Haiti: A Whirlwind of a Week – Part 1
Many of you are well aware of what’s happened in Haiti, almost two weeks ago, an earthquake shook the country to it’s core. I don’t know the exact number of the dead, but I read a story that they buried over 150,000 just the other day. It seems like for most of us, we didn’t pay much attention to Haiti prior to this, I was one of those.
Yet the effect of this earthquake really hit home last Tuesday. I had finished my night class and walked into my friend’s house, to see all of my friends on their phones calling various people. I was confused.
"Hello, this is Stephanie calling from Safe Families, we kind of have a unique situation here…"
As I got up-to-speed, I found out that the Department of Child Services (DCS) had contacted Safe Families’ regional office in Chicago asking them to prepare for 300 Haitian orphans who could be arriving in the next couple of days. I was immediately recruited to start calling people, so I looked through the database and called people I knew.
I can tell you that what we were asking was not an easy thing to ask. Take in a child coming off a plane with little more than their sandals and underwear, many infested with lice and ringworm, only speaking Creole? What fascinated me in that moment were the answers I received, "yes, we’ll take them!" As we finished going through the whole database of people, I had to step out on the back porch to grasp the reality of what was really happening. It struck home that these are children, God’s children, who had lost their families and were looking to be transported to a country they knew nothing about. I could only weep for them (I’m an emotional dude, it happens) and I was reminded of my prayer earlier in the week, "break my heart for what breaks yours," yup, my heart was broken for these kids.
Since our church partners with Safe Families, they had asked us what we could do to assist. Our pastor, Dave Rodriguez, decided to send out an e-mail to our Grace family to let them know of the need… little did we know what this would bring. I came into work with Safe Families and our Outreach team setting up a "command post" in the conference room we affectionately call the "War Room." My friend Steph had gotten two hours of sleep and hadn’t eaten all morning, we had three people answering phones, and e-mails were coming into the e-mail address we set-up at over eight e-mails per minute.
By mid-afternoon, the DCS had denied any such report that any orphans were on their way to Indiana, even though we had written proof. It was a whirlwind day of emotions: we were tired, emotionally exhausted, hearts were broken. But the story doesn’t end there…