Coming From a Changed Life – A Guest Blog by Josh Knipple
It’s now been a few days since returning home from Haiti. I have honestly been trying to process through in my mind what we experienced this past week. Heartache. Devastation. Turmoil. Loss. Hope.
I have worked in Louisiana after Katrina, Alabama and Arkansas after tornadoes, West Virginia and Kentucky after ice storms. I have also served and gone on many mission trips before this, including one to Haiti after the earthquake. Nothing though, could have prepared me for our venture to the Savannette.
Houses completely obliterated, to where families are living on a pile of dirt mixed together with busted concrete. Exposed rebar everywhere from where it had been torn apart. Seeing a family crawl out from under a piece of sheet metal they were using as a shelter.
Then there’s the tarps. Tarps are like gold right now. Anything to get out of the sun but also provide shelter. People begging us for more tarps. Not food, not money, but tarps…
And yet, hope… This, is what I take away from a week of being there.
Seeing the community come together to help us rebuild even temporary tarp and 2 by 4 shelters. The hard working men coming out for 10 dollars a day doing machete work to clear houses and roads (and here we want 15 dollars an hour to flip a burger…). The image of kids joyfully running around with a tennis ball as their only possession…
Emotions can’t describe it. My heart and life have been changed.
