Leaving on a Jetplane!

So this blog is going on holidays… as am I! In three more sleeps we are leaving on a jet plane and going on a cruise. We have been planning on this trip for almost a year now and are very much looking forward to it.  I realize that this is only my fifth blog and going on holidays so early on seems pretentious but like I said… a year in the planning.

What we weren’t planning on is the earthquake that devastated Haiti.  Not that our cruise ship sails anywhere near there so what does it matter right? Well my heart has been heavy since this devastation struck. It doesn’t help that CNN seems to be my best friend when insomnia hits.

I once visited Belize. Not a visit so much as it was an outreach mission. I was 17 years old and thought I was going to change the world one missions trip at a time. And Belize was my first.

Let me start by saying now incredibly naive I was about this whole trip… I didn’t even know where Belize was and as far as ‘third world country’ well… I’ll save myself the embarassment of what I thought that meant. Let’s just say geography was never my strong suit.

So I got to Belize and pretty much had a melt down. That was without even seeing the sights – just the roaches in my hotel room. Not to say I was totally ineffective because I did manage to touch a few lives but much like my nursing career, more lives touched me.

I left for Belize thinking that it would be my first of many, many missions trips and have never gone since. But in that 15+ year time span not only have I grown but grown out of my naivety but grown into a compassionate nurse and mother.

That being said… Shortly after I return home from my vacation with my kids I will set out on my second missions trip… to Haiti. Am I terrified? Yes. Am I excited? Yes. Am I naive.. no. I know there will be devestation. I have had to read up on how to dispose of human remains and send a picture of myself for identification purposes. I watch CNN and basically any news show. I have access to google and the reports that are coming in. But I also have access to the blogs of the missionaries. They are changing lives. They are reaching out. And bringing hope to the hopeless.  And I am equipped both from a medical perspective and a “I know In Whom I have believed” perspective. So I will go.

My mom used to sing a song in church that said, “My house is full but  My fields are empty.. Who will go and work for Me today?”

I will…

I’m surprised at the feedback I am getting, which I thought would mainly be positive save my 91 year old worry-wort Grandmother. And she surprised me by saying she would go if she was younger!

I guess people are negative just for the sake of being negative. “Why would you go there?” “Good luck having no shower” “What good is it going to do” “What about your kids?”

You know what? I will go because they are in need. I can handle not taking a shower if it means I am taking part in saving lives. And my kids are surrounded here in this healthy country by people who love them and will gladly care for them in my absence. But who do the Haitian’s have? What about those children who lost their parents? Or whose parents are missing? Who do they have?

So yeah… I’ll go.