A Night for Haiti

Well, Mon­day is offi­cially com­ing to a close for me so I thought I’d check in with you to see how your Mon­day went. Mon­days seem to be pretty bru­tal for peo­ple. I read a friend’s Face­book sta­tus about her Mon­day and I wanted to fly to Seat­tle and give her a big hug. It sounded awful! I per­son­ally enjoy Mon­days because I’ve usu­ally been recharged over the week­end. For me, it’s usu­ally around Wednes­day or Thurs­day that I start to break down with exhaus­tion and I tend to crawl my way into Fri­day. Isn’t it crazy though how much energy you can have on a Fri­day sim­ply because you know it’s the end of the week? The thought alone gives you an extra boost for the day and I’m always amazed at how happy every­one is on Fridays.

Today I was not only phys­i­cally charged up from the week­end, I was also both emo­tion­ally and spir­i­tu­ally recharged. I had the most amaz­ing Sun­day evening spent with great friends shar­ing din­ner, mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion and prayer for those in Haiti. I got the idea from the Com­pas­sion blog and I rec­om­mend any­one read­ing this to host your own evening for Haiti.

I’ve been think­ing a lot about one of the prayers from last night. One of my friends prayed that we would all con­tinue to remem­ber those in Haiti. It’s so easy for you to have an evening like this and then get sucked back into your own life only to for­get about those that are still suf­fer­ing. This res­onated with me. I remem­ber after Vitaliy’s tragedy of los­ing his mother, father and lit­tle brother that the sup­port poured in like a flood at first. Then it was a steady flow. And even­tu­ally it was a trickle. It wasn’t that peo­ple didn’t care. It’s that life doesn’t stop. Everyone’s lives keep mov­ing and with the pace of this life, peo­ple can for­get. It’s a nat­ural occurrence.

But I remem­ber the ones, the ones that made it a point not to for­get. They called out of the blue to send a word of love or encour­age­ment. And there were all the silent ones, the ones that we may not have heard from our­selves but those that I know prayed hours upon hours for us. Then there were the anony­mous ones, the ones that sent dona­tions our way with no return address. I am so thank­ful for these peo­ple and it’s their exam­ple that inspires me to work and make an effort towards remem­ber­ing those that will con­tinue to suf­fer in Haiti for a long time. Tragedy, pain and suf­fer­ing — it’s no quick fix.

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I had to do it up nice for this event because it was our first din­ner cooked in our new kitchen. I avoided fry­ing up some eggs on Sun­day morn­ing sim­ply because I wanted to save it for this meal. I’m sen­ti­men­tal like that. I just can’t help it. (Oh! Can any­one find what’s wrong with this pic­ture? Answer the ques­tion, but don’t hate!)

This is offi­cial Hait­ian style soup. We totally under­es­ti­mated the time invest­ment of this dish, but I think our guests thought it was worth the wait. How­ever, I firmly believe the Haitians must have an eas­ier and faster way of cook­ing this soup. I’m just cer­tain of it! You can find the recipe here. Invite your friends over or have a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for your kids.

There aren’t many things bet­ter in this life than community.