Reflecting On Our Trip to Haiti...From Jen

    When our team met at the airport to head to Haiti early Saturday morning, we carried with us many bags. Some bags we could check, while others we shouldered on our backs. Bags of supplies and personal items, bags of hope and inspiration, bags of fear, and bags full of motivation to help others and work together for a greater good.  There was an air of excitement and apprehension that surrounded us. 
         We came from different places, we were different ages, we had different ideas and different beliefs, and we probably all had a different picture in our minds of what laid ahead of us. Perhaps this is why our trip was so successful.  It was the perfect combination of unique individuals united for a common purpose. Not only did we help make a difference in the lives of the children we met, but we all learned things about ourselves and people we might not ever have had the chance to meet. 
    Upon returning to Raleigh, I realize that while I left most of the bags that I brought with me behind, I came back with others.  I now carry memories of amazing, determined, compassionate, brave people working to help those in need.  A bag of sights and sounds of children singing, dancing, jumping rope, kicking soccer balls, and washing and playing in the water.  And yet another bag is filled with visions of crowded streets, the smell of exhaust from vehicles that passed on the left and right, honking as they avoided the people buying and selling goods at the market. The bumpy tap-tap rides and unpaved streets, crumbled buildings, trash and goats, and a mass grave filled with 250,000 human being who lost their lives in the earthquake. Perhaps the heaviest bag I brought back with me from Haiti is the one that holds the need to continue with this project, the motivation to do more, and the drive to return to Haiti and check up on Emmanuel and the other children who blessed our lives. 
   To my Haiti Team Members...Thank you.  You are an incredible group of people who have touched my heart, renewed my faith, and helped to make me a better person.  For anyone who is thinking about going to Haiti or supporting Convoy of Hope in another way...Do it. I can say from experience you will certainly get back more than you give.