Haiti

I returned yesterday from 9 day trip to Haiti. What InterVarsity calls a Global Plunge. Fifteen InterVarsity students and three staff traveled to the village of Neply in Haiti on the Leogane plain. We were about an hour due west of Port-au-Prince.

The people and land of Haiti both captured and broke my heart. It is a beautiful land, with sugarcane fields spanning the plains and rising into mountains, but much of the land, like it's people has been stripped and left impoverished. On our trip, we got to come alongside a group of men who have banded together to seek the betterment of each other and the people of Neply. There are a fraternity of sorts and if you're interested you can check out their site here.

We walked twenty minutes each day from Neply to another small village called LaSalle where we brought running water to the front yards of ten homes in the village. Previously there was one well in the center of the village that every household had to travel to multiple times each day, filling up buckets or containers with water and traveling back to their homes in order to cook, do laundry, and for all their water needs. The look of pure joy on the people's faces as they turned on a water spigot in their front yard made all the work and effort worth it. God is good and the faith of many in Neply challenged ours greatly. The question of what is needed in a place like Neply has left me with more questions than answers.

I hope to post some more reflections here in the days to come. For now, I'm enjoying being home with my family and wrestling with some of those questions the trip left me with.