to me. He loves bubbles, swinging, and being thrown up in the air! He can be a stinker though…he doesn’t like it if I’m holding any of the other kiddos up on the balcony and he can throw quite the fit ha! His smile is contagious though and his giggle warms me from my head to my toes. You would all love him.

My twins are continuing to blossom as well. Their personalities are very different. One is very independent, loving, and easy to get to smile. The other twin is more reserved, quiet, and prefers to be attached to my hip (of course I don’t mind this at all!). Both of them have opened up so much since the first day I met them. They were both pretty much silent for the first week or so that I knew them but now they “talk” all the time! I’m trying to teach them small words (swing, jump, and smile) but they communicate pretty well just by blabbering and pointing to things they want. They both love to swing, play in the pool, jump, dance, and read books. I absolutely love watching them come out of their shells. I’ve gotten full blown giggles and tons of smiles from them this week. Each giggle and smile is so precious to me when I think that just 2 weeks ago one of the twins cried whenever I tried to pick her up. We also took them on a walk this week which was fun…we walked to get juice from a street vendor (they of course loved the juice!). They don’t normally wear shoes in the orphanage so it took both of them a few minutes to adjust to the feeling of shoes ha! We all got a few laughs from watching them toddle around. They both did really well on the walk though…they’re the sweetest little girls and I love them both so much.

My other little man is doing very well too! He is really getting good at holding his head up and he doesn’t dislike tummy time as much as he did 2 weeks ago! He is so handsome and his toothless grin kills me. I love picking him up from his crib because when I stick my head over the side of the crib so he can see me he gets this surprised look on his face and then he just breaks out into the biggest smile and starts kicking his legs and waving his arms. I need to video it one of these days so I can always remember it! He is the most easy going kid I have ever met…always happy and smiling. His eyes are beautiful and when I talk to him I really feel like he listens ha! I love to hold him on my chest and sing/talk to him. He loves to lie on his back or in my arms and play with rattles or any toy he can chew on. This little guy is such a blessing to me!

My littlest guy is still just as sweet as he can be. He is really smiley for how little he is he loves to snuggle. He is cooing a lot and he loves to be sang/talked to. Most of the time when I bring him up to the balcony he will fall asleep on me…such a wonderful feeling. I love kissing his chubby cheeks and making him smile!

My little baby girl (who wasn’t doing so well earlier in my trip) is doing so much better! Last week she had to have a feeding tube and she was lethargic and couldn’t leave the NICU. This week I was able to bring her up to the balcony for short periods of time and she was a completely different baby. She is tiny but so beautiful. She smiles a lot and not with just her mouth…she smiles with her whole face. I love it! She also loves her fingers and sucks her thumb (which is so adorable to me). I’m really excited to get to spend more time with her! Thank you so much for the prayers for her. She is doing so much better! Her eyes are wide open when I go in to the NICU to talk to her and she responds to me…God is definitely healer!

My heart aches for all of the kids at GLA…but it is the most perfect kind of ache. I’m getting to know all of kids, not just the kiddos I specifically work with. Every single one of the kids here has a way of stealing my heart and I wish I could give each of them the amount of love they deserve every day.

I am continuously amazed by what love and trust can do for these kiddos. Love and trust give them the courage to open up and live freely. It makes me think about how free and courageous I feel because I know/feel God’s love and trust His plan for my life. I feel so incredibly free here. It’s hard to explain, but for some reason I don’t feel as weighed down by fear or anxiety about the direction of my life. I feel at peace here. The first week and a half was a lot harder than I let on…I missed home a lot. This week it has been different. I still miss you all but I don’t ache to BE home. My heart desires to be here completely. It’s a wonderful feeling…but I think leaving will be much more difficult now.

I am so blessed to be able to be here with these kiddos. They are helping me just as much (if not more) as I am helping them. Thank you so much to everyone who supported/prayed for me and made this trip possible…I cannot explain how much this journey has meant to me already. 

This verse has been on my heart this week…so much so that I wrote it down and put it next to my bed so I can read it every night and morning. I thought I would share it with you…love you all.

