Adventure Fuelings: Vwayaj Nou An Nan Ayiti!!!

The last week in October, I had the amazing opportunity to return to Bonne Fin, Haiti for a short trip. I got to take a few friends with me too! There were six of us that went....Kristi Baran, Lindsey Kieser, Amanda Winn, Charla Leman, and Terry Zollinger(Charla's mom). All of which work at Gateway....except Terry. We flew out of Fort Wayne last Friday, spent the night in Miami, then arrived in Haiti on Saturday. Amanda and I spent half of the week teaching the Geckoes (which is the name of the missionary school there), since the Klopfenstein's were back in the states for part of the time we were there. Kristi and Lindsey spent those days painting an apartment for a hospital employee and her daughter. Charla and Terry spent the entire week with their sister/daughter's family....the Hartzlers. Then on Thursday, we worked on cleaning up the house for the new missionary couple (the Plattners from Goodfield)....who moved down the week after we went! So please keep them in your prayers as they adjust to a different style of living! Sunday we had the great opportunity to go to the Bonne Fin church, then to Port Salute...which is a great beach!!:)

I took the girls on a few different hikes...some of them they were not so fond of.....but we all survived it and no one was seriously injured! Minor incidents...weellll...yah...but like I said, we are all still living!:) As one so stated in a moment prior to terror...."Argh, these stupid leaves are in my face." A few moments there it became..."I am really glad all the green foliage was in my face!" What happened in-between, you might ask? Well first you need to know that we were climbing back down from the side of a waterfall and instead of jumping into the water, we decided we didn't really want to get completely soaked...so we were scaling the side to reach dry land. Lindsey was taking the lead and she made the comment...right after which she grabbed hold of a rock that was unstable and fell back(while screaming)...in these brief milliseconds, I looked down to see that were she would fall would really damage her....she would have hit her head/neck on a rock jutted out below, then rolled into the water. But she stopped after falling back so far! I looked back at her to see that she was hanging on to some foliage!! They weren't that big or strong...but somehow they managed to hold her and she pulled herself back up! Then came the after statement. A real life example of give thanks in all things and hard eucharisteo.

To talk about and explain everything on our trip would take paragraphs upon paragraphs....so I will refrain my ever blabbering fingers and spare your weary eyes.:) Overall it was a great trip! I loved being back there! And it was way harder than I expected to return to the states after the trip. A huge chunk of my heart will forever be in Haiti. And it gave me all the more confirmation of what my passion is though!! Below are just a few of the pictures....:)

Our incredible group:)