Day 20 & 21: God's Littlest Angels

The news of the January 12th earthquake in Haiti made my heart cry... While praying that night, on the evening of Haiti's most catastrophic natural disaster to date, Christ called upon me to not just cry for Haiti, but to get involved in their recovery.  I had no idea what to do, or what this meant.  All I kept hearing was "go."  I felt the Lord telling me to "go" to Haiti. I asked the Lord, "What is this suppose to mean?" and "How am I suppose to do this?"  My answer?  "The children."  So, the first thing I did (the first thing I always do) I logged onto the internet and went straight to Google.  If you type "haiti children go" into the search engine at http://www.google.com/ you will come across a link for God's Littlest Angels.  The direct URL is http://www.glahaiti.org/ .  This link jumped right off of the google search result page and into the center of my heart.  So, I clicked on the link, and as I read various articles from the site I became overwhelmingly involved with it's contents...

God's Littlest Angels is a Haitian orphanage located in the mountains above Petion-Ville, which is close to the village of Femathe. GLA is a non-profitable, non-denominational Christian organization.  It was founded on December 25 1994 when a one pound fifteen ounce baby was born in a mission hospital in Haiti. This is from their website "With the parents' permission, Dixie took the baby home. John put his skills to work making an incubator out of a cardboard box and a heating pad. At the time, Dixie didn't have access to IV supplies, so she kept the baby alive by feeding her with an eye dropper every 2 hours. Within 4 days, she was drinking from a doll bottle. Angel Noël survived and went home to her parents in April of 1995. She is now in grade school and is very bright and outgoing.

God continued to send babies in need of medical support. In November 1995, John and Dixie followed God's call to leave the mission they were working with and moved into the community to work with Haitian families and their infants.
Haiti's health care is underdeveloped and has few facilities to care for premature infants. Haiti has the highest infant mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere. Out of all the infants who die in their first year, 60 percent die in their first month of life. There is no other program in Haiti that focuses on these newborn babies." 

Today God's Littlest Angels is much more than just a facility for premature babies.  They are now a fully functional orphanage, and home to children of all ages... I contacted GLA via e-mail and a woman by the name of Jean Bell from the orphanage replied to me.  Through e-mails I found out that there's many items that not only the orphanage, but the surrounding community needs... So, that brings me to the adventures of days twenty and twenty one of my journey...                                                                                                      (Photo from the GLA site)

I decided to send a few donations to GLA.  These donations must be sent to their Colorado office.  They hope to send a shipment off to Haiti on the fifteenth of February.  Therefore, I don't have that much time to collect and ship out the donations.  I started my collection of donations at my Church.  I asked the Pastor to ask the congregation for their help which he did last Wednesday.  On the day of our Baptism I was caught off guard when a woman said that she "had a few things" for me.  I then realized that the things were for GLA.  I was thrilled to be accepting the first donations to go off to GLA.  However, I was also worried that I may not receive that many donations by Feb.9.  So, with the advice of a kind woman I spoke with at church that day, I e-mail another woman who does a mail forwarding to the church members... This however is only the tip of the iceberg!

On Monday I spent the entire day on the phone calling local dentist offices. I told them what I was doing and asked them if they had any extra tooth brushes, or tooth paste that they would like to donate.  I had many misses with several offices saying that they had  just donated tooth brushes to Iraq.  But, to my delight I got two hits.  Also, on Tuesday I did an online course for the Red Cross, and registered for various classes. 

Today Mark was off from work, so we picked up a HUGE box from one of the dentist offices in town.  We also stopped at Dunkin Doughnuts where we picked up a few doughnut holes, coffee, milk, and a bagel.  We then drove down to the water and attempted to feed the ducks the bagel.  The ducks didn't eat that much of the bagel because of the seagulls aggressiveness.  Mark, the children, and I also took a few photos that we are going to send to our sponsor children.  It was COLD by the water, so we didn't stay long.  After our little outing we went to Wal-Mart where we bought Stephie her first "big kid" potty and pull-ups.  She was THRILLED to have her very own potty!  The girls and I also picked out a small gift for Sinny while Mark picked out a hot wheels car for Ardjan.

When we got home the girls each sat on their own potty where to my surprise they BOTH tinkled in the potty!  I was so happy with Stephie that I must have given her a million hugs and kisses. Afterwards, they both (although Rene has been potty trained for some time I couldn't exclude her from Stephie's treat)got a treat of yogurt covered raisins for being such big girls and using the potty. 

The past couple of days have been awesome, and so easy!  When you leave your life in God's hands it all just flows together so smoothly!  There is nothing that I can't do with God!  With him I find myself doing incredible things!  I love who I am and I love my life!  I love who my children are becoming!  I love the way my family works together!  I have a sign hanging in my living room that says "When God is in your heart... Love is in your home."  And, I feel that is why I'm so happy with things in my life... Because I have an extraordinary love in my heart and home that only He can provide! 

God Bless, and have a safe, extraordinary night!