Day 4: Full

I loved today. As a returning, graduated senior, I got to experience a new addition to our mission here. Before leaving, myself and six other students took a StrengthsQuest, which is basically a personality test that uses a formula to churn out a list of 34 Strengths in an order. Each person gets a unique combination of Strengths that are evident in their lives, but now are put into words. We traveled to Grace Village, one of Healing Haiti's locations, and met 10 Haitian students, who are in a transition program at Grace Village and took the test. We got to learn about our strengths together. At first, it was difficult, because many of them did not speak French or Creole, and only one of our leaders was fluent in French. Information was definitely lost in translation as we introduced ourselves to the group, at least until Jonas, our team translator, hopped in to translate Creole and French to English, and vice versa. One of the Haitian students and the only girl of their group was fluent in Spanish as well, so when she introduced herself, she decided to do so in Spanish. It was really cool for me to be able to understand some of what she was saying in Spanish, about how she loved to cook, and would love to work in a kitchen. For that experience, the language barrier was very present, but felt much smaller than it has in Cite Soleil or any of the orphanages thanks to Jonas, who translated word for word what everyone said. It was also really cool to discover that, even though their circumstances are very different from our own, they have the same kind of hopes and dreams. As I said about the girl, Whitney, she knows she wants to work, and even own her own business. Another kid, Gerno, wants to be a doctor. Many others had dreams of being in chemistry and engineering, and I was just amazed that the same jobs are options to them, and they are so confident in their purpose in life. It truly filled my heart to know that they have dreams and hopes just like I do, and it made me want to help them and see them achieve those dreams.

After the Strengths Training, We left Grace Village to go to the mass grave. Two years ago, this location was nothing more than a hill fenced off by a stone wall, but today it is a beautiful monument to those who were lost in the earthquake in 2010. I felt a lot of sadness and mourning at this place. I had forgotten that between 300,000 and 400,000 people were lost in this disaster. Jonas, our translator, spoke to us about the memorial and about his personal experience durinng the earthquake. While he was talking, I remembered a project that I did in my Contemporary Issues class last fall. I focused on the poverty in Haiti, and did a lot of research on the earthquake and its effects on the country, and I remember watching video after video of live footage during the earthquake. There was something so distinctly awful about watching those videos and remembering those videos, and both Jonas and one of my teammates taught me what it was. Jonas told me that most of them could not have known how to try to save themselves. My teammate, Sarah, spoke during her word of the day about how those people were just trapped with no way out of the disaster. I cannot even imagine what it feels like to truly be that trapped and helpless to stop what is about to happen. My heart just breaks for the families who were broken, leaving many people alone, especially kids. Tonight, we sang the song "What Joy", and one of the lines is "You care for the widows and orphans", which has been ringing so true here in Haiti. It brought me so much peace and fullness to declare that God cares for these people and for their hearts and their lives just as much as anyone else. Tonight, I am just praying that I would be able to love these people with God's heart these next few days, that every person would get to feel chosen, would get to feel beautiful and loved absolutely.