My First Week Back

I got back to Haiti 1 week ago today. It was soooo wonderful to get back “home” to the place God has called me to serve. It has been a crazy busy week of change, adjustment, unpacking, saying goodbyes, meeting new people, cleaning, organizing, training/teaching interns, therapy, etc. As much as the week flew by it also seemed very long. I don’t even know where to start to share about this week. I am just going to share on the 3 BIG areas of ministry from this week.

1.     INTERNS: I am so EXCITED that I am finally in Haiti and able to start working my 2 OT interns Julia & Molly. They are both incredible women of God with hearts of service. They are both eager to learn and have such love for the Miriam Center children, workers, and outreach families. It has been a blast working with them. This week I trained them on Pediatric Massage, Splinting to make knee/elbow blocks for weight-bearing, Positioning using boppy pillows/theraband and stretching techniques. Molly my ST intern trained them on oral motor/feeding prior to me arriving. We also worked through individual treatments of various children. It is so great having extra hands as many of the children need more than 1 person in order to perform the most effective therapy that is effective and meaningful to the child. Below are some pictures from therapy with the kiddos this past week.

2.     CLEANING: When I arrived back in Haiti everything was so disorganized for multiple reasons. Molly my roommate was packing to move out and both interns carried therapy supplies & items for the visibility boxes into Haiti for me. I could barely move around my room. The kids had gotten into the therapy Depot while I was gone and made a mess and Molly got AWSOME chairs made for all the Miriam Home Children to sit in and right before I left we got boppy pillows made. All of this was being stored in this depot. Needless to say it was not functional as you could not move around in there or find anything you need. This past week I conquered cleaning both. I have a 1/2 done cleaning picture and after picture of the depot but only a ½ done cleaning and finished cleaning picture of my room. Justin put up a line to hang the boppy pillows up on and is working on putting screws in the wall to hang the chairs up. He is the BEST!!!! I also started hanging bags of water from the ceiling as it is suppose to help keep flies  away.  I feel so much better now that I have organization in my life!!

3.     VISIBILITY BOXES: The Interns were a HUGE help in putting the Visibility Boxes together and getting the cabinet put together. We used the visibility boxes today to do therapy with 3 of the higher functioning children this afternoon! It has also been fun to see the interns grab boxes in their free time and work with the kids! I am so EXCITED for what these boxes are going to mean for increased interaction from the short-term teams with the kids. These boxes break the barrier of not knowing how to interact with the kiddos!!! I pray that God uses these in BIG ways!!!!

This is a more to the point...light hearted blog. I have a few stories I can't wait to share with you from this week and also a few things that are heavy on my heart but they will have to wait for another night.