Mission Haiti : Day 8
Well, today was our final day in Haiti. Like most mornings, it started early, but this one was different. Our bags were packed and we were leaving behind the rooms that had become home for just a little while. We stood waiting for the bus to arrive, but deep down hoping that maybe it wouldn’t. It’s one of those weird emotions where you know you are excited to go home – to see friends and family and share with them all of the experiences – but you simultaneously feel like you are leaving friends and family.
It’s always pretty amazing to me how the Holy Spirit empowers believers to form relationships that are so much deeper when there is a unity in the Gospel. So in a matter of just about a week, we each feel in love with the children and those that we worked alongside. And even though we don’t say “goodbye” – we believe in “see you later” – it’s still hard to say. But we trust in God’s good plan for our friends at Cambry and that we truly will be able to see them again.
So we said our “see you laters” and loaded the bus for Port au Prince. We were again amazed and the beauty of the country as we made the journey back to the city. We tried to sleep, but found it a bit difficult on the bus, but the ride was an adventure. And we made it in only 4 hours which was a bit surprising. We gave extra time with it being a political day… they were waiting for election results.
We were able to move through the PAP airport process fairly easily. We were a bit surprised to know that our team had been divided into two flights, so some had a bit more waiting than others. But we tried some of the lunch in the airport and soon after we were headed back to the US.
Coming back home is always a strange process. Being back home is great, don’t get me wrong, but it is always weird hearing your native language, freezing in the air conditioning and moving at a much faster pace. But the process was pretty smooth for most of us, especially considering the outage that happened the day before.
It was at that point some on the team heading different directions – back home while the good many of us waited for our return flight to Tally. We arrived late, but were greeted by smiling faces and were happy to find that all the team had made it back and all the luggage as well.
It will take a good few days to decompress and really process through all we learned and experienced. But we look forward to doing that individually and also as a team. We miss each other already and we most certainly miss Haiti too. And we can’t wait to share more on here what we learned and experienced and also will plan a luncheon that we will host at Wildwood to share our experience with our faith family and supporters. And again, thank you for being one of them. Thank you for supporting us and standing with us in prayer. And while we know our Haiti mission is over… we all know that the mission never ends!