Life detour leads to unplanned vocation
Today an article appeared in the Courier featuring my story. Here it is if you'd like to read it.
By JEANNIE WILEY WOLF
Staff Writer
Tori Rayle misses her babies.
It's been nearly a month since the 23-year-old Findlay High School graduate has been in Haiti where she helps care for sick, abandoned and orphaned youngsters.
"I cannot wait to be back," said Rayle, who is the preschool teacher at the Children of the Promise complex in the small northern village of Lagossette.
She has been in Fostoria with her family since Dec. 20, raising money to finance the coming year of her mission work. Rayle hopes to return to Haiti by the end of January.
"It's been hard to be home because the day that I left they found out that we had a cholera outbreak at the orphanage," she said. "I want to be with the kids because they need people."
Any updates she receives come from the staff's Facebook pages and blog posts.
"They had adequate staff and some volunteers came right away, and I'm glad they had all those people," she said. "But my babies are there. I want to see them."
It's a far cry from what she expected to be doing when she graduated in 2008.
"It's not something I planned out. Definitely, it was all God that planned it out," she said. "There's no doubt in my mind."
Rayle wanted to attend college and earn a degree in social work. She spent a semester at Owens Community College, then moved to Texas where she went to school and worked as a nanny. When that family relocated to Georgia, Rayle went with them. A neighbor there founded an organization called 3 Seams, a women's cooperative sewing group, and asked Rayle if she'd be interested in going to Haiti.
"The first time she said something about it, I didn't know," Rayle said. "I thought it was really cool, but I'm like, what can somebody who doesn't know how to sew do? So she named a couple of things, but I didn't really know how to do those either."
Yet, she was intrigued by the idea.
"In the fall of 2010 I started feeling a call to missions, but I didn't know what that meant," she said.
"I had been feeling like I was supposed to go somewhere, do something, and specifically I was feeling called to missions, but I didn't know where or when," she said. "I thought about it, prayed about it, and I ended up going."
Rayle visited Haiti for a week in June 2011, then moved there in September to work as supervisor for 3 Seams. She said the organization creates opportunities for people to purchase clothing for their children while also supplying a child in need with an identical piece.
"When I worked for them we employed four seamstresses," she said. "It was a sewing program, really. They made dresses for little girls, and for every dress that was sold one was given away in Haiti. But we made other things like headbands and wallets and purses and accessories as well."
While working for 3 Seams, Rayle lived in Port-au-Prince, the capital and largest city in Haiti. The national language of the country is French, but the standard dialect is Creole.
"Creole is easier. Someone described it to me as a poor man's French," she said.
"I took two years of French in high school. I remembered some of it," she laughed. "I've had a little trouble learning the language, but I'm working on it."
Rayle said she became an advocate for job creation programs in Haiti.
"There are times when aid is necessary, but they need to know they can do things themselves rather than sitting back and letting the white people in general do everything," she said.
While Rayle was at 3 Seams, she discovered that she wanted to work with children.
"I have been given a passion for children. I always loved children but I didn't really realize it until I was in Haiti working with the seamstresses," she said. "I felt so much more of myself when I was with the children. That's when I realized I need to be working with children."
She left 3 Seams after 10 months and returned home.
"I didn't know what I was doing ... I was willing to go somewhere else, but I started looking at places in Haiti because I was learning the language and the culture," she said.
She finally connected with Children of the Promise, a non-denominational Christian organization that cares for the sick and malnourished infants. It is not an orphanage, said Rayle, but an infant care center, or creche, as it's called in Haiti.
"We take in abandoned or malnourished children and we love them back to health and obviously give them medical care and things needed," said Rayle. "Our main goal is to just have them for a short period of time, like three months or something, and give them back to their families, which a lot of orphanages don't."
Rayle explained that many of the children in Haiti are economic orphans.
"They really have parents but their parents don't have the money to care for them. So our goal is to keep those kids with their parents," she said. "If they're really malnourished, we take them in and get them back to health. Usually they're fed through feeding tubes or things like that which they can't do at home."
The organization also has a prenatal program to educate parents and provides formula for babies and Medika Mamba, a ready-to-use therapeutic food made of ground roasted peanuts, powdered milk, cooking oil, sugar, vitamins and minerals, for older children.
"It's medicated peanut butter, and that can be the only thing you eat and it's got enough nutrients and everything in it. We're able to give it to the parents, and the parents can feed that to their kids and they're nursed back to health," Rayle said.
