Haiti as Remembered

The devastation from Haiti is heart-wrenching to look at. But Haiti has always been a miserable place in ways, even without earthquake rubble everywhere. I visited there in college on a missions trip, some 30 years ago now, when things were actually somewhat better than the last few years, from what I have been told. Which means that in recent years it must have been really, really bad, because conditions were bad back then. Going to Haiti changed my life - I never looked on our comfortable lives in the U.S. in exactly the same way again.

I found an entire album of Haiti pictures from that trip and have scanned in five.

Looking out the open door of our "tap-tap," our open-air bus-like taxi vehicle. A note is written on the back of the photo: "Notice the six chairs tied to the head of the man in the background."

The marketplace where we held our first open-air service. You can probably tell even from this small photo just how dusty and grimy everything was.

A service in a little church in the countryside. Actually, the countryside was a welcome relief from Port-au-Prince. But I've been told that all the lovely trees have been chopped down since we were there. My dear college friend Barby is seated on my right. I wonder what has ever happened to those sweet Haitian children that clamored to sit on our laps.

Another sweet little Haitian girl. She would be in her thirties by now. According to the back of the photo, we lured her to the door of the tap-tap with a Hershey bar, so that we could take her picture.

And finally, this is a picture of yours-truly sharing a missionary story during one of the open-air meetings. The man on my right was Pastor Cebien and he was translating. Truly a life-changing trip.