Day 6

Sometimes the best way to experience life is to break through your comfort zone and just embrace what comes your way. If I feel like what I am doing is truly needed and appreciated, I can force myself to ignore my own comfort much easier and start doing things that seem almost surreal. That's how I was able to do wound clinics during my last visit and that's how I found myself at a rural hospital today applying lotion to patients.
We visited the Home for Sick and Dying adults today and my duty was to go to the men's wards to see which patients wanted to have lotions applied to their dry skin. I really wasn't sure how I felt about that but it was needed so I did it. To my surprise, the awkwardness subsided about a minute in to my first patient and instead began to feel a little bit like I was out of my own body. I was there doing it but I felt like I was watching and it was interesting. I applied lotion to the arms, legs and torsos of about a dozen patients and, although none spoke English, each one told a story on their bodies. I could see scars from years ago. I could tell that a leg had been broken in the past and had healed without being set properly. Hands were so leathery from hard work that they felt more like hide than flesh. Feet were thick with callouses from years of walking barefoot on the rocky Haitian ground. Some stories were fresher, as I could tell one patient I was putting lotion on was clearly recovering from some type of pox. If I call in sick next week with "pox," I have some idea as to where I got that.
We spent the rest of the morning and afternoon visiting orphanages where we sang songs, did crafts and distributed supplies.

In the evening, we got to attend the social event of the season in Tetonyen: the dedication ceremony of the new Grace Church building. Grace Church had been operating out of the dining area of Grace Village, but had significantly outgrown the space and a new beautiful church building was built down the hill in the village outside of the Grace Village compound.
 I don't know if the entire village was in attendance for the event, but it was probably close to it. One thing that you may surprise you is that in Haiti going to church is an event and even poor, rural villagers try to have one formal outfit for church, weddings, etc. Attending the dedication of a church counts as one of the occasions for people to dress as nicely as they could and it was on display. There were hundreds of well dressed locals in attendance. It was a who's who of Tetonyen.
I was glad to have been in attendance for this historic day for Grace Village, Grace Church and Tetonyen.