The most frightening thing I ever experienced in Haiti took place in a vehicle. We were coming back from the airport, heading to the orphanage, and turned onto a street that intersected with a mob of angry protesters. They spotted our car and, for no apparent reason, charged it, throwing rocks and bricks. One rock hit the hood of the car and ricocheted up into the windshield. I was sitting in the front passenger side. Had that rock hit two inches higher, it would have shattered the glass into my face.
We escaped that incident, despite the protesters jumping on our car and banging on the windows, thanks to the quick thinking of our director, who was driving the vehicle. He popped out, hands up, and started shouting who we were, that we ran an orphanage, that they had no beef with us.
We finally drove away — with half a dozen protesters riding on the roof and sides — shaken and scared. But not surprised. You can’t be surprised at anything that happens in the streets of Port-au-Prince these days. Fires. Kidnappings. Shootings. You have to expect the worst.
Over the past year, we have been paying expensive fees to hire an armored car service to take our kids to the hospital, or our director to shop for food, or our volunteers to the airport. It costs around $200 per ride. That’s crazy expensive for an orphanage. But we keep asking ourselves “What choice do we have?”
With your help, we may have one.
The new kitchen should be completed before February 2023!
Thank you for the food security
Before I speak about our December goal in this Year of Thanks & Giving campaign, I want to thank you all so much for racing to the rescue on our November target. Our goal was to build a new kitchen at our new location, so that our children could continue to eat healthy meals. We put out the number we needed, and you got us there.
Thanks to your generosity, we hope to have that new kitchen completed by the end of January, a place where we can feed 100 people per meal, teach our kids about cooking, and safely store nutritious food to feed our children, in a nation where half the population can’t meet minimum daily calorie requirements. You have made a small miracle in record time.
Who stole the kòde from the kòde jar?
One goal down, next one up.
We’ve dealt with nutrition.
Now we must deal with safety.
We need to purchase a Safety Car. What that means is an armored vehicle that is impervious to gunshots. That may sound like something out of a “Mission: Impossible” movie, but I can assure you, such vehicles have become essential in Haiti. Foreign officials will not travel without one. Government workers. Businessmen. Well-to-do families.
What about children? What about orphanage directors who need to shop for food? What about nurses who need to take sick children for medical care?
We recently hired an armored car to take a child with tuberculosis to the hospital, only to find out that half the staff was not there because the streets were too dangerous for them to come into work.
A Safety Car is essentially an older vehicle — we do not need a new one — that has been fortified with bulletproof panels, windows and tires. The typical kidnapping methodology in Port-au-Prince is to surround an unsuspecting car with motorcycles, have the bandits jump off and wave guns, and force the passengers out of the car.
If you’re afraid of the bullets, you must acquiesce. If the bullets can’t hurt you, you drive away. I hate to be that blunt, but this is how it is. Nobody asked for the streets to devolve into a war zone. But we simply cannot function behind our gates all day. We need to get places. Our children need to get places. We need supplies, medicine, food.
A Safety Car can get us there.
It is difficult to describe the relief a strong gate like this can bring
Mission: Possible?
The cost of a vehicle like this — usually an old model SUV or minivan — is around $55,000. We are seeking to raise that money in the month of December, as well as $10,000 for a driver trained in evasive tactics, usually a former police officer.
I know it feels weird to be asking this in December. December should be about toy drives, stocking stuffers, something holiday-ish to bring out the spirit of the season.
But there are no holidays without security. We feel safe behind the gates of our new home, but not outside them. And we must go outside them.
Here is the reality: in the first six months of this year, nearly 680 people were kidnapped in Haiti and nearly 1,000 killed. This year alone, over 100,000 Haitians in Port-au-Prince have had to flee their homes due to gang violence.
Orphanages are not immune. Most of you recall the bus full of volunteers and kids from a Haitian orphanage that was commandeered by a gang, and all the passengers kidnapped and held for months.
We never want anything like that to happen to our precious children. So, weird as it may sound in December, all we want for Christmas is to be safe. A Safety Car and driver will help. It will let us function. And being able to function — to transport our sick children, to keep our teachers from harm, to protect the volunteers who travel all this way to help us — well, that would be the best gift of all.
