Nou la! We are there...

We are here in beautiful Haiti among the people and place we love. We flew through the night on Wednesday and arrived early Thursday morning on a calm flight to a beautiful sunny day in Port-au-Prince. We found Collins, our driver easily, and were greeted with lots of hugs and even some dancing from Cherline when we arrived at the women's center! :) It feels great to be 'home'...though we definitely miss Beth and Jonna (friends of ours who live here-but are in Oregon at a midwifery conference this week).

We jumped right into a full day of the Women's Program and prenatal classes. Cookie (another midwife who lives here) had us over for dinner that evening. Her friend, also named Sarah, is visiting and helping with births. We unpacked our stuff and slept soundly.

Friday we woke up early, helped with the Bible study and family planning clinic that Heartline offers free of charge. Franchette, one of the women from the prenatal program, came to the Birthcenter in early labor. There were more reunions: Antoinette & Eden, Olez & Rose, Agathe's girls (Gracie & Bernie), teen mom's Djenie and Ernege. We did the first of many crafts. It was a very full day, culminating in the birth of a healthy baby boy around 10pm. Sarah x3, Tara, Cookie and Winnie were in attendance, and Sadrack, the dad came in to give his wife an occasional pep-talk throughout the more difficult parts of labor. At the end of the night the mom 'sang him out'. It was quite lovely. We checked on her throughout the night and she left for home early this morning.

After finishing up some projects here, we went to the teen mom house and did an project with them today. It has been fun to see the growth that has happened over the last few months for the teen moms. They shared paint and art supplies and no major fights happened. Did you read that correctly? Yes, we said “No major fights happened”. This is major progress when we consider where they have come from and patterns that were in place when we first met many of them. This is what “thy kingdom come” looks like in a very tangible way.

Being here reminds us of the simple power of relationships to transform lives. Not only the lives of those on the receiving end. We love that God's kingdom is one where both parties are changed by relationship—that it is not one sided, passive giving-receiving. We are so SO blessed to be here—especially since so much was 'going south' in our lives in Los Angeles before we left. It is nice to have a true break from all of that.

There have been a discouraging series of events in the last few weeks at Heartline (the ministry we are now working with in post-earthquake Haiti) and so one of our hopes is just to be a source of encouragement for the families who live here full time. They are some amazing, courageous, lovely people. Our hearts hurt when theirs hurt. We are grateful to be able to do some practical/tangible things...and also to just “be” around them.

You can check out their blogs at:
(links don't seem to be working so there they are un-hyperlinked:)
http://livesayhaiti.blogspot.com/
http://allthingshendrick.blogspot.com
http://johnmchoul.wordpress.com

We've had power all afternoon and are stocked up in case of any funky stuff when the election results are announced tomorrow. But overall we are content to be just exactly where we are right now. In this busy, crazy world we know what a gift that is—and we receive it with our hands held open.
With gratitude-
O & D
!