Fellow Missionary "Kimberly Cochran"

I have asked the other 11 amazing men and women in my group to share with me their story about Haiti. This message comes from Kimberly who's spirit and honesty is an example for all of us!

"I kept a hand-written journal while I was in Haiti about the 6 million adventures we had in the 4 days we were gone (if you want to know the details, you are more than welcome to read the whole thing sometime, or even better ask one of the amazing people I went on this journey with). This is the last couple pages I wrote while I was on the plane back to the US, when the experience was still fresh in my mind. I think this section captures pretty exactly how I felt and the convictions this experience has brought up for me in my own life… “Anywho, we made it to the airport just in time to miss our flight. Meredith and Martha were flying back to Chicago instead of RDU so they went on to arrange their flights separately. We ended up all getting on a flight that was 2 hours further into the DR out of Santo Domingo so we had to, once again, cram into a too-small van and ride 2 more hours. Thankfully, that leg of the journey was much more uneventful. J I am finally on a plane to Miami, where we will hopefully catch one more to Raleigh. What an amazing experience! I’ve left out a lot of details, but so much happened in such a short time frame it’s a challenge to be thorough. I definitely feel the call to missions in my life even stronger, but at the same time, being in the thick of it makes me feel torn. Willio has given everything for the kids he serves (the 32 at the orphanage and the 1500+ at his school) and the strain shows. The flesh part of me doesn’t want to give up my bed and good hair days to sleep on the floor, eat rice every day, and have consistently frizzy hair. It’s gotta be a lonely job, a thankless job, and exhausting job… But isn’t that the kind of work we are called to do? To show unconditional love to those the world spurns and forgets? It was so powerful to me to finally have faces to put with a generic name. As tragic as Wilderman and DaveDave’s injuries are/were, as much as it ripped me apart as well as everyone else in the group… I realized at the same time how amazing and powerful it was that these two little boys -- these two orphans -- had a whole group of people shedding tears for them, praying for them, loving them. I realized these sorts of things happen every day – children die, people throw them away, they waste away from lack of the basic necessities of life and most times, nary a tear is shed or second thought given because we don’t know them and we don’t take the time to know them. It doesn’t concern us. We don’t want to sacrifice our comforts to love them. The whole time I was in Haiti, even just walking around Ouanaminthe, I felt God saying to me over and over, “These are my people who I love.” It made me cry on more than one occasion. Will I answer the call?”