Sweet Return

This trip for me only came about 3 weeks ago.  One of my jobs for Apparent Project is to write in the blog and help manage their Facebook page.  I had not been here since last June and was feeling disconnected.  Things grow and change so rapidly here and it's hard to write about it all if you haven't been around for a while.  Marilyn was coming and asked me to join her.  I knew that I needed to come and reconnect with the artisans and all the new things going on here.

So I spent today enjoying all the sights, sounds and smells of all that is Apparent Project and the surrounding community.  Lots of landscape changes as they are paving all the roads in the neighborhood and putting in sidewalks.  So everything looks different.  It doesn't matter though - as soon as I step off the plane, there is a piece of my heart that feels like it is home.  Each time I have come here, God has done amazing things in my heart.  There is a love that I have for this place that cannot be expressed with words.


As I was walking around Apparent Project today, taking lots of photos and seeing all the new additions and changes, I couldn't help but think about the very first time I came here.  How God opened my heart and my mind to the idea of giving people dignity through work.  Shelley only had about 70 artisans then - now they are busting at the seams with more than 300.  

Since my first visit, an entire ceramics/pottery line has been created and just in the last month new jobs were added as more new potters were trained.  A recycled glass production line is under way and beautiful things are coming from there.  The daycare has been created - it was bustling today with 15 babies!  I also got to sit in on the new Apparent Project Institute.  About 23 managers are learning how to type, learning English and Grammar and today I was able to witness the first instructional class in Excel.  Talk about exciting stuff!  So many changes and so many possibilities!

Walking around - seeing so many familiar faces.  Artisans that have been here for years - whose lives
have drastically changed.  Also seeing so many new faces - faces whose lives are beginning to change. There is so much dignity and possibility in this little section of Port-Au-Prince and I am so thankful to be here and be a small part of it.  And the exciting thing is - it's only going to get better!

Things will calm down for the weekend - we are actually going to go to the beach for a few days!  But I look forward to coming back on Monday and interviewing more of the moms and the API students so that I can share their stories with you!