If a picture is worth a thousand words...

The saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words" and if that is the case, I guess I will just run out of word to describe my 2 weeks in Haiti. Neither words nor picture could ever do justice to describe the hurting, fear, and devastation I have witnessed. I cried as I saw a young boy on the side of the street in a wheelchair holding up his arms asking for food while his mother sat helpless nearby. Or the man who brought his friend by car to our "bus clinic" (with what appeared to be a kidney stone) in the hopes that we could do more than any hospital could.
The grandmother who is now the "mother" of young infant twins after their mother was killed in the earthquake. Tent camps tripling in a days time because they have no where else to go. Or after touring the downtown ruins of Port-au-Prince, dropping my friends off at their tent homes. These are the images I have no words to truly describe and no picture could ever do justice! Yet they are indelibly etched in my mind. Harder yet is the ability to explain the fortitude of the Haitian people. I have never witnessed people with so little be so giving and dare I say joyful in the midst of tragedy as I saw in the last few weeks.
Families taking in strangers because they have no one else, digging with bare hands to find survivors in collapsed buildings, sharing of what meager food one may have...the list could continue, but it just isn't enough to let people know what is truly going on there If you could only catch a glimpse of the 2 church services I attended while there. The passion in their singing, the depth of their prayers and conviction. You don't see people crippled with fear, but rather resolve...they will not be destroyed by this. They will come out stronger - physically, mentally, and most importantly spiritually. God is all they have left! Hope is what pulls them together and allows them to face the next day. None of this could ever be captured in one moment of time as a snapshot!