Day 13 | Madison

I have quite a few different emotions towards today. We went to the market, which I did not like. When we went down these set of steps, this man was telling me that he loved me, and he was blowing kisses at me and motioning for me to come over to him. I was really scared. I was so scared to the point that I was fighting back tears. Once we started back toward the truck that took us up there, my group wanted to go back to the same place and get some mangos, but I wasn’t about to go back down there. Thankfully, on our way back down the road, the second group was coming back up, so I stayed with them. When I told Bill about him, he and Johnny knew exactly who I was talking about. Turns out, this guy followed a group of girls that were in the group last week. Since Johnny had knew him, he shielding the girls in his group from him, but I don’t guess our interpreter knew he was there. Johnny told me that this man had a emblem of some sort of demon on his shirt, and he cut his arms and was not a safe man, so I’m not the only one he did that stuff to. I enjoyed the ride up the mountain, but not the trip to the market. Getting back to the ark was the best part of the day. Kids swarmed the whole entire area! It was so humbling! We had to teach some of the children how to use the slides and the cargo nets because they had never seen something like that before! I teeter-tottered with Shon-Shon for about 20 minutes. He is so sweet. Chase, Johnny, Travis, Emerson, and I were all talking to this young Haitian boy who was nineteen. Chase actually made really good friends with the boy, but the funny part of the story was that he thought Emerson was 25, Travis was 24, Chase was 22, and I was 20! He was so shocked at our ages! That just goes to show the size difference between the two areas! He only weighed 105 pounds! That really made me feel fat! But just seeing the eyes of all the kids playing on the playground melted my heart. I was thinking about how excited I was to meet my little girl that I decided to sponsor, and as soon as that thought crossed my mind, Trey came up to me and told me that my child was one of the two kids that they couldn’t find. I was heartbroken, and I wanted to cry, but I wasn’t surprised because she had no brothers or sisters, and her father abounded them, so it was just her and her mother. He told me he still wanted me to come and experience meeting them, but I’m not sure I can do it. It is going to be kind of a sad day tomorrow as we all back up to get ready to go back home, but the anticipation of getting to see everyone will override the sadness, I think. Please continue to pray for us as we put the finishing touches on the ark and educate the kids how to play! It’s going to be a blast! I love and miss everyone, and I’ll see you soon!