Life in Haiti, straight from Haylie!

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

An AWESOME Week.....

This past week we had an amazing team stay here at the seminary! Rosa and I tagged along their whole trip! (Thanks guys!)

So the first thing we did with them was go to a village called Fev. We went to Fev because there was a small group of our seminary students on a missions trip, and we were going to get a little taste of what they were doing there. We drove part of the way, and hiked the rest!!!

We walked around all morning evangelizing, until lunch.

After lunch, we hung-out with the students for an hour, then we walked to an open area for VBS!
(This is Rosa with some children from the village...)

I was put in charge of ten kids- nine girls and one boy.

(That poor little boy!)

After crafts, they gathered together in one big group. I think that there were over 100 kids!

Me and some of my girls...

On the second day, we went back to Fev! We went from house to house praying for people and sharing the Gospel.... I loved it.

We explored the area in search of a voodoo temple to show the team, (after Junior told us some of Haiti's history and how voodoo is tied into it).

And we found one. On a nearby tree we found this...

While evangelizing, we came across this little one!

We did VBS again the second day too!
There was a set of twins that came, and here is one of them!

One thing I enjoyed about Fev was that I got to see some of the students again!
This is William, one of the guys that practiced English with me at the seminary.

The next day, we piled into a tap-tap (form of transportation like a taxi, except its a truck), and we went to one of the best hospitals in northern Haiti called Haiti Hospital. After taking a tour, we prayed over every patient in the rehabilitation center!

The view from the tap-tap was gorgeous.
I. love. this. mountain.

We also visited a place called "Emmaus House" which is a place for orphans after they leave their orphanage. It is a place set up to help them become independent!
To find out more about Emmaus House go to this link:
http://www.emmaushousehaiti.org/

The next organization we visited was an orphanage called "Streethearts"!
We did crafts with the kids all morning, including bracelet making!
Here's the link to there website:
http://www.streetheartshaiti.org/

I actually ended up with three of these bracelets, given to me by the sweet kids at the orphanage!

The next day, we went back to Streethearts! Except this time, we took a field trip with the kids to a nearby basketball court!

Rosa and I hung out with the team and watched the kids play!

We are basically the coolest people in the world.

Totally kidding by the way... (:

Here are two kids I hung out with that day!

Later that day, we went to a town called Petit Anse for a basketball game with Streethearts! The team's church donated outfits for the kids to wear! (The purple and yellow are Streethearts kids!)

Watching the game and talking with friends was really fun!!!

That Sunday, some of us went to Fev for church!

Here I am walking there...

The service was beautiful, led by our very own students...

But unfortunately the week had to come to a close. They left a little over a week ago... sad right? We will miss you guys Sooooooooooo much!!!

Thanks for reading my blog!

Stay tuned!

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Graduation!!!

This past Friday, was the 4th year students graduation!

So, of course, I was there! I went there early, and stayed the entire service! It's kinda strange that I enjoyed it so much... It was four and a half hours long, extremely hot, in a different language, yet I still loved it!

Maybe it was the amazing marching band that I loved...

They marched around the church performing (what I think was) Haiti's national anthem....

Then through the front doors, and down the aisle...

This choir was SO good! (And they match!)

There were like 25 speeches that I didn't understand (Yay for French.)

(But I didn't mind sitting with my friends pretending to understand!)

One of my favorite parts was the music! One of our first year students, Rose D'Haiti, did an amazing job with leading!

This group in the picture below was really good too! They had a nice jazzy sound to them....

You can't really tell, but the church was PACKED.

Rosa and I!

When Matt was giving the 4th year students their diplomas, it was like a mosh-pit in front of the stage.

Everyone was pushing each other, and frantically taking pictures.

This is my least blurry picture of him...

I love this picture.

Our good friend Walnique Cenat gave the Valedictorian speech for his class!

He did a great job, he even said a little something about each one of his classmates!

After graduation, we came back to the seminary for a little party! I hung-out with my friends until the very last moment, when they walked out of the gate. It was a sad goodbye, but I know I will see them again in August!

Thanks for reading this blog!

Stay tuned!

Thursday, May 14, 2015

A Much Needed Update!

Hey guys!

Haven't heard from me in a while, huh? Well, I guess we have some catching up to do then...

I'm sure most (or some) of you know that we have a new intern here, Rosa Burnley!

We were neighbors in New Jersey, and now we are practically sisters!

She helps my mom do everything she needs help with, and has been a really fun friend!

One day Junior (our good Haitian friend) told me he found a boa constrictor in the computer lab. So of course, we investigated and found it. We trapped it in a box, to let it go outside the next day (or so we thought...). The next day the snake was gone, so we started looking for it. A few minutes later, Junior declares that he thinks it's in the old printer. How he knew this, I have no idea.

After about an hour, we finally found the snake, wrapped up in the printer!

It was SO cool!

Another half an hour and the five foot long snake was free!

One fun thing I did was work at a medical clinic in a town called Lory!

As some of you might know, my dream is to be a missionary doctor, so it was a really fun experience! I went with my good friend Brianna and we weighed and took people's temperatures, and put together medicine and gave it out to people (all in Creole)!

We also got the chance to weigh a few newborn babies!

Another fun thing we did was go to Labadee with the Gross family, for Caleb's and my birthday!

Labadee is a cruise ship dock that has lots of fun stuff to do....

One of the most exciting things was the food! We haven't had American food in FOREVER!!!

Labadee is home of the longest zip-line over water in the world!

So of course, we had to try it!

Though once I got up the 500 some feet in the air, I realized that I am TERRIFIED of heights.

Rosa loved it though! (I liked it too, I was just scared out of my mind!)

We sure are missing the Ayars a lot these days... (We love you guys!!!)

Since Stacey isn't here, I took the graduating students pictures for her too! It was fun!

Over the past three months, I have become really good friends with some of the students. I tutor some of them in English, I watch soccer with them in the cafeteria, I participate in chapel three times a week, and I hang-out with them all the time. But now that the school year is over for the seminary, I am so looking forward to next year's school year so I can see my friends again!

Thanks for reading this blog!

Stayed tuned!

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Hey guys!

So the COOLEST thing happened...
I found those pictures I talked about on my last blog! Yay!

Here are a few... (I wish I could put ALL of them on here, but there are like 200 pictures...)

Here is the Citadel...

Mountains, mountains and mountains...

Here is that cloud picture I talked about...

One of the coolest parts of the castle was the vibrant algae growing along the walls...

And growing on the bricks... cool right?

Wow.

Here is the picture... (I mentioned it in my last blog)

There was a moat around the Citadel (it was mostly dry, but there was still flowing water and fish in some places), anyway, the moat made the area around it SUPER wet...