The ladies room woke up to Chase hollering, "WAKE UP YOU LAZY BUTTS!". Unlike our awakening, the rest of the day went very smoothly. The bookshelf 'dream team' of Ciara, Michael, Chase, and I built two more bookshelves before lunch. After lunch, Chase and I led worship for VBS. The children in 1st and 2nd grade are really getting into the worship and it is a joy to be a part of. In the afternoon, I tutored a student named Junior, in the future tense of English. The girls and I played with the kids after school until we went to the nunnery.
Supposedly, these nuns have started a ministry of taking in malnourished or abandoned babies. The top floor of the nunnery is toddlers, and the basement level is a huge room FILLED with cribs. Every crib almost had two babies. Most of them were malnourished and disgustingly tiny. It is a sight that I will never forget. Our mission was to hold the babies. The importance of human touch for babies is crucial and there is not enough nuns to hold all of the babies. So they have mission teams come in and hold the babies. It sounds simple, but being there and wanting to hold every child and not being able to is heartbreaking. I held this sweet girl named Sarah and she started crying when I left. It was an emotional experience, but it gave me tons of respect for the ministry that these nuns have started. The incredible God story happen to our leader Stew, who held a child named Joseph. It touched his life because this Haitian baby reminded him of his premature son Joseph. It was very hard for him to imagine this child going through what his son went through, but without a loving family and a community of support.
When we came back from that emotional experience, there was still work to do. Michael taught me how to cut the wooden boards. I felt so powerful with the big power tool in my hands, but unfortunately I was not very accurate and quickly got it taken away. We had dinner and a special devotion. Stew taught us about steadfast prayer in Daniel 19, Ezra, and Nehemiah and how we should take some responsibility for others' faiths.