Romans 12:1-2

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

Sickness and Health: June 3rd

What a weekend! I went to bed on Friday night (after writing my blog) around 11:45 p.m. I woke up at 12:30 a.m. and became violently ill. I’m not sure what kind of bug I had but I haven’t been that sick in a long time. From around 12:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. I was awake with a high fever and a horrible stomach bug. I couldn’t keep anything down and my stomach physically hurt. I was quite miserable. Luckily, I had the best nurses ever (my fellow volunteersJ) they pushed fluids on me…did my laundry so I could have clean clothes to wear…and checked on me constantly. They hugged me and made me smile even though I felt like I was dying ha! I still really missed my mom and home though. I caved and texted my mom early in the morning on Saturday and told her how awful I felt…I feel bad because I probably worried her too much but it felt good to talk to her. It doesn’t matter how old I am…when I feel that sick I will probably always want my mom. Thankfully, I was able to sleep for a few hours in the afternoon and my fever broke in the evening. One of my sweet friends made me a little macaroni and cheese which I actually was able to keep down around 9:00 p.m. on Sunday. I don’t feel 100% today but I feel much better than I did yesterday. It is like night and day. I know I’m still dehydrated though so I’m trying to drink twice as much water and I haven’t been eating too much…trying to take it easy for awhile. I kind of over did it today I think but it was the last day for one of my friends here so I really wanted to spend lots of time with her and the rest of the volunteers. I can take it a little easier tomorrow. I’m excited to see my kids though because I didn’t get to see any of them on Saturday and today I only got to see one.

This brings me to the highlight of my day…after church we were hanging out at the main house and we went up to the balcony to get pictures for Hope (the volunteer who is leaving tomorrow morning). I didn’t feel 100% up to getting my kiddos out (it was SUCH a hot day and I didn’t know if chasing around a little one was really the best idea for me J) but one of the other volunteers randomly decided to bring my little guy up who I have been working on walking with. He was of course thrilled to be up on the balcony and when he saw me he stuck out his hand (it is like his special greeting he does with me whenever I come to pick him up out of his crib) and got the biggest grin on his face. He reached for me so the other volunteer just put him down on his feet (she thought he was a walker) and the most amazing thing happened. He WALKED to me…like it was no big deal at all he toddled across the room to me. My arms were wide open for him but I almost didn’t believe that he had done it. Suddenly we were all shrieking and screaming with excitement…he had finally taken his first legitimate steps and gotten to a specific destination ME. I was so deeply touched…my eyes welled up and I started to cry ha! My little guy not only recognized me on the balcony but he wanted me to hold him so much that he WALKED! I totally understand why mothers cry when their kids reach developmental milestones. It was such an amazing moment. I still can’t get over it. He also made us all clap and laugh later in the afternoon when he blew kisses for the first time. I have been trying to get him to do it all week and then all of a sudden this afternoon he does it to me and all the girls out of nowhere! This little man is absolutely incredible…I love him so much! I didn’t think he could steal my heart any more than he already had…but boy was I wrong. He really helped me feel even better today! What a blessing. Love and miss you all!

New Friends and Goodbyes: June 1st

It has been a busy and fun week here at GLA! Sorry I haven’t updated in a few days…I’ve been having a great time and my days are so filled that I sometimes find it hard to sit down at my computer. Today we said goodbye to the adoptive mother (and her friends) that we met at the beginning of the week. It is amazing how well you can get to know someone when you spend 9 hours a day with them for a week! We were all so sad to see her leave but it was a joy to have met her and hear her story. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for her to leave GLA and back to the states...knowing her baby girl will not be able to come home with her for another 6-12 months. Seeing her say goodbye to her baby and cry as she was leaving was an extremely emotional moment for all of us volunteers. Her story will have a happy ending though…we are all praying the adoption process is quick and she will be taking her sweet girl home before Christmas! It is amazing how emotional this journey has been already…I feel God moving in my heart here so much more than anywhere else I have ever been.

Another exciting part of this week is the friendships that I have begun to develop with the other volunteers here. I’m starting to feel very comfortable with them and the more I get to know them the more I love them! They are extremely inspirational women and being around them lifts me up so much. As I have begun to get to know them and bond with them, I realize again how wonderful and perfect God’s plan for my life is. He put Haiti/GLA on my heart and He brought these women here at the exact same time as well. It is no accident that we connect so deeply and that they model excellent discipleship for me. God intended for this to happen…He knew my need for strong Christian friendship and He provided, knowing they would help me grow in my faith. CRAZY AMAZING! It blows my mind. I sat up talking with two of the girls tonight for a few hours about faith and trusting God…they are so wise and it was one of the best conversations I have had ever. They prayed over me before we went to bed and I cried so hard because of how touching their words were and how grateful I am for God’s love. I know He loves me and He is jealous for me. He is definitely using this trip to draw me closer to Him.

Anyways, I really wish that I could bring these girls home with me…I know that we will always be connected by this incredible experience and the short but special time we have spent together…but I am still incredibly sad to say that all four of these wonderful ladies will be leaving by the end of this next week. So I plan on spending most of my nights bonding with them and soaking up their love for God and their knowledge of Him. It will be a rough and emotional week for me as I say goodbye to them…but I know it will only be a temporary goodbye! Please say a prayer for them as they travel. Love you all!