Haiti Team 2017 Update #8

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8

Today we woke up, packed up and loaded up one final time as we prepared to leave Haiti and head home. Having a late afternoon flight, we had time for a stop at Papillon Enterprise (www.papillon-enterpise.com ), a company featured in the Poverty, Inc. movie we watched last year.

Papillon, which means butterfly, is a company that was started by a lady who had adopted a child from Haiti in 2007. While she was in Haiti, she discovered the child that she had adopted was an economic orphan, which means he was only up for adoption because his biological mother could not afford to take care of him.

 

Shane and Kalispo goofing around

She felt guilty that people in Haiti couldn’t afford to keep their children and she had enough money to come and take someone else’s child. So she decided to help change that and started a non-profit called Apparent Project, which later gave birth to the for-profit Papillon.

 

this is on the back of all the workers

“Orphan Prevention through Job Creation” became a motto for her endeavors. Today, Papillon employs 201 Haitians and provides a meaningful wage to all their employees. We had the opportunity to tour the facilities, to see all the workers busy making products, see the process and hear the story. It is really exciting to see what is going on at Papillon.

 

Screen Printing T-Shirts

Handmade beads, handmade necklaces

Making paper beads from cereal boxes

One of the pieces of art that caught my eye was a painting with the words of Micah 6:8 on it, “To do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God!” It seems so simple, but as humans we miss this an awful lot. Papillon is a company that is seeking to live out these principles as they invest in the people and families of those who work there. Like Haiti Design Co and Rebuild Global, Papillon is a place that when you purchase something from them your impact is felt immediately and benefits real people.

We then looked through their retail shop and found some amazing products that were created by hand with care. After seeing the process and the people making them, it bring so much appreciation to what they do. The coffee mug I bought (I know surprised right haha) has a woman’s name, Luafie, on the bottom of it. She is the one who made the mug from start to finish, from the unformed clay to the glazed finished product, she was with it every step. How cool is that?

 

Finished products on display

We than headed upstairs to their café where we had smoothies and our last lunch in Haiti.

The Airport

We arrived at the airport and I was surprised that we barely had any line at check in, made it through security and to our gate in record time.

Sarah helped get us all checked in and saw us all the way to security!

Home Again

My battery was about to die and the wifi wasn’t that great at the airport so I didn’t get to finish. Flying into Miami, we were met with tons of people in Passport Control and I did not think we were going to make it through in the 1.5 hours we had till our flight. We stood in line for awhile, and then thought we caught a break when someone asked for US Citizens to follow him. He ushered us around a corner to what seemed like a short cut, but turned out to be a long line that wasn’t moving.

I heard someone say, “talk to the guy in the orange vest.” So, I got out of line, walked over to him and told him we had a team of six that was boarding in an hour. Praise the Lord, he gave me a pass and all of us were ushered toward the front.

God is good! We thought we wouldn’t make it, but His provision allowed us to make with time to spare.

We arrived in Cleveland about 12:45AM and Patty picked us up and took us back to Lakeside. It is always a bit weird to get back on US roads, especially a 4 lane highway that is empty. Haitian roads are narrow and always full. There will be some time of adjustment and allowing God to continue to use this trip in our lives.

Please pray for the team as we settle back in. There are a lot of emotions and thoughts to process. We are excited to tell stories and look forward to sharing with everyone. But in reality, there are things that we can share, pictures we can show, but it is the deeper things, the heart things, that are either too raw to understand and/or share, or the things we haven’t figured out yet. But God is using them all in a big way!

 

Our Team thanks you for your prayers and support!

Thanks for following along! To God be the Glory!