I should be used to going outside my comfort zone, I thought, as I grabbed my purse and my keys. I’ve raised support––speaking in front of crowds and befriending strangers. I’ve learned a language––blundering my way through many a stilted conversation. I’ve moved to an impoverished country––making it through culture shock. But as I left […]
One of the privileges of ministering in Haiti is the opportunity to serve alongside people from so many different countries and cultures. For the past nine weeks, a group of Haitian, American, and Canadian-Korean young people have come to our house and studied Eph. 4, Rom. 12, and I Cor. 12 together. What motivates you […]
Your partnership with MAF helps a remote Haitian orphanage thrive
Not long after Danita Estrella-Watts responded to God’s call to open an orphanage in Ouanaminthe, Haiti, she discovered that the closest medical care required more than a car—she needed a plane.
Danita’s path first intersected with MAF in 2001 as she began to commute between Haiti’s capital […]
It’s been seven months since I stepped off of the old DC-3 airplane onto the hot tarmac in Port-au-Prince. In that time, I have learned how to drive around goats, pedestrians, and erratic vehicles. I can now understand French spoken with a Haitian accent and am learning how to speak Creole. My days are filled […]
Unpredictable. That’s the word that causes me the most stress, living here. You just never know what you’re going to run across. However, it also can cause a lot of laughter—because some days, if you don’t laugh, you just might cry!
The scene that confronted me as I was headed out the door to go get […]
I studied culture shock in college and read about its various stages: honeymoon, frustration, depression, and acceptance. Graphs showed how you start on the ‘high’ of the honeymoon phase and over time sink down through frustration to depression before eventually bouncing back up to acceptance, thus completing your bumpy culture shock trajectory.
We have been […]