Tori's Stories

What is happening? What is going on? Innocent people are dying every day. Everyday-for various reasons. Massacres, drunk driving, stupid mistakes, murders, and who knows what else. Many people think the world will end on December 21 st Sometimes, I wish it would. Can this tragedy just end? But, these people, these beautiful creations don’t know our God. These people do not know how to show their beauty because they are afraid of the God who created them. These people who do all these things—they need to be loved. They need to be shown Jesus in ways they have never been. Too often we turn away because it’s a “helpless cause”, but we know the one who can help Can we fall to our knees and pray? Can we ask God to show us how to be Jesus in this dark and fallen world? Can we fight for justice and peace by showing love? Can we accept everyone because of who they are? Innocent lives are taken all over the world— Some unexplainable, some ...

I don’t know if you remember or not, but I wrote a post about our newest little admit the day after Thanksgiving. This is a follow up of that. If you want, read that first here http://torirayle.blogspot.com/2012/11/our-newest-little-arrival-and-how-hes.html . Well, he stayed with me the rest of that week. For seven days I bathed, fed, changed, and loved him at all hours of the day and night (except when I was teaching preschool). He was such an easy going baby (besides waking up a lot in the night). He would be content sitting in the Bumbo or laying on the floor if other things needed to get done. He loved being tickled—especially under his chin. I could tell from the first time I met him he was a special baby—I couldn’t see why his mom would have left such a cute little bundle alone at the hospital. He had big handsome eyes and looked cute in just about any outfit I would put him in (of course I picked out all the cute ones).   He ate well and seemed very happy. The next F...

Today is December 6 th . Not a spectacular day by any means, but it means Christmas is approaching. Its hard to be in shorts and t-shirts and knowing Christmas is so close. It doesn’t make sense. When we were little we had to bundle up by this time putting on many layers of clothes and we may of even had a snow day or two. We would see Christmas displays in stores and when driving at night my siblings and I would have contests to see who could count the houses with the most Christmas lights (I’m still convinced my one older brother would count each porch light because he always seemed to win). Some volunteers that where here last week found some Christmas lights and put those up and I’ve been talking about Christmas a lot in preschool. How do you explain Christmas to kids who have no concept of what it is? They aren’t anticipating Santa coming down the chimney (nor am I encouraging that), they don’t see the lights as they travel, they don’t know what “marvels” stores hold, they ...

Every little girl dreams of being a princess. Whether it is because they want that night in shinning armor, to ride horseback to their castle, to have someone to do all the work for them, so they can be in charge, or just to “be beautiful”, it’s the dream of them all, right? What if there are girls who don’t know what being a princess means? There are ones who cannot even imagine what that is like because they have so few things. There are girls who have never seen a movie with a princess in it or read a book about a princess. There are little girls who do not have these dreams because their dreams are too filled with good food and just one beautiful dress to wear to church. Today in preschool, for various reasons, we only had the girls in class.   One of the girls is a missionary family’s daughter and when I told her mom what the class would be made up of she suggested bringing dress up to class. I (of course) loved that idea and had already been planning to bring out the b...

I sit here at my desk—my messy desk and wonder how to put my thoughts into words. Scraps of paper left over from a preschool craft I made up, coloring pages and 20 markers lye in a pile waiting to be finished for a song prop, 12 baskets from when I taught the story of the 5 loaves and 2 fish, a cookbook I used when making my portion of Thanksgiving dinner, a cup of water, Kreyol notes, a couple of baby toys, lesson idea books, a few CDs, and my computer all clutter my desk. This array of items pretty much sums up my typical life here but doesn’t even break the surface of the things that go on here. Since I’ve been here we’ve admitted six new babies. The youngest are six month old twins and the oldest is 13 months. They all came from different circumstances and are here for different reason. Our hope and the plan right now is for four of them to be reunited with a family member after three months of our care, one of them was reunited in August and is now back to stay until he is ...

Thanksgiving… It happened this week (in America at least). I feel like there is an unsaid rule about writing what you are thankful for or talking about what you are thankful for sometime around this Holiday. That isn’t too hard though, we all have so much to be thankful for. I’ll list some of mine later. Sitting here at 12:37 in the afternoon on the Friday after Thanksgiving and I sit with a thankful heart. I loved preschool this morning. The last week and a half there has been construction going on right next door to the preschool room and having only half walls, the kids easily get distracted by all the action. I’ve been frustrated by repeating myself over and over recently. I’ve been frustrated feeling like the kids are not absorbing anything. I’ve been frustrated at the fact that I was feeling like a failure as a teacher. We started out the year with actions similar to this, but with corrective discipline and daily structure we moved out of it. I didn’t want to go through...

I am now living in Lagosette, Haiti (about six miles south of Cap Haitien) at Children of the Promise (COTP). COTP is not an orphanage but a creche because they do not keep the children long term. They take in sick and/or abandoned babies and love them back to health. Their main goal is to eventually reconnect the child with family but when this is not possible they adopt them out. We have 16-20 babies 0-1, 8 special needs kids (1-5), and 30-40 kids 1-5. Our numbers are always changing. Since I’ve been here I have seen two kids be reunited with their Haitian families, two children go home to their adoptive families, and five children be admitted. This means that there is always something to do around here. There are always babies to help feed, diapers to change, hugs to give, boo-boos to kiss, kids to chase, kids to push in a swing, songs to be sung, loving to give, and attention to give. Luckily for us there is a great staff of Haitian nannies that work here and love these kids. ...