Thank you for anything you can do to help us. And treat every safe minute you enjoy in America as a blessing. Because it is.
A Year of Thanks & Giving Project 2: A Safety Car
StatusLuxury Safety
The road to an armored car can take many forms:
If we can raise enough to purchase a used armored vehicle, we’ll then manage import to Haiti and customs duties.
A gently used, not flashy vehicle — such as a minivan, or older model SUV — may be donated. If the vehicle fits strict parameters, we will use funds to upgrade to armored protection (cost to do so varies widely, but average estimate is $50,000 – $60,000). Let us know here if you think you have something that works here in this form.
A donated armored vehicle is ideal — spread the word to any organizations or companies that have access and can help.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — In the middle of a construction site, I lined up the kids in various poses. One stood against an exposed interior wall. One stood against a small tower of rebar. A few stood in the foundation. Two others pressed against a beam.
“Now,” I said, going one by one, “tell me what you are.”
“I’m the freezer!” one hollered.
“I’m the pass-through window!” yelled another.
“I’m the propane burner!”
“I’m the mop sink!”
They laughed with each claim, as if they were appliances come to life in “Beauty and the Beast.” And as they laughed, my chest swelled with joy. We were standing in the middle of a soon-to-be new kitchen.
And we were feeding dreams.
With Thanksgiving now upon us, I realize the most grateful moments of my life are mostly here in Haiti, a place that has the least. But in a place that has the least, a little bit feels like a lot.
And that’s the ground floor of gratitude, isn’t it?
The one constant is your kindness
A little bit feels like a lot. You, the readers of these pieces, alongside hundreds of others who know about our orphanage through visits, media reports, friends, or my books, have done so much to make our children prosper.
I remain amazed — and humbled — by the continuous stream of donations. Someone I once met. Someone who read about our kids. Someone who saw a video.
One act of kindness from a stranger stays with you. But hundreds of acts of kindness? Well, that changes you.
And you all have changed me — and our kids. Thanks to donations from all over the world, the 60 kids we raise here go from starving to eating, from sickness to health, from boredom to engagement, from abject poverty to their own bed, three meals a day and school.
And occasionally, we get to dream even bigger.
“Once a place touches you like this, the wind never blows so cold again. You feel for it like it was your child.”
— Field of Dreams
So we moved to a new facility, with trees, and open spaces, and no waste facility behind us like we had at the last place.
And now we are building a kitchen from scratch, a place to feed 100 kids and staff members every meal. And before we build it, the kids get to see the dirt, the framework, the wiring, the drainage. They see what goes into a dream.
Thanksgiving is a memory-maker, and a reconnector. To me, that’s its greatest value. I am blessed to have a large Thanksgiving gathering each year — I think we’re pushing 60 people this week — and nine of those 60 will be Haitian kids from our orphanage, seven of them college students, one a college graduate en route to medical school, and one an 11-month old baby girl.
Baby Nadie, happy and healthy today
To them, Thanksgiving isn’t an historical event. They didn’t grow up with stories of Pilgrims and Native Americans. They were all born into the harshest of circumstances, where starvation and death were regular visitors.
I wonder if they privately say to themselves “That’s enough food to feed my family for a month.” I wonder if they think us terribly indulgent.
But then I’m reminded that they are here, going to college, through the kindness of others, schools, sponsors and donors. They speak English thanks to volunteers who come and teach them in Haiti. They have solid health because of doctors volunteering their time, hospitals waiving their fees, U.S. embassy workers speeding through visas.
A crowded temporary kitchen, where staff work to cook – and clean for — at least 300 meals each day.
I hate to fall on an old cliché, but it really does take a village to raise a child — more than a village, an international community. And somehow we have built that, thanks to you.
And those are the words I want to say. Thanks to you. Thanks to you for the privilege of watching children grow and laugh and pray and love and stand in a construction site pretending they are a freezer, and knowing one day there will actually be a freezer there.
The first kitchen was not a kitchen at all. It was a small propane burner that held a pot for rice and beans. There was no sink. No place to store dishes or silverware. No place to sit. Kids got their bowls and found a spot on the ground, or a wall to lean against. And they ate.
