By Elizabeth Rogers

Walking out of a seventeen passenger plane and onto the runway, I could see the people staring at our group of six wondering what we were doing there. We had just landed in Port-de-Paix, Haiti after around 1400 hours of traveling and had no idea what to do next. We were all wiped out but knew we needed to find a man named Pastor Christbon. It turned out to be an easy task because he found us. We were the only white people in the entire town and he knew what he was looking for. He gathered our two bags out of 12 that had arrived with us and we were off. Stepping out onto the streets was like entering a new world. There were women carrying baskets of laundry on their head that were big enough for me to fit into. Men raced by on their motorcycles. I distinctly remember this one woman who was begging for food. She only had one hand and just a few teeth left. I wanted to offer her something but I had nothing to offer. Instead, I climbed into an old beat up Ford truck and we set off on our journey. We crossed a river filled with people washing their clothes and bathing themselves. It was neat to drive past all the people and see their faces. When we arrived at Pastor Christbon’s house in Poste Metier, we marveled at it. Instead of being made out of sticks and branches, which most houses were, it was made from bricks and even had indoor plumbing. That night we feasted on wonderful Haitian home cooking, and went to bed wondering why we were worried because God was working everything out for us. The following day was Saturday, and Pastor Christbon offered to take us to the ocean while someone else went to see if the rest of our bags had made it to the airport in Port-de-Paix. When we got back from the beach, our bags had arrived and the work began. We were a team of six, Dr. Forest Pagett, Reid Pagett, Patsy Pickett, Denny Pickett, Sandra Rogers, and me, Elizabeth Rogers. We were in Haiti to do a dental clinic. It was a wonderful thing because most of the people of the village had never been to a dentist before. We organized all our dental tools and prepared to take them down to the clinic the next day. Sunday, we had the pleasure to go to a real Haitian church service and see how they worship. We sang in French from a hymn book and then one of the pastors spoke. On Monday the real work began. We extracted and cleaned teeth from eight in the morning until one in the afternoon, when we would break for an hour to have lunch and take a nap. We would walk back to the clinic around two and work until we had no more patients in the waiting area, which would normally be around five o’clock. At night Reid and I would play soccer with four children that stayed and worked at the Christbon’s home. After a Haitian dinner, we would gather around the table to play cards, talk and have our nightly devotional. The rest of the week went in the same fashion as Monday. We were all wiped out by Friday and took the day off to stay around the house and hang out with the Haitian children. Around four Saturday morning we woke up and began our journey home. Going to Haiti was one of the best experiences of my life. I have never seen such poverty, yet in the midst of this poverty were some of the most incredible smiles I have ever seen.  It wasn’t easy but it was rewarding. It changed me at the core of who I am. I stepped off the plane in Florida and realized that Bruce, the missionary from Haiti we were connected with said it best. “You will arrive back in the states and hear people complaining about food, spending 50 dollars on a shirt, and having to keep up with the latest fashion trends. You will want to slap them in the face and ask them why they don’t see those things as worthless. But remember that it is you who changed and you can’t ever expect them to because they haven’t had the same experiences you’ve had.”