Not Goodbye

The leadership council always tells us that with everything, there is a beginning and an end. But they also tell us there is no goodbye. For at least some of us, it is see you later.  But that never makes it any easier.

As we have done every trip, we begin by doing a Jericho walk.  For La Croix, that means walking through a part of the community as we pray for them, for the leadership council, and for Haiti.  Each Jericho walk we have done has ended at the beach.

A few days ago we had helped some fishermen pulling in their net, but were not able to stay to see the net teach the shore.  Today we arrived after they had  already pulled it in. We got to see what they had worked so hard to catch.

After, we sat down with several members of the leadership council to talk about the week. As usual, we could not provide any negative feedback. The entire week was amazing.

After lunch we did some shopping. It is an opportunity for us to bring back some souvenirs while supporting the local economy.  Many of our team were distracted by the man trying to sell two rabbits. Of course, at first they didn’t realize that he was not selling pets, he was selling them for dinner.

Then we spent much of the afternoon playing with kids. We told a Bible story, and did some related activities. Then we brought out the soccer ball and played several different games with it. We even tried to start a game of duck, duck, goose.  However, since we were not able to explain what a goose was to our translator, we ended up teaching them duck, duck, turkey instead. We finished by singing a few songs together, and then praying with them.

After the children left, we were joined by some of the young adults we had met during the previous trip. They had taught us to make corn wine, and brought us a bottle of the batch we had made to taste. We spent some time with them discussing many of the natural remedies they used to treat various illnesses.

Before sitting down to dinner, we got a visit from our translator Frantzou, who brought his three boys to meet us. We also got to visit with the daughter of our bus driver for the week.

Hard to believe that the week is over. It is always with heavy hearts that we pack up and head home. But in the end, I feel like we come back with so much more than we came with. We get a greater appreciation for the many blessings in our life. We have a better understanding of the positive effect our words can have on those around us. And most of all, we return with our love banks full after being showered with so much in our short time here.  So full that it has stretched us and increased our own capacity. A capacity that we can hopefully go back home and use to impact those that are near to us every day.

Written By: Dave Breaux