Another part of the mission is employment. The center currently has a staff of about 80 local Haitians that work as nannies, laundresses, cooks, adoption workers and yard men.
Rayle spent three months working with Children of the Promise last year and hopes to return to her job as preschool teacher as soon as possible.
"If the children aren't able to go back to their parents and they're being adopted out, most of them go to the United States and Canada, so they're going to a place that speaks English," said Rayle.
"Age 2 and under, they're OK really going back to the states and learning something totally new. But as the kids get older, they're right at the age where they should be in preschool, so we want them to not be totally behind everybody else. Also, we're helping them learn English which will make the transition easier," she explained.
When a preschool teacher isn't available, Haitian teachers care for the children, said Rayle.
"But they don't really do a preschool, like they have them color or play with something. So there is some activity, but it's not what they would be experiencing in the states," she said.
Rayle has three classes of children, including six in one class and five in the others.
"I get to spend my days waking up to the sound of 70 beautiful babies, yelling, talking, screaming, babbling and crying," she said. "I get to feed, clothe and change babies. I get to invest in the lives of 18 preschool children. I get to tell them about Jesus, teach them English, manners, stories, songs, structure, and all the other things preschoolers should know."
"I get to kiss all their boo-boos, help them brush their teeth, give them hugs, walk with them, be silly with them, read to them, watch movies with them, dance with them, and hopefully be Jesus to them," she said.
It's challenging, admitted Rayle.
"I've seen three babies die. It's never easy," she said.
The day she left to return to the United States, one child died of cholera, a bacterial infection caused by eating or drinking contaminated food or water.
"He was the reason we discovered it (the outbreak). He was playing the night before and that's how fast it can happen," she said. "Once we realized we were on guard ... we had a lot of kids we had to put on IVs (intravenous therapy) ... it's just so fast. When you're in your home and you don't have money or a way to get them to the hospital, you can't just put them on IVs in their house. That's why things like diseases can just be rampant and there's no way out of it."
Despite the problems, the Haitian people love life, said Rayle.
"When you go and see pictures or you hear stories, you're like, why would you love a country like that, a country where people die all the time, where people are living in a way that they shouldn't be living?" she said. "But the people who live in those circumstances or survive through the death of a loved one or through trials or natural disasters, they're just different. They have a joy that's just unexplainable."
"They have so much passion for living," she said.
Rayle said living in Haiti has made her more appreciative.
"They don't have a lot. In America we get so focussed on getting and me, me, me. I need more, I need more," she said. "In Haiti, they don't have that and they don't have that opportunity. Their mind can't even comprehend getting more and more. They just love life because it's life, not because they have so many things. It's cool to see."
Rayle is trying to raise about $12,000 to support herself for a year in Haiti.
"I am raising a little bit extra for a salary now. That way I can buy food. I need about $1,000 a month, for plane tickets and housing and food and health insurance," she said.
A lot of her money is pledged and comes monthly, she said. But she needs more before leaving for start-up expenses. She has support from three churches in Findlay, Indiana and Georgia and a couple of individuals.
"And some people just send one-time gifts which I'm very thankful for," she said.
In Haiti, the center provides the staff with one meal a day. The rest is on their own, she said.
"We go grocery shopping at a gas station a lot," she laughed. "Things are a whole lot more expensive."
"When I was at Port-au-Prince, we could pretty much get anything we wanted. There were a few things we couldn't, like I could get ice cream and chocolate and milk and everything. Here it's a whole lot harder to find chocolate and ice cream. Those are things I miss the most, but you get over that."
"I miss family and friends way more," she said. "When you see how people live or they don't have food, and you miss ice cream, that doesn't even equate. They need food. You don't even care about the ice cream."
Rayle said her parents, Daniel and Sharon Rayle of Fostoria, have been supportive of her decisions.
"I don't think anybody likes sending their kids to a foreign country, but especially after I came home and they could see how much I love it, they know that's where I belong so it's easier for them to send me back," she said.
"I think everybody should go to Haiti," said Rayle. "But if you go to Haiti, don't expect to come back the same person. It's something that will change your life. It's hard to explain to somebody who's never been there, but it makes you thankful for what you do have."
Donations to the program can be made at childrenofthepromise.org. Rayle also has a Facebook page and blog at www.facebook.com/ToriInHaiti.
Wolf: 419-427-8419, Send an e-mail to Jeannie Wolf
http://www.thecourier.com/family/2013/Jan/18/ar_fam_011813_story1.asp?d=011813_story1,2013,Jan,18&c=fam
Friday, January 18, 2013
Life detour leads to unplanned vocationBy JEANNIE WILEY WOLF
Staff Writer
Tori Rayle misses her babies.
