This day was spent primarily venturing to the land purchased by Orphan’s Promise which will be the new Miriam Center. Once out of the city, the drive through the country and into the mountains was breathtaking! The ocean was an awesome aquamarine color as the waves softly rolled into the sandy shore. What a stark contrast to the villages where the streets, the rivers and even the beaches are ridden with trash. And an even greater contrast to Port-au-Prince, an oceanside city, where rubble and trash seem endless and vegetation is nearly absent. A feeling of peacefulness verses a feeling of chaos and confusion. When we arrived at the 3 acre parcel of land, Courtney, the director of Miriam Center, walked with the group and explained the potential layout of the new Miriam Center campus. It will truly be remarkable for the children!
As we prepared to leave, we were met by a group of children of all ages. One young girl was pulling a string upon which was attached a car. But this was no ordinary car. It was made of old plastic pop bottles, using the caps as the wheels, a whole bottle as the body and pieces of bottle for the axles. It was so creative and at the same time so humbling. I thought of the boy who walked with us on the property who had made a toy out of two plastic lids and some sugar cane stalk, and the boy in the trash heap who flew a kite made of an old paper plate, some string and a length of thin paper. Then I thought of my own children and the variety and complexity of the toys that they have. What does one do with that? It isn’t so much that they need to have the toys that the children in America have. Actually, I was tickled to see that such simple toys brought joy to children the same age as mine. It was the realization that this was really all they had, and in the midst of their hunger for food, education, and the love of the Father, they found joy in a little plastic car made from a dirty, old pop bottle.
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