Happy and blessed Easter season to you, our readers, and to all your friends and family who have helped support the Haiti Micah mission in Mirebalais. It has been over two years since Father Constant asked if I could take on editing the newsletter. Anyone who has done this type of work knows it is not easy. I need to coordinate with other board members for story ideas and information, gather and edit content, and format everything correctly, all by a monthly deadline. There are times I can barely juggle my full-time job with my volunteer work, and how do I find time for a social life? Then I see the photo fellow board member Karen Wires sends to me for the monthly Sponsor A Child section (see the sweetheart this month below!) and I am reminded that most of my busy-ness is ephemeral and will be gone tomorrow. But the promise of Haiti’s children will last.
I have been blessed to travel to Haiti twice, first as an HMP volunteer in 2006 and later as a board member in 2011 when we opened the water purification center. My first trip to Haiti was my first ever to a ‘developing’ country. I boarded a plane 9 months after that introduction to start my Peace Corps service in West Africa. My first thought when I stepped onto the tarmac in Nouakchott, Mauritania, was that it smelled just like Haiti. I was catching the scent of charcoal cooking fires! Both countries have the challenges of scarce energy resources and massive deforestation. That first sense of connection stayed with me throughout my service and when I returned to Washington, DC, I jumped back into the work of HMP. During my second trip, I met the children in the SAES home and will never forget the loving, chaotic greetings of hugs and questions and kisses.
There have been moments I was afraid that I would not have the time or energy or willingness to do my part in the work of HMP. The promise of Easter 
reminds me that, with God, there is always enough. There are hundreds of smiling faces in a town called Mirebalais in Haiti and my life, and yours, and theirs are connected. We will all “press on toward the goal.”