It's been nearly a month since the 23-year-old Findlay High School graduate has been in Haiti where she helps care for sick, abandoned and orphaned youngsters.
"I cannot wait to be back," said Rayle, who is the preschool teacher at the Children of the Promise complex in the small northern village of Lagossette.
She has been in Fostoria with her family since Dec. 20, raising money to finance the coming year of her mission work. Rayle hopes to return to Haiti by the end of January.
"It's been hard to be home because the day that I left they found out that we had a cholera outbreak at the orphanage," she said. "I want to be with the kids because they need people."
Any updates she receives come from the staff's Facebook pages and blog posts.
"They had adequate staff and some volunteers came right away, and I'm glad they had all those people," she said. "But my babies are there. I want to see them."
It's a far cry from what she expected to be doing when she graduated in 2008.
"It's not something I planned out. Definitely, it was all God that planned it out," she said. "There's no doubt in my mind."
Rayle wanted to attend college and earn a degree in social work. She spent a semester at Owens Community College, then moved to Texas where she went to school and worked as a nanny. When that family relocated to Georgia, Rayle went with them. A neighbor there founded an organization called 3 Seams, a women's cooperative sewing group, and asked Rayle if she'd be interested in going to Haiti.
"The first time she said something about it, I didn't know," Rayle said. "I thought it was really cool, but I'm like, what can somebody who doesn't know how to sew do? So she named a couple of things, but I didn't really know how to do those either."
Yet, she was intrigued by the idea.
"In the fall of 2010 I started feeling a call to missions, but I didn't know what that meant," she said.
"I had been feeling like I was supposed to go somewhere, do something, and specifically I was feeling called to missions, but I didn't know where or when," she said. "I thought about it, prayed about it, and I ended up going."
Rayle visited Haiti for a week in June 2011, then moved there in September to work as supervisor for 3 Seams. She said the organization creates opportunities for people to purchase clothing for their children while also supplying a child in need with an identical piece.
"When I worked for them we employed four seamstresses," she said. "It was a sewing program, really. They made dresses for little girls, and for every dress that was sold one was given away in Haiti. But we made other things like headbands and wallets and purses and accessories as well."
While working for 3 Seams, Rayle lived in Port-au-Prince, the capital and largest city in Haiti. The national language of the country is French, but the standard dialect is Creole.
"Creole is easier. Someone described it to me as a poor man's French," she said.
"I took two years of French in high school. I remembered some of it," she laughed. "I've had a little trouble learning the language, but I'm working on it."
Rayle said she became an advocate for job creation programs in Haiti.
"There are times when aid is necessary, but they need to know they can do things themselves rather than sitting back and letting the white people in general do everything," she said.
While Rayle was at 3 Seams, she discovered that she wanted to work with children.
"I have been given a passion for children. I always loved children but I didn't really realize it until I was in Haiti working with the seamstresses," she said. "I felt so much more of myself when I was with the children. That's when I realized I need to be working with children."
She left 3 Seams after 10 months and returned home.
"I didn't know what I was doing ... I was willing to go somewhere else, but I started looking at places in Haiti because I was learning the language and the culture," she said.
She finally connected with Children of the Promise, a non-denominational Christian organization that cares for the sick and malnourished infants. It is not an orphanage, said Rayle, but an infant care center, or creche, as it's called in Haiti.
"We take in abandoned or malnourished children and we love them back to health and obviously give them medical care and things needed," said Rayle. "Our main goal is to just have them for a short period of time, like three months or something, and give them back to their families, which a lot of orphanages don't."
Rayle explained that many of the children in Haiti are economic orphans.
"They really have parents but their parents don't have the money to care for them. So our goal is to keep those kids with their parents," she said. "If they're really malnourished, we take them in and get them back to health. Usually they're fed through feeding tubes or things like that which they can't do at home."
The organization also has a prenatal program to educate parents and provides formula for babies and Medika Mamba, a ready-to-use therapeutic food made of ground roasted peanuts, powdered milk, cooking oil, sugar, vitamins and minerals, for older children.
"It's medicated peanut butter, and that can be the only thing you eat and it's got enough nutrients and everything in it. We're able to give it to the parents, and the parents can feed that to their kids and they're nursed back to health," Rayle said.