The “kitchen” in 2010
In 2010, not long after I arrived, a crew of Detroit-based volunteers came down to change that. Using concrete, wooden beams and yards of screening, they created an enclosed area, then installed a sink, more burners and electricity. We purchased a refrigerator.
And our first real kitchen was born.
Celebrating our first refrigerator
Truth be told, there wasn’t much to it. It was always hot and flies were constantly swarming. But for the next 11 years, that small rectangular room gave us a place to stir the Soup Joumou on New Year’s Day, to cut up mangoes when they ripened in season, to dish out oatmeal, to spread peanut butter on sandwiches, to make eggs, boiled chicken and memories.
And then we moved. And we had to start over.
This time we took a first level room in the school building, originally intended to be an office, and we cut a hole in the wall for venting, put in plumbing for drainage and water lines, and brought whatever we could fit from the old kitchen to create a new one.
Cooking in our makeshift kitchen at the new property. Photos: Theresa Finck
A dining room? Well. Seeing as the food was being made in the school, a dining room couldn’t be far beyond. We took an area originally intended for a classroom and jammed it with long tables and folding chairs. It is packed with kids and they have to eat in shifts.
That is how we’ve been operating. Getting by. Making due.
But Thanksgiving is coming up.
And we’d like to change that.
“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
Mother Teresa
Making food secure
This issue of the newsletter marks the launch of a very special campaign, “A Year of Thanks & Giving”, stretching from this November to next. It is our first ever organized capital campaign for the Have Faith Haiti Mission/Orphanage. We’re doing it because, with 60 children every year and 40 full time staff, we have grown to a level where our needs exceed our means.
We want to create permanent excellence, a place of stability in a country where stability is truly rare.
To do this, we have identified 12 projects that we think, upon completion, will make Have Faith Haiti the pre-eminent facility in Haiti for sheltering, nurturing, education and cherishing the nation’s most needy and abandoned children.
It starts with a kitchen, because most homes start with a kitchen, right?
Food is precious in Haiti. A report just last month showed that nearly half the population, 4.7 million Haitians, are currently facing acute hunger, including nearly 2 million in what they call the “emergency” phase.
Most of our children come from such backgrounds. I recently wrote of baby Nadie who was brought to us at six months old having had nothing to eat during that time but sugar water.
A kitchen is not only the place where we begin to rectify such issues, it’s also a symbol, a symbol of what is possible even under the most dire conditions. A place where the children can see, yes, we are making you food, yes, there will be a meal this morning, and another this afternoon and one more in the evening, yes, we have enough for you and all your brothers and sisters.
Regular meals are a promise made, and kept. Photo: Theresa Finck
And no, you do not have to be hungry anymore.
Hearth and home
We have drawn up plans for our new kitchen, hoping to make it the most complete facility possible. Currently, it is nothing more than a few walls and a hole in the ground. We are digging pipes and drains in anticipation of sinks and – for sanitation purposes – a dish washer, something we have never had.
We are pulling electricity in anticipation of a freezer and two refrigerators, so food can be stored and saved and not spoil.
We are planning for propane tanks to fire up a three-head burner for the large pots of rice, beans, chicken and other foods prepared en masse, which is how you have to do it when you are cooking for 100 people every meal.
A kitchen is not only the place where we begin to rectify such issues, it’s also a symbol, a symbol of what is possible even under the most dire conditions.
And we are hoping to add an oven, where we can learn and teach baking, in hopes of being able to make our own birthday cakes, since we celebrate at least 60 birthdays a year!
Our dream is to make the kitchen a place of sweet aromas, happy activity, responsible preparation and sanitary cleaning. We also hope to teach our kids – who love to help in the kitchen – how to prepare the food themselves, so when the time comes to step out on their own they are ready.
The hole and walls where a new kitchen (and dining area) will go. Can you envision what it will become?
In short, the kitchen, we hope, will become an aorta of the orphanage, a three times a day magnet, a place of hope that puts an end to the hunger nightmare with which so many of our kids arrive.
We are looking to raise $95,000 by the end of November, completing the first of a dozen projects over the next year. That estimate covers labor, materials, and equipment for a kitchen that meets our most basic needs, and that of the children of Have Faith Haiti.
In a few weeks, most of us will be gathering in dining rooms of our own, to eat a large, delicious, homespun meal for Thanksgiving, and to celebrate the bounty by which we have been blessed.
