My first group

The first group of my time here came the week before Christmas. Sorry that was so long ago as I try to keep you more up to date. A group of 12 from Malibu Presbyterian Church, CA,—many of them Pepperdine students plus another couple from Wilmington, NC, joined them for the week. They had amazing energy and great attitudes—up for anything and everything. Their project for the week was helping to build a soccer field at Repatriate, one of the HOM campuses. It’s hard manual labor, spreading a thick layer of sand over a thick layer of gravel from piles at the edge of a large field. We thought that it would take them all week using buckets and wheelbarrows and it was pretty close. In the hot Haitian sun we encourage lots of breaks in the shade of the tent and lots and lots of water. There is also a school there with preK and K kids so the group would break at the same time as the kids and go to see the children who performed their song repertoire and introduced themselves with hugs and chants of I LOVE YOU. Each afternoon on their return they were ready to see other things—orphanages, a walk in the surrounding area, a drive around the city, anything. I would have been done for the day but they just kept going.
Most of the week I was busy at school but as the kids were taking exams and there really wasn’t too much for me to do, I went with them for 2 days…hot, heavy, fun, exhausting. They had a system down in filling up the wheelbarrows and dumping them and leveling the sand…taking breaks was no problem and they were hard workers! As careful as they were it did seem that each day another person or pair would be sick and in bed for the day but as soon as they could they would be up and join the group again. The evenings after dinner (food does get more variety with the groups though not a huge change—I’m getting ok with it) would be devotions and team time. The devotions were for everyone and the team time was a time where staff could excuse themselves while the group debriefed the day. And then came games if people were still up for it (and usually they were).