Julie Herrick
Anything can go wrong on a trip. It doesn’t matter what the cause is or how you solve that problem. How you react is what defines the problem the most. You could have three flat tires or wake up really sick just a few days before you’re supposed to leave. You could even be afraid of making a mistake while drawing a picture. For this trip, our group came up with a slogan that seemed to define our entire trip. No matter what happened, whether it was good or bad, it added to the experience because “it’s all good”. Our amazing art teacher, Kathy, seemed to introduce our slogan when she taught our kids how to use French curves to draw beautiful pictures on their new drawing pads. She told the kids that no matter what they drew, even if they thought it was bad, it’s all good because that’s the beauty of art. From there on, every obstacle we encountered was tackled by that positive thinking.
This slogan also helped us feel better about being in Haiti. When we first arrived and looked around, we felt sad and wanted to do so much to help everyone, but that’s impossible to do in one week. When we finally got to visit the children in Chantal, we realized how by helping these children we are doing so much more than we think we are. We took them to the beach to swim around and taught them how to do chicken fights. We gave them new soccer balls and had our own little tournament in the back yard. We built them chicken coops and they were right there beside us helping. We made them laugh and held them tightly in our arms. No matter what we did on this trip, these children’s lives were being changed with each passing day. No matter what we did, it was all good to them.
