Gifts of Appreciation

With each trip to Haiti we get the chance to thank the nannies, workers, and director of our orphanage for the countless hours of love, care, and protection they give Nora.  To say thank you on this next trip, I decided to paint something that would be a personalized gift for each of them.  There isn't much more personal than a name, so I decided to paint their names with either a Haitian flower or the Haitian flag and country.  I asked all the other adoptive families in our orphanage for photos of each of the workers--either photos of them working with our children or simply a snapshot of them from past trips to add to the paintings.  I also asked for as many photos of Rachel, the director, with the children she has cared for over the years to make a collage of photos for her.  There were so many photos given it was hard to decide what all to do with them--I hated not putting them all in there, so I included all I could and then printed the rest for them to have when I go.

My ideas of what all I could end up doing with these photos kept changing and changing--who knew it would be a bigger project than I thought it would be.  Anyway, I finally got the last ones done today and thought I would share them with you before packing them up very carefully for the journey to Haiti.  They aren't perfect in my eyes, but I hope they will #1 get to Haiti without breaking-ha! and #2 encourage these workers and let them know we truly appreciate all they do.

I included a verse on each of their gifts written in Creole, but since majority of you will not be able to read it in Creole (myself included), here's what the verse says in English...

^"For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,

which God prepared in advance for us to do."

~ Ephesians 2:10

My hope is they will know or be reminded that as they care for our children, they are doing a good work that God personally had prepared for them to do and that they themselves are also a beautiful handiwork of God Himself.

Now all I need is the news we can set our travel dates and hand-deliver these gifts to their owners.  Her name was printed in the September 7th edition of Le Moniteur but no word yet on it being released from IBESR, so we will continue to wait and hope and pray that email will come soon.