Jake goes to Haiti

In July, I had the opportunity to go to Haiti with our church, The Bridge, and an organization, Haiti Awake. The plan was to land on Friday, the 6th and leave early the 7th for a small remote village in western Haiti called Doko. There we would meet with the people of Doko, and begin an outdoor latrine project. The area had been devastated by Hurricane Matthew about a year before this.

But God had a different plan. Shortly after landing in Haiti, some local rioting began due to a gas price announced that day. The Haitian people were going to be devastated economically so this led to a civil unrest.

My plane was the last plane to land in Port au Prince. The plane coming behind us in a couple hours with the rest of our church group was diverted to the Dominican Republic, and then finally rerouted back to the states.

After leaving the airport we stopped at a local hospital to visit a man Becky Graves had brought a couple gifts to. One of those gifts was a pillow.

We left the hospital and went to the Children's Home Haiti Awake is in charge of. There we played with the children for a bit, and got a tour of their new house they had just moved into this year.

We then drove to a store to pick up a birthday cake for one of the people staying with us that week. As we left the store, we saw many roads getting blocked by vehicles. And we knew we had to hurry to get back to our house for the evening.

After trying several routes, we finally parked the car and had to walk about 10 minutes. 

When we arrived back home, we found out how serious it was getting in Port au Prince.

From the rooftop, we could see the smoke from the piles of burning tires.

We stayed in the neighborhood of the Haiti Awake house. We had Haitian nationals listening intently to the local radio stations and keep us in the loop of what was happening.

The Doko trip was cancelled due to the unrest, and the project was postponed for later in the year.

We were able to go to church on Sunday, and hear the first plane take off in 2 days later that afternoon.

The skies were clearing, and the unrest was calming due to the government rolling back the gas prices.

The people we met were very friendly.

The food was very good!

Here we are getting our water jugs filled up at a local water pickup. 

Here is a road that is partially blocked by rocks.

On Monday morning, we woke up and Becky said we were going to try and fly back to the US that day. The airport was crazy, but after being there 7 hours, we took off headed back to the states.

It was a great experience seeing a country not my own. And sharing the love of Jesus.