Disclaimer- the grammar and spelling in the following piece is probably not so great. But, after all, I’m running on 8 hrs of sleep for the past two nights and I want to get this out fast and I don’t care what you think 
Just Kidding
Wow, full day. Good day. First I’ll give you a run down of our day and then some thoughts.
We left Awake Haiti guest house around 8:45 and drove over rocky dusty roads to the Good Samaritan boys home. Awaken Haiti rents this house. The earthquake completely flattened the house next to the Boys home and severely damaged the house to its right…however, the Good Sam Boys home was not damaged at all.
We spent the next 5 hours painting this house on the inside. It turned out fantastic! Kristin Tuckey is an interior designer so she was all bossing us around telling us what color to paint what. We had two colors-beige and white…but she was in her glory…oh, and we painted the front screen double door red. It turned out great. Got the whole house painted inside!! While we were painting most of the 7 boys who live there were at school except for Luben and Lubenson. These boys are four year old twins. They are so cute! They were loving the paint in all the most messy four year old ways imaginable.
One of the fun aspects for some of the Engage peeps on our trip is that they get to meet their sponsored child(ren) for the first time. Nate and Jessie H. sponsor Luben and Luben helped Nate paint like the whole time. Check out my FB to see a picture. The Sokolofskys sponsor Lubenson, Luben’s twin brother.
After we painted the house we left in the mid-afternoon to go visit and hang out with the girls at the Good Sam Girls Home. As soon as we arrived Randie T. was greeted by Stephanie with a kiss on the cheek and a huge hug. Randie and Doug have sponsored her for several years and Randie has adopted Stephanie into her heart foe show Kristin T. got to meet her sponsor child for the first time. You could should have seen the smile on Kristin’s face as she hugged Kevencia, a bright smiling girl of seventeen. Kevencia is being groomed by the founders of the home to take it over one day and run Good Sam Girl’s Home. You can see Kevencia’s nurturing leadership in the way the younger girls respond to her, balancing playfulness with confidence and respect.
Tom and Ky C. did a dental check up on all the kids. First, Tom gave a talk to the girls about dental hygiene and Junior our translator made Tom sound pretty convincing. His name in Creole is Poppa Tom, but we already knew that! Tom and Ky sponsor a cute 11 yr. old girl named Lovely–she is! KY did great as his loving assistant. Older couples still in love are so cool!
Some of the women on our trip brought acrylic paint and invited the girls to paint their hands and make hand prints on one of the walls in their house. That led to painting flowers and hearts. And that led to one of the girls painting this crazy purple Haitian Barney looking bird thing! It was like the twitter bird but purple and lumpy.
My girls sent silly bands and playdough with me. This made me quite popular. So I sat down in the middle of the room and started making shapes with the playdough. Soon after, I was swarmed with girls making shapes and throwing playdough balls back at me I broke out my iphone and started showing the kids a picture of themselves on the front facing camera. Soon after we started the boys arrived and flocked to the technology (it’s a man thing So I met Redegy and we started started playing marathon games of Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds. Some say love is the universal language. I’m sure that’s true but so is Fruit Ninja. It was hilarious because these 10-11 yr old boys beat all of my top scores in like the first 10 minutes…sharp as a wip.
Each night we have a group debrief from the events of the day. Tonight Jeff recalled several years ago when they first started coming to Haiti-long before Awaken Haiti was established. He said the girls would just flock and swarm he and Deb and others when they came to visit. They were starving and thirsty souls in desperate need of hope. Hope that life is more than dying parents. Hope that life is more than abandonment. Hope that life is more than feeling hungry and boredom. When you are just surviving you are so starving for hope that you will try to grab every ounce of it from whomever is willing to give it to you. Jeff said in the early days they would give all the emotional energy they had to give and that still wasn’t enough. Fast-forward several years. When Jeff and Deb and others visit today the girls greet them like my kids when I come home from work, “Hey dad, what’s up?” Simple, short, hello. This is actually a good thing because it means the kids are living, not just surviving. The girls are full; not just full bellies but full souls. They sing and laugh and play and invent games and laugh in little girl circles. They are fully alive fully reflecting the joy and delight of God shining through, mending their fragile heart, and restoring the trust that they are indeed beloved daughters of God in the messy, scarred, chaotic, beautiful, joyous, alive, and delightful contradiction that is Haiti. TTYL
Jon
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7 Comments
What beautiful & precious experiences!!!
So glad that today was so much fun. I have been looking forward to hearing about the day and I am so glad I can give these details to Karis, Addy and Cohen. They will be so happy to hear that the kids liked the gifts you brought them. We miss you but we are fine. Thanks for telling us about your day and how things have been going. I love the pictures you posted on Facebook.
Aimee
Thanks so much for the updates - and for getting past the “no technology” rule - it’s great that we can all journey along with you. So happy to hear about the day yesterday, especially with Kristin meeting Kavencia - our boys will love to hear this story. So glad to learn that you’ve had two fantastic days. Praise, praise. All ok here, the weather is less than fantsatic - cloudy and cold - so enjoy it! Tell my wife that we love and miss her so much but are so proud of the work that she / your team is doing. Praying for you,
Thank you for the great details of your day. Your dad & I are praying for you!
hi dad.i miss you.i really liked your blogging.did you tell the girls at the good samaratin home about me????? did you give the playdough and other stuff to anyone? hows the food?
i love you,
karis
so glad to hear good news from everyone. loved it.
foe show