Traveling + First Morning in Haiti

By the time one of us got to the computer to be able to write a blog post, we no longer had access to the internet. This is being written in the evening of July 9, and will be posted as soon as possible!
Our team left Hudsonville at 12:45 Thursday noon. We had very little traffic getting to Chicago, and had plenty of time to get to the plane. The agent who was checking us in first told us that we had to pay $60 a person to check our bags (and almost gave me a heart attack! $600 was not what we planned on), but we argued the point a bit, and the next person who came said that we would be okay. We weren’t able to check our bags all the way through, because we had a lot of time in Miami. Our flight was on time. We got to Miami, found all 20 of our bags, took them up to our hotel room (we stayed at the Miami Airport Hotel), and settled in for the night.
The next morning (this morning), we all met in the hotel lobby at 8:30 with all 20 of our suitcases (weighing 2000 pounds total), and then proceeded to check-in. We were very excited because the area for checking in to Port-au-Prince was about 50 feet from our hotel lobby. No one tried to charge us money this time, which was great. We made it through security pretty quickly and found our gate. We hung around for another hour or two, and then it was time to board our plane. Our plane showed up at the last moment, we all boarded, and then finally headed off to Haiti!
We arrived in Haiti pretty much right on time. It took us quite a while to get through immigration and find our suitcases. We were all sweating buckets by this time- it was soo, soo hot! We were all overjoyed though that all of our 20 suitcases made it through. It would have been quite unfortunate if some got lost.
We got out of the airport fine (customs just waved us through), and then we had a rather interesting walk. Cherie, one of the airport people, helped us get our 4 carts down the road to where the cars are. The road was quite uneven, and some of the carts tipped a couple time, so he earned his money helping us today! We loaded in the cars (1 truck and 1 SUV), and then headed up the mountain. We got to GLA a little after 4:00 and began to drink a bunch of ice water which tasted great! We got to see the nurseries and meet some of the babies, and see the balcony. The nursery only has around 30 kids in it right now, which looks so strange to those of us who have been there before and have seen the nurseries with 3 times as many kids. There are 10 volunteers here already, so we won’t be spending our afternoons with the babies (they each have 3 kids already, so there aren’t anymore for us to take care of). We’ll have time around the evening to hang out with the kids, but not for the whole afternoon. We’ll be spending our mornings with the VBS and our afternoons doing whatever GLA needs us to do.
We had a delicious dinner of pizza- anyone who has been to GLA knows how great their pizza is! Yum! After dinner, we had a little bit of time to hang out with some of the babies, and then we went up to the guesthouse. We are staying in a different place than we have in the previous trips. We aren’t at the main house, in their little guesthouse, but we’re staying in a guesthouse up the road a little ways from the toddler house. We are kind of bummed that we won’t be able to hang out with the babies in the evening, but the guesthouse we are in is absolutely gorgeous! We have two bedrooms with some nice beds, we’re getting breakfast served to us every morning, and we have a beautiful balcony to sit on in the evening. Brandon and Nikki Jordon are hosting us (they run the guesthouse), and they are fabulous hosts. We’ll be spoiled while we are here for sure! We did have to move all 20 of our suitcases into the house, and we’ll sort through them later.
We had a team meeting and devotional time, took some much needed showers, hung out for a little bit, and then went to bed! I’m sure we’ll all sleep very good tonight!
Saturday update: it ended up that one of our hosts got sick overnight. He was going to take us up to Ft. Jacques to clean a house, but that wouldn't work anymore! We ended up sorting through our 20 suitcases of donations, organizing them, and then had a few hours to relax. We are currently at the main house, where we'll eat lunch in a little bit, and then spend the afternoon with the babies! Since we won't have much time to do that later in the week, we are very glad to have the opportunity to do this now! We'll take it whenever we can! Thanks for all of your prayers and support!