I can think of no better time to kick off A Year of Thanks & Giving, and no better way to start than by building a miracle kitchen for our children, so that one day, they too can celebrate a Thanksgiving of their own.
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Something new is happening at the orphanage. At night, or when it rains, I have to walk from the school down and up a slippery hill. Lately, the teenage boys come running alongside me.
“We’ll help you, Mr. Mitch,” they say.
They grip my shoulders and lock my elbows.
“We’ll walk with you. We don’t want you to fall.”
When did I get so old?
When did they?
It’s a changing time in our little corner of the world. We are blessed with this beautiful new property, but challenged with how to afford it, run it, and protect it.
Marvens, 1
We are waving goodbye to college-bound students, but welcoming in more babies than ever. This trip, I visited one-year old Marvens, who is recovering from tuberculosis in our old property, and admitted his three-year old sister, Poushalina, into our group. She’d suffered scabies and a skin pox that forced her into a month of isolation. Now, here she was, finally free, smiling and dancing in front of the other kids as if she’d been with us forever.
We have welcomed some impressive new staff members from Haiti, and my friend and fellow author Ridley Pearson, he of the bestselling thriller novels and the “Peter and the Starcatcher,” “Kingdom Keepers,” and “Lock and Key” series, came down and taught writing classes all week.
Ridley Pearson in a writing class
But Thursday morning, we had to say goodbye to a wonderful volunteer, Sarah Stone, who came all the way from Australia last January and has taught history, English, oceanography, poetry, math and even swimming during her time with us.
The kids and staff organized a farewell party, and some made speeches and some cried. Everybody swarmed her with hugs.
“It made me want to stay,” Sarah said. “I read the kids’ notes they’d given me the night before and I cried. Even though I’m leaving I feel a part of my heart still belongs to Haiti, and still belongs to these children.”
Life, ever-changing.
Ms. Sarah says goodbye
Swiftly fly the years
Who knows what will happen next in this country? There are rumors an international force will be coming to quell the violence and gang-inspired unrest. There is talk that the gangs’ grip on daily life might be nearing an end.
On the other hand, fuel is still impossible to find, the streets remain fairly deserted, and everyone is on the lookout for daily protests and burning tires. Most schools are closed. Many businesses only open a couple times a week, and usually shutter by noon. Food and water remain in scarce supply. Everyone is scared.
The famous book by Tracy Kidder referred to Haiti as “Mountains Beyond Mountains.” It’s from an old Haitian proverb that speaks of life that way: beyond the mountains are more mountains. Beyond your problems are more problems.
We have overcome so much in Haiti. We rebuilt after an earthquake. We cleaned up after hurricanes. We endured life without bathrooms, showers, hot water, a kitchen or a school, and now have all those things and more.
But there are new challenges, new hurdles. We can’t go out anywhere. We can’t take the kids to summer camps or work with other orphanages. It’s harder to find people to hire in Haiti, because they fear the streets or lack the money for gas. Volunteers from America are harder to entice, because they read the news just like everyone else.
There is so much to do and build at the new property, but we need funding to do it, and it’s hard to convince people to donate to Haiti again. There are only so many times you can paint a bleak picture and still get others to empathize.
And yet.
One season following another
And yet the kids make it so worthwhile. This week, I watched our smallest ones march in a line, holding each other’s shoulders and singing. I told a bedtime story to the young boys, lifting and swinging tiny Jeff — who is all of 30 inches tall — as a lad who could fly.
I met with the middle school kids in a private discussion group and one of them asked me, “Mr. Mitch, what is the difference between desire and destiny?” A teenage girl, Bianka, asked if it was possible to study Latin. Chamaika, who is tall for her ten years, painted a beautiful picture then walked it over and said, “Mr, Mitch, this is for you.” Two of our most studious kids knocked on my door one night, sat down and said, “We’d like to apply to college for early admission.”
And the two boys I’ve known the longest, Nahoum and Appoloste — who were knee-high when I first arrived in 2010 — both made me blink this week.
Nahoum had to take the Duolingo English test, a language proficiency exam used to admit international students to American colleges. Other kids had taken it, but only after spending days on practice tests, over and over, until they were confident.
