Hurry up and wait.

This phrase is a common one around the Mission of Hope. When the high adrenaline teams come flooding out of the busses ready for action we clarify from the get go that Haitian time will be a big factor during their stay. It's important to be flexible and ready to jump, but patience is next in line. I feel that this phrase can also be echoed as a summary to my life over the past couple of weeks.

First off, I feel like I have been pretty negligent to my blog as a result of my life being pulled in a variety of different directions. My anticipation of school ending and life slowing down was a bad judgement on my part... Life accelerated faster than it had all year as I neared my departure back to Canada. Each day was jam packed with new experiences and friendships and moments that were difficult to let go of. Every morning I would wake up with a flurry of activities waiting at my doorstep. I can kind of illustrate it with the scene from Finding Nemo... You know when Marlin and Dory take the East Australian Current? The sea from the outside was calm and collected but as soon as they synced into the streamline they were moving at a expeditious pace. It was all I could do to process everything happening around me and in me as I stepped off my balcony every morning and into the current of MOH life, but I wouldn't have traded it for the world.

One of the favourite things I got to be a part of was travelling with Diana Cherry, who is working full time in our new prosthetics lab at the Mission. Each week she travels to tent cities surrounding Port-au-Prince and picks up amputees who are then brought to the mission to receive prosthetic limbs and undergo rehabilitation from the volunteer professionals that come to the prosthetics lab each week. It was an incredible day and I am looking forward to plugging in more with her and building stronger relationships with the patients when I return in the fall. How I miss them already!

I also got to visit my mountain families with a few different guests along including a dear sister - Hillary McBride who lives in Nashville.

I blogged about her friend Chris earlier in the year after I first met the family and it has been a privilege for me to get to know them and work alongside them across the distance as we bring hope to these beautiful people. From a thrilling drive to their dwelling place, distributing clothes, painting fingernails and trucking home an abundance of melon, the memories will never escape my heart.

I caught some world cup action on TV with friends from Source Matelas, the Hope House boys and my next door neighbours... Haitian sunshine compounds body heat like you wouldn't believe but even the hottest temperatures don't stand a chance against people piling on my couch and celebrating goal victory's with some fresh guacamole and dip.

Long talks into the evening with the storm clouds rolling in and spotting vibrant rainbows arching the sky were bonus.

Coming home has been everything I knew it would be. Familiar faces lighting up across a crowd, long suppertimes, tight hugs with close friends, and recounting stories about where life has journeyed since my last visit. I feel so blessed to be in a place where my roots grow deep and with the people who have shaped who I am today. Thank you all for your prayers in this time of 'laying low' and being refueled in a time of waiting. A time of anticipation for all that is ahead and yet somehow balancing my time to be fully alive in the present.

Sometimes I catch myself looking at the clock and thinking about where I would be and what I would be doing if I was still in Haiti. The country that I once countdowned to get out of has seized a piece of me that I can't deny. It's the mentality that I've lived for weeks - not wanting to miss a moment. And yet in these days of a quiet bedroom and tall evergreens outstretched into flat farmlands, I can hear the Lord whispering words of rest and renewal into my heart. As I live in the present and soak in all of the goodness of home, the giggles of barefoot children ring in my ears, the memories of tap tap rides and sun setting on a mountain walk, and pure preciousness like this reminds me of all that is to come.