Haiti Relief Trip...

Hello from Port-Au-Prince! I'll try to catch you up on the last two days...

I found out that I had the opportunity to go to Haiti with Gateway's relief effort about a week before we hopped on the plane. I had a busy week before so that I hardly had a lot of time to really think about the trip, but so begins our excursion to bring some semblance of help to a disaster of unimaginable parameters.

We (Dad, myself, Andrew Bailey, Manny Martinez and Jimmy) met at DFW at 5:30 am with all of our clothes, etc., packed in our respective carry-ons for the whole week;) This was because we were checking 7 bags/boxes of tools and 3 jackhammers...yes, jackhammers...
Mark Jobe had met us at the airport and we prayed before heading out.
American Airlines were great with working with us in not charging for any of the bags except the overweight charge on the jackhammers (98lbs!) and off we went to Miami to catch our connection to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. We were unable to fly directly into Port-Au-Prince because of oversold flights, apparently it's the place to be this time of year.

MIA (Miami International) was MIA, except less annoying than usual. In about two hours we were off to the DR for the night before an early morning to begin our trek into Haiti. Oddly enough our U.N. contact, for transport out DR happened to miss his earlier flight and was on our plane. After landing immigration was a breeze even with our odd shaped and extremely heavy cargo, may have been the presence of our U.N. guy helping us along, which was great. He and his brother escorted us to our hotel in a very, very old part of Santo Domingo, which happened to be Christopher Columbus' first stop before the "New World". They have an amazing memorial to him which I was dying to go in! Our hotel was an extremely historic building that had been turned into a very nice place. We went and ate dinner at a restaurant on the coast with a deck hanging over the water, I know what you're thinking, "Wow, some rough trip," but just wait!

So, after we ate Dad, myself and Andrew went with our contacts in search of a SIM card or phone that we could use instead of paying the ridiculous international rates on our phones, alas, to no avail.

I set my alarm for 3am...yes, 3am! OK, so it was 5am our time though:) Still, felt really early. We loaded up our heavy cargo and headed to the small airport in Santo Domingo. We pretty much got there before anyone who worked there...not very helpful except the owner of the airline we were using happened to walk in before all his employees and checked us in and gauranteed our cargo all on the one, small, tiny airplane...which really was a good deal, we were worried we'd have to make two trips because of the weight and the size of the plane. I assumed he'd cut back on passengers or the plane was relatively empty and that's how he could do it...uh, no...

He called our plane and we walked outside...with a crowd...umm...uh oh. So, ya, every seat in the tiny plane was sold. Yes, they got all of our luggage on the plane. How? I'm glad you asked. They got it all on the plane, after filling up the cargo hold AND the extra storage in the rear of the plane by putting one of our boxes and Andrews carry on in the aisle of the plane, at this point I looked at the trees at the end of the runway, and further to the peaks of the mountain range ahead...and prayed.

We took off with our plane sounding, at least to me, like the little train who refrained, "I think I can, I think I can!" An hour later we are landing in Port-Au-Prince...whew.

As soon as we landed we helped unload the jackhammers and tools off the plane and the damage was instantly recognizable from a ominous crack down the entire facade of the main airport that was completely shut down. We walked across the tarmac to an AA storage facility that had been made a makeshift immigration HQ. Everything went incredibly smooth, we walked outside to meet Jack waiting to take us to our home for the week. Along the way I got to grab some images I'd rather not describe as remarkable or incredible because they are neither.

The destruction here, even after a month of cleaning up is unimaginable if you weren't standing in the middle of it. We're told that there are still bodies in the rubble even in the neighborhood where we are staying. After being here 6 years ago I was trying to draw a comparison to what I saw today, and astonishingly enough there is very little difference in the peoples attitude and what would seem to be normal day to day happenings, and if not contrasted by the massive physical damage surrounding them, it would seem nothing happened.

After having breakfast we headed out to work, which we were antsy to get to after a long trip and not doing anything for two days. We get to the building and find it in horrible repair and evidence of damage. We decided to remove the entire roof system as it was very obviously a massive failure. This turned out to be one of the most difficult roof tear offs I've ever done...not only did they put a stupid amount of screws in the roof, they tarred the slats of corrugated sheet metal together on top of that they put the rafters and the lathing too far apart making for a severely precarious surface to work on since the metal was seriously compromised in areas with rust and rotten lumber underneath...something I found out first hand.

So, the interesting part of the day came when I...fell straight through the roof into the room underneath barely missing a metal cabinet. And by straight through, I mean I was told I looked like a magician disappearing in front of them by one of the guys on the roof. Yes, I'm fine, shoulder is a little sore from where I reached out with both arms to attempt to grab the rafters on either side of me to slow me down, which I did. I landed flat on my feet and heard the yelling on the roof and Manny calling for my Dad to run inside to get me...at this point I wanted out of the building quickly to gather myself and was outside in the yard walking around before they could even get off the roof and Jimmy grabbed me and hugged me, lol, it made me feel good. Honestly, it boils down to experience, if I hadn't been comfortable in that situation I could have really been hurt, and by God's grace that I came straight down in one of the few spots where there was no furniture or on the metal cabinet which would have sliced my back open, or worse, contorted my fall where I landed in a way that I could have broken something.

So, we finished up there and came home for an amazing dinner! Was hoping to lose weight and tone up on this trip...ya, this food is ridiculous...that's all I have to say about that! :)

Well, that's it for tonight, tune in for more updates from the isle of Haiti...love ya!!