Up before the sun in paradise this morning. I can't tell you when the last time I watched a sunrise was. It's kind of outrageous that every morning God paints this beauty into the sky, and the majority of the time it goes wasted.

Well, me and my trusty iPhone compass know that east is directly out across all that open water and this morning we're not gonna miss the show.

Saturday

Our last breakfast on the base, followed by showers all around, goodbyes and a last minute photo-op before we headed back to the airport. People kept asking us how we felt about going home, whether we wished we could stay longer, and it was a tough question to answer. Although some of us we really starting to miss home, others of us thought we definitely could have handled another couple of weeks if we had been prepared for it....and if we were promised no more green paint. Who knows, maybe some of us will go back someday, there's certainly more to be done, and God's prescence is so apparent there.

It was a bit of a somber drive back to the airport, passing through the streets of Port au Prince again. We viewed it differently a second time through, faces that we almost recognized, poverty that was closer to home now. All of us were thanking God for keeping us safe through a week of driving in Haiti. After going the wrong way round a round-a-bout, we were more than ready to arrive at the airport.

The Port au Prince airport. Craziest airport ever. We thought it was crazy coming in.....its more crazy flying out. I'm convinced it is the most secure airport in the world. I'll just walk you through out time there. We arrive and immediately go through security. We send all our bags, even our massive expandable 400lbs suitcases through a scanner, and then we go through the metal detectors. From there we have our bags weighed, a few of our team scored 50.0lbs right on the weight limit. Then we waited in line for our tickets. Before we got our tickets however, we went through security checkpoint 2. All of the luggage that we were checking had to be opened and searched. Why were their 12 machetes in the guys bag? What is this strange thing called a diffuser? Thankfully the staff had a sense of humour. Once we had our tickets we went though customs and had our passports stamped. I wish every country would stamp your passport. What is the fun of having a passport if it doesn't even record where you've been. So thank you Haiti for being the first country other than the US of A to actually stamp my passport. Did we get to our gate after that? Oh no, not yet, security round 3.....put your carry on luggage through the scanner again, walk through a metal detector aaaaaand pat down. We sat at our gate for probably only 30-40 minutes before we were called to board. But between our gate and the one flight of stairs that leads to our plane, there is clearly a huge risks of us amassing illegal drugs and lethal weapons because we must go through security checkpoint #4. Open up your carry-on luggage, let us search through it again, and then just for safe measure they put you through another pat down. Feeling very safe, and very violated we boarded our plane.
After landing in JFK we all enjoyed some fast food and a quick lay-over before hopping on our short flight to Toronto.

Our parents worried that we would be sick, exhausted and unable to bounce back to school on Monday, but it was just the opposite. The trip left us energized and encouraged. Although it is always tough to resume life after an experience like this, we have to remember the power of prayer, and the continuing work God is doing. Haiti reminded me of my passion for missions. It reminded me that knowing French is actually useful, and that translating is very satisfying. I will definitely be exploring my options for future mission trips, whether that be short term or longer term endeavors. Also I think one of the most significant things that Haiti has done for our team is to reshuffle our priorities and broaden our perspective. The way we view our country, the fairly trustworthy government and stability. The fact that we have a waste disposal system. The fact that we do not often experience natural disasters. The fact that we have accessible health care and clean drinking water. The fact that we have food. It has also made me look at church a little differently, and appreciate the fact that all over the world God's people are shouting out praises to him. It has also made me see that in a lot of Western churches we're missing out on the Spirit. Going to Haiti obviously made us realize how much we have to be thankful for, but also how much about our world, and our lives that there is to learn.





Thanks for tuning in.

It's Friday...Friday...

Although a part of us was disappointed that our days of work were through, we kept hearing stories all week about the beautiful scenery at the beach we were going to. So when Friday rolled around there really wasn't any grumbling about getting into our bathing suits and heading to Wahoo Beach.

Now I'm been blessed or maybe spoiled to have had the opportunity to travel a few places already in my life. I'd been to the ocean before, I'd seen mountains before, and I'd been in the Caribbean....but I'd never seen all of that in one place. To be so close to where the mountains touch the clear turquoise water....breathtaking. Pictures and descriptions don't do it justice. We all just needed a second to take in our surroundings.



