Seeing Both Sides to a Rainy Day

What a crazy week for the world! So just in case you have not heard there was a huge earthquake in Haiti (for those of you geographically challenged that is the other piece of the island I reside on, don’t fret until I moved here I had no idea either! World travel sure has helped my geography!). I live about 120 miles away from it! That would be a two hour car drive. That is just crazy.

I am fine; I was running at the time and didn’t even feel it. Later that night my roommate mentioned that a huge earthquake happened but somehow the subject changed quickly and we never went back to the topic. The next morning I woke up at 4am feeling like I was dying because my stomach hurt so bad, no idea what happened there. Luckily before my body decided to turn on me I already had the day off and it was one of those days where your stomach hurts so bad you can’t stand up straight. It was intense. I decided to check facebook and that’s when I remembered the comment that was said the night before and I quickly sent out many emails to my panicked family.

It’s crazy…how much control we don’t have. Some days you forget just how fragile life is, how one minute you can be eating dinner and the next your whole life is different. Crazy. By Thursday night I got a great idea, I can go over there, I am just three hours away! i couldn’t sleep that night all I could think about were the thousands who were still buried. I just couldn’t justify lying on a mattress and calling it a night when people two hours away were starving and I had food in my pantry. First thing I did the next morning was talk to the outreach guy on our campus as to what we could do, if going there for the weekend would have been worth it. He told me that he is in contact with the missionaries there and they say teams from all over the world are coming so for now we can stay put. In about a month when the glamor of helping out a nation in need dies down, that is when relief we can offer is needed. We may go over there to help rebuild, or help the refugees who come over the border, as of now I am not sure what our response will be. I do have some cool stories.

A friend of mine here, her mom was in Haiti. Her parents lived there for a while but now live in Georgia. They put together a medical mission team that specialized in leprosy, a disease that has infected many on our side of the island but is an epidemic in Haiti. Her mom led the team and was over there during the quake. After the earthquake happened the U.S. Embassy flew all the Americans out to New Jersey. Her mom made it out safely but in New Jersey was worried how she was going to front to cost of paying for a ticket to Georgia for that day. They local news station had been following them since before they left and when the earthquake happened they aired their story again. A woman in Georgia heard the story and paid for a jet to take the entire team from New Jersey to Georgia.

I don’t know if you will remember but a while back I talked about the directors son who got into an accident way back and damaged his leg so bad he could no longer walk correctly, the one that by a miracle a missionary hospital had the rare equipment and offered to do the surgery. Well on Thursday a guy with a really fat wallet walked in and paid whatever it took to help the transport all of their medical supplies and machines to Haiti to help out.

People’s responses to disasters shock me. Please keep praying for Haiti. So many of my friends have friends there and it is crazy stuff. Every day is a blessing.