Fet Bondye Day 3: Alex Henning

July 4, 2013:
This week has been quite the experience. On Saturday, when the crew from Nebraska arrived in the Port-au-Prince airport I was on the other side of the chaos you experience when leaving the airport. But it isn’t busy until the people know that a plane has just landed in the Haitian airport.  I had a lot of built up excitement leading up to that moment in being able to see some of the Nebraskans that I hadn’t seen in over 7 weeks was pretty amazing.  When I initially saw Pastor Rick, the founder of HTF, I knew that I was would see Rhonda soon after and when I did I started walking straight for her and the rest of the Nebraskans. They definitely weren’t paying attention and were completely focused on one thing because it took them a long time to realize that I was even standing right in front of them. It was awesome to see them all and give them all hugs after not being able to see friends or family from back home in a while.

Alex Henning (center) with Haitian camp leaders.

This week has gone by pretty fast.  The first day I was able to use the Creole that I have learned over this summer in many different ways that I had never had to do before.  For me personally it was great to be able to communicate to our Haitian partners in their language.  For the camp, I’ve been able to be a floater and have been able to help fix different types of problems that have arisen, been able to be plugged into different groups, and, my favorite, help Rhonda, Julie, and Fabiola one of the HELP students working at the camp doing story time. The kids seem to love it when I’m able to participate in the different skits that they have.   All in all it’s been a great week and I’m glad to see some of the hard work that I’ve put in this summer to help prepare for the camp pay off.  And I can’t express enough how happy I am to be able to see the group from Nebraska and get to know them even better than I did before.

Alex Henning (left) in the line after camp participants
receive their personal care kits.