A local vendor talked us into doing some snorkeling in the morning. Some members of our team had never been to the ocean or done snorkeling before, so for $7, this was a must. An underwater camera made the whole thing that much better... Several large truck tires reminded us that this is still Haiti....garbage everywhere, I wasn't kidding



When we got back it was time for another authentic Haitian meal before settling down for an afternoon in the sun. After hiding out for the sun all week, it was great to be able to soak in some Vitamin D, and have the option of jumping in the pool or ocean whenever we got too warm.

We left just at the perfect time when our skin began to turn that unnatural reddish colour. Beautiful day, and made even better by the fact that the guys decided to pay to take our translators with us, so they got to enjoy a beach day as well.

That night was our evening on dishes....we were kind of dreading it to be honest. Dishes aren't so bad when you have a dishwasher, or even Hobart from camp....but dishes for 250 people done by hand is a daunting tasks. One of the guys from our team decided to make a game of it. Every single dish had to be named and no two dishes could be named the same thing. Beginning with blue bowl, moving to sunburn red plate, to robins egg speckled plate and two-toned Ronald Mcdonalds red and yellow happy-meal bowl.

A surprisingly fantastic way to end the day

Thursday

On Thursday we lost one more member of our team - Lisa, to the vision clinic. We were thrilled that she and Olivia could have that opportunity, and the rest of us we excited to get back to the village for one more day of work projects. That day consisted of tying up loose ends. A lot of homes had the outsides painted but someone forgot to come back and do the insides, so that was our job. It was neat to see a lot of familiar faces and continue conversations from the previous day. I had my iPhone playing music in my pocket, and jamming to Chris Tomlin with everyone from the Mission and the village singing along, the day went by pretty fast. The families sometimes let us take pictures with them once we had completed their home. We gathered a few of the families we had the pleasure of meeting and assisting for a photo together before we ended off the day.

Wednesday

In the morning everyone except for Olivia hopped on a bus with the guys on our team. We dropped them off at Bercy to continue their noble fence-building project with the tarantulas and inescapable direct sunlight, and then we doubled back to the village of Leveque. We drove through the housing we had seen on Sunday, but continued over the hill to a separate part of the village. This was the deaf village Mission of Hope had developed there. In Haiti the deaf are treated like lepers, social outcasts who don't add anything to society. Following the earthquake the majority of the deaf community were living in the roughest ghetto in Port au Prince. Thanks to Mission of Hope's connections within the Haitian community they learned of this situation and relocated about a hundred families to Leveque. Now these families are better off than they were even before the quake. The houses they are given consist of 3 rooms, 2 bedrooms and and main room that is often used as the kitchen. The insides of the houses are cream or white, and the families get to choose what colour to paint the outside. And just when we thought we had escaped olive green, we discovered that was the colour of the day in Leveque. So we whipped out our paint rollers and paint brushes and motored through those houses. And this time we had eager little hands to help us.



For lunch we boarded the bus and passed around peanut butter sandwiches and Pringles. In the afternoon, some of us lucked out and got to paint the insides of some homes, a welcome break from the sun and the green paint. It was so cool to watch conversations go from English to French to Creole to sign and back again. Sometimes people from the main village in Leveque would come over just to chat with us, practice their English, and laugh at my French.



As we left Leveque that day, my second pair of sunglasses found their way onto some boy's head. Happy to have done my part in protecting the eyes of Haitian youth, we departed the village with the hope of returning the next day.

On the topic of eyes......Olivia had found out about a Vision Clinic being hosted at the Mission of Hope base to provide glasses for the surrounding community. With her future career path leading to optometry she took this as a really cool God opporitunity.



That evening we had some down time on the basketball court, tossing around a football, having a massage train, and a few of us actually played basketball.....truly though, Julia and I decided that out game of dancing football was more of our calling, and we were inspired to purchase a football when we returned home. That night we slept well. There is nothing like feeling physically exhausted. We had been longing for that kind of exhaustion.....mental exhaustion, emotional exhaustion - sure! all the time, but we don't really get the chance for any kind of physical labour whilst in university.