HBHH teen missions are definitely a two-way street. While the teens from the United States contribute valuable skills, labor and friendship, the teens and children from the villages teach them equally valuable lessons in wants versus needs, common points of silliness and laughter, and the importance of family.
While just experiencing the third world conditions of Haiti would be an eye-opening for most American teens, the children from these remote villages provide even more remarkable experiences: the wonder at a photograph; stoicism in the face of one meal a day - or less and ingenuity of making a balloon out of a discarded rubber glo
The goal of an HBHH teen mission is to accomplish a major task that is urgently needed and unlikely to get done without the help of our teen mission members.
The first mission trip was in the summer of 2006, the HBHH teen mission team totaled fourteen teens and adults. This team had three goals: help get the St. Suzanne medical clinic prepared for the upcoming medical mission; organize the medical supplies shipped in specifically for the mission and paint the St. Suzanne school.
The St. Suzanne school had last been painted twenty years ago! HBHH had made arrangement for the paint and supplies to be ready for the team's arrival and the work began. Fortunately, word spread throughout the village and both children and young adults showed up each day to help.
The HBHH teens had to learn how to improvise instructions in broken creole while many of the village children had never seen anything painted before. Work progressed more smoothly each day until, suddenly, the end was in sight!
At the clinic, the teens packaged medicines into individual packets and labelled each with visual instructions on dosages.
Games, from string creations to soccer, always had a place during the day, and the setting sun would find the parish pickup truck filled to the brim with kids on their way home!
Each mission trip since has done various activities; painting and repairing schools, doing irragation work, sorting and distributing clothing, shoes, medicines, helping in the agriculture program, doing construction work, and doing whatever is most needed. These groups bring great hope to the Haitian people!