Well, we made it! Jessica and I are very excited to finally be here at Canaan. The day started early (we met up with Chelsea Rushing, a recent grad from Samford, who will be staying in Haiti till the middle of July) and we have already found ourselves in situations where the only thing to do is laugh and have also experienced a few t.i.h. situations. Before we left, we were told that some moments in Haiti can only be described by saying t.i.h. which stands for "this is haiti"... I didn't fully understand what that meant until we had been through immigration and baggage claim at the haitian international airport. After an early flight out of Birmingham, a five hour layover in the Miami airport (where Jessica was SURE she saw multiple celebs), and a quick flight to Port-au-Prince on a huge airplane, we landed!

We made it through immigration and began the search for our bags. I immediately began to pray that we would be able to spot Jessica's red, pink, and green polka-dotted cheerleading bows tied to our luggage, and we did! Praise Him, first mission- accomplished. Now for the second tast- find Bobi (our Canaan contact). We held onto our luggage tightly as we squeezed through the sea of people to get outside near the street. We were immediately bombarded by many haitians who wanted to help carry our luggage, but we kept moving through and found Bobi. She greeted us with a huge smile and hug and told us just to hold tight and wait for the other group of 21 people that would be joining us in Canaan for this first week. Our luggage and the luggage from the group was piled high into the back of a cattle truck and then everyone else also hopped into the back of the truck (yes, 24 peoples' luggage and 24 people in the back of a cattle truck) to begin the hour long drive to Canaan. The ride was tight :) but so incredible to see Port-au-Prince and the country side as we left the city. It began to rain (it's rainy season-so it will be raining at least once a day) but as we continued to drive, it let up a bit just enough to see the most breath-taking rainbow. It reminded me so much of the Lord and His faithfulness.

Once we arrived to Canaan and everyone climbed out of the truck, we all congregated in the cafeteria for our first haitian meal. It put Qdoba and Chipotle to shame. We got to know the group of 21, they are from a church in Illinois and are here to do VBS for the school in Canaan. After dinner we headed to our new home and began to unpack. We laughed so hard as we tried to figure out where to put what, while wearing our head lamps. I'm not sure why we wore the headlamps, but we did, and we thought we were pretty funny. We all took our turns taking a cool shower, bug-sprayed ourselves one last time, turned our fans on, and crawled under our mosquito nets, just in time before the routine power-down at 10 pm (the generator turns of every night around this time). Chelsea said a prayer thanking the Lord for such an exciting, but safe day and for our time here at Canaan. With our ear plugs in (the dogs bark all night)- our first day in Haiti was complete.

-Morg