Another part of the mission is employment. The center currently has a staff of about 80 local Haitians that work as nannies, laundresses, cooks, adoption workers and yard men.
Rayle spent three months working with Children of the Promise last year and hopes to return to her job as preschool teacher as soon as possible.
"If the children aren't able to go back to their parents and they're being adopted out, most of them go to the United States and Canada, so they're going to a place that speaks English," said Rayle.
"Age 2 and under, they're OK really going back to the states and learning something totally new. But as the kids get older, they're right at the age where they should be in preschool, so we want them to not be totally behind everybody else. Also, we're helping them learn English which will make the transition easier," she explained.
When a preschool teacher isn't available, Haitian teachers care for the children, said Rayle.
"But they don't really do a preschool, like they have them color or play with something. So there is some activity, but it's not what they would be experiencing in the states," she said.
Rayle has three classes of children, including six in one class and five in the others.
"I get to spend my days waking up to the sound of 70 beautiful babies, yelling, talking, screaming, babbling and crying," she said. "I get to feed, clothe and change babies. I get to invest in the lives of 18 preschool children. I get to tell them about Jesus, teach them English, manners, stories, songs, structure, and all the other things preschoolers should know."
"I get to kiss all their boo-boos, help them brush their teeth, give them hugs, walk with them, be silly with them, read to them, watch movies with them, dance with them, and hopefully be Jesus to them," she said.
It's challenging, admitted Rayle.
"I've seen three babies die. It's never easy," she said.
The day she left to return to the United States, one child died of cholera, a bacterial infection caused by eating or drinking contaminated food or water.
"He was the reason we discovered it (the outbreak). He was playing the night before and that's how fast it can happen," she said. "Once we realized we were on guard ... we had a lot of kids we had to put on IVs (intravenous therapy) ... it's just so fast. When you're in your home and you don't have money or a way to get them to the hospital, you can't just put them on IVs in their house. That's why things like diseases can just be rampant and there's no way out of it."
Despite the problems, the Haitian people love life, said Rayle.
"When you go and see pictures or you hear stories, you're like, why would you love a country like that, a country where people die all the time, where people are living in a way that they shouldn't be living?" she said. "But the people who live in those circumstances or survive through the death of a loved one or through trials or natural disasters, they're just different. They have a joy that's just unexplainable."
"They have so much passion for living," she said.
Rayle said living in Haiti has made her more appreciative.
"They don't have a lot. In America we get so focussed on getting and me, me, me. I need more, I need more," she said. "In Haiti, they don't have that and they don't have that opportunity. Their mind can't even comprehend getting more and more. They just love life because it's life, not because they have so many things. It's cool to see."
Rayle is trying to raise about $12,000 to support herself for a year in Haiti.
"I am raising a little bit extra for a salary now. That way I can buy food. I need about $1,000 a month, for plane tickets and housing and food and health insurance," she said.
A lot of her money is pledged and comes monthly, she said. But she needs more before leaving for start-up expenses. She has support from three churches in Findlay, Indiana and Georgia and a couple of individuals.
"And some people just send one-time gifts which I'm very thankful for," she said.
In Haiti, the center provides the staff with one meal a day. The rest is on their own, she said.
"We go grocery shopping at a gas station a lot," she laughed. "Things are a whole lot more expensive."
"When I was at Port-au-Prince, we could pretty much get anything we wanted. There were a few things we couldn't, like I could get ice cream and chocolate and milk and everything. Here it's a whole lot harder to find chocolate and ice cream. Those are things I miss the most, but you get over that."
"I miss family and friends way more," she said. "When you see how people live or they don't have food, and you miss ice cream, that doesn't even equate. They need food. You don't even care about the ice cream."
Rayle said her parents, Daniel and Sharon Rayle of Fostoria, have been supportive of her decisions.
"I don't think anybody likes sending their kids to a foreign country, but especially after I came home and they could see how much I love it, they know that's where I belong so it's easier for them to send me back," she said.
"I think everybody should go to Haiti," said Rayle. "But if you go to Haiti, don't expect to come back the same person. It's something that will change your life. It's hard to explain to somebody who's never been there, but it makes you thankful for what you do have."
Donations to the program can be made at childrenofthepromise.org. Rayle also has a Facebook page and blog at www.facebook.com/ToriInHaiti.
Wolf: 419-427-8419, Send an e-mail to Jeannie Wolf
http://www.thecourier.com/family/2013/Jan/18/ar_fam_011813_story1.asp?d=011813_story1,2013,Jan,18&c=fam
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