The Home for Sick and Dying Children Should be the renamed to The Home for Children with Hope and Life

Today my word of the day is LIFE. I saw so many instances of LIFE today.
LIFE at it's fullest,
LIFE at it's happiest,
LIFE at it's lowest,
LIFE lived to the fullest,
LIFE full of hope,
LIFE searching for a little glimpse of hope,
LIFE worth living,
LIFE through the eyes of a child,
LIFE through laughter,
LIFE through communicaition,
LIFE through gestures,
LIFE through God's children,
LIFE through love.

This morning I got up, sleepy, but in a great mood. I came over to the guest house and started coffee and getting food out for making breakfast before the housekeeper even showed up. Together we made breakfast for the team. It is so much fun to be able to serve these teams that give up a week of their LIVES to serve the people of this country. I enjoy hanging out with them and seeing their views change from day 1 to day 7. I enjoy watching their LIVES change as they live in another country and see the sights and fall in love with the people. I like watching the bonding happen between eachother (and hate saying bye on Mondys). Living LIFE here in Haiti with a new "family" every week and helping to provide jobs to the ladies has been nothing less than a blessing.

Now that we are done with that tangent, I'll move on to the rest of the day. We headed to the Home for Sick and Dying Children. Entering through the doors I had a couple of girls I wanted to see and a baby downstairs that needed my loving. A boy held his arms up to me before I was even a foot in the door, how was I going to say no to that? I loved on him for a while and a couple other kids when my hair stylist showed up (these were the two girls I was looking for). They spent a long time braiding my hair when in came a little girl I was also loving on last week. She had a huge cut up the side of her face and it was looking so much better than last week. Her wound had life as it was healing. I laughed and played with these kids, tickling, putting crazy toys on my head, watching them smile, and feeling my hair being pulled so tight I cringed. Every one of these kids were full of LIFE. The girls eventually got tired of doing my hair and the little one I was holding fell asleep. I put her in her crib and headed downstairs to check on my little girl with the feeding tube and the blanket I talked about last week.

She was asleep so I stroked her skin and then went to pick another baby up. As soon as I saw her awake I put the other baby down and picked her up and realized she no longer had the feeding tube! She is getting better and better every time I see her. Her LIFE is full of hope whereas last week she couldn't even keep food down that went through a feeding tube. Such encouragement. I carried her into a room I had not been in before, the one for the really sick babies.

Here it was hard to remember my theme of LIFE. These babies (up to two years old) layed their lifelessesly, lethargic, big eyed, and no energy. Their eyes cried for love and attention but their bodies had no energy to express these feelings. Holding back tears, I wanted to love each one of these kids as I'm sure they wanted. Kids in America want to be cuddled and lounge around on the couch watching TV all day when they are sick, but these kids spend day after day in a room full of cribs wishing and wanting to be loved, touched, and cared for. I ended up putting "my" baby back and first walked around this room stroking skin and praying for them. I picked up a few for a while and loved on every baby in that room in some form or another until we had to leave. As I was wishing I had fifteen arms to hold and stroke every baby in that room and wanting to bring them all home with me so we could just sit and cuddle all day long I couldn't help but let tears run down my cheeks wanting each one of these kids to have that kind of love and touch. A picture on the wall caught my attention at just the right time. It was a picture of a little girl who had her arms wrapped around Jesus and his around her. I knew that I couldn't give them the love the longed for, but someone bigger and better could. It gave me peace to know He has a plan for each one of the babies and kids that I had the opportunity to love on for a few hours. Isn't it great that we serve a God who cares immensly about the LIFE of His creation?

Before I left I wanted to find the girl who is the best hairstylist there. I think she is the oldest of all the girls, but we have made a special little bond. I found her and gave her a big hug when she asked "Are you coming back tomorrow?" I told her I would be back later and she got a big smile. Its so great to have that effect on her LIFE when I can only speak very little of her language. Smiles, hugs, laughter, tickles, and donating my head to be a practice model goes a very long way.

We then left and went to Gertrude's orphange, the one for children with disabilities. There we fed, loved on, and played with the kids and then headed back to Mother Theresa's. When I entered I was looking for "my" little girl. I didn't see her right away, but when she saw me she ran up to me with a smile and eyes full of LIFE and gave me a hug hug and hung out on my lap or right beside me most of the rest of the time (she's eight). We took a whole group of kids outside to some basketball courts so they could run aroud and we wouldn't have to watch for little escape artists (which there are several). My eight year old went back inside, but I ended up having a whole posse of kids loving on me. We ran around (they loved me running with them on my back), tickled a lot, sang crazy songs, and played ring around the rosie. So much laughter, fun, and LIFE! The afternoon was so much fun. After I was worn out from being active I went and got my baby and loved on her the rest of the day. Before we left I saught out my little eight year old and gave her a huge hug. She didn't look happy as her death grip of a hug was on me. I looked at her and told her I would be back and she got that beautiful huge smile on her face again as she was now content and went to play. I love going to this place :)

We ended the day celebtrating a birthday at the Visa Lodge Restraunt with amazing pizza and some cake. This again reminded me about LIFE and how awesome it is to celebrate another year of someone's. Today was a great day and its encouraging to me to think about all the LIVES on this earth and all the purposes each one has. How is your LIFE being displayed to the world?