With Nahoum, whose passport arrived late, we didn’t have time for all that. So he took a chair and a small table and we plugged in a computer and he started the test totally raw. No practice whatsoever.
He blew the score away.
And Appoloste? Well. The kid who only knew one word of English when I first met him — “Cookie” — is now taller than me and was one of the young men holding my elbows as we walked down the hill.
“Isn’t this a switch?” I said.
“Yeah,” he smiled. “You used to hold my hand when I was little.”
“And now you’re holding me up.”
“Exactly.”
Mylove and Luxie, sleeping side-by-side
Life, ever-changing. I began this series at a transition moment, the time we decided to move homes. But the truth is, at a Haitian orphanage, everything is a transition moment.
After this week, we will stop publishing “Life at the Orphanage” weekly here at Bulletin, but will continue at least bi-weekly at havefaithhaiti.org and will soon be announcing a Year of Thanks campaign — from Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving — in which we hope to raise enough funds to complete our new home. Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to share it with others.
On my last night this trip, I told the kids a joke at the end of our nightly devotions. It went like this:
The big animals were playing the little animals in a soccer game. The entire first half, the big animals won every ball, stomped downfield, and scored goal after goal, the elephant, the rhino, the giraffe. The score at the half was 72-0.
Then the second half began. The little animals got the ball first. And the centipede took it and went dashing right, left, right, left, and zoomed between the big animals for a goal.
“That was great! That was amazing!” the other little animals squealed. “But where were you the first half?”
The centipede said, “Putting my shoes on.”
Sometimes, that’s what it’s like on this adventure. The odds are big, brash and stacked against you. It can take a while to get your shoes on. But little people can do amazing things. I see it every day here.
Our shoes are tied, and our task is endlessly before us. Nurture these incredible children, love them, feed them, teach them, cherish them, and marvel at the changes as the journey goes on.
Life, ever-changing. This place, as always, blows me away.
Did you ever look out your window and see your family there, playing or running through the sprinklers? Did you ever take stock of your loved ones in a noisy moment around the Thanksgiving table, eyeing them all together in one setting?
Here we are. For years I had these “inventory” moments at the orphanage, standing on the second level balcony from which I could see the entire expanse of our cramped, third-of-an-acre facility. If the children and staff were outside, I saw them all, from east to west, north to south, gathered under my watchful gaze. In those moments, I had a feel for the totality of the place, what we lacked, sure, but mostly what we had. Standing there, taking it all in, felt good. It felt…satisfying.
An aerial view of the old “campus”
Times change. This morning, I tried to take stock of “where we are” and realized our little orphanage has spread out in so many ways. It covers more land. It covers more settings. It covers more countries!
It starts, of course, with the dormitories on our new facility, where the kids now wake up. Where we once had all the boys in one room and all the girls in another, we now have divisions: youngest, middle, oldest, boys, girls, eight rooms, multiple nannies.
Our live-in “staff” used to be a few people sleeping where the kids slept. Now we have multiple nannies, nurses, volunteers, administrative staff — many of whom have to sleep in our facilities because the streets are too dangerous to travel back and forth.
It’s not possible to see everyone from a single balcony or window anymore, because the new place is expansive compared to where we were, and at any given moment the kids might be exploring trees, or running on our makeshift “lawn,” or in the school building, or the kitchen, or doing a nature walk.
Here we are.
Family in Michigan
Then I think about our “extended” orphanage, which tentacles itself to America, beginning with our home in Michigan.
This is where you find Knox, 11, Ziggy, 5, and Nadie, 10 months, all here for various medical treatments. They bundle up in winter clothes they never would use in Haiti, they travel freely to doctors and rehab centers, they enjoy an occasional trip to a frozen yogurt store.
Knox holds Nadie as Ziggy leans in
But they still pray before every meal, the same words the kids in the Mission pray, and they still study their lessons during “school time” in the house, and they can’t wait to get back to Haiti this weekend and shed the coats and the boots and run freely with their brothers and sisters.
Then there’s the college kids, seven of them, spread across two campuses, Madonna University in Livonia and Hope College in Holland. There, our kids are plowing through their studies. They call or visit regularly, and this week I heard from a number of them with their midterm grades. Almost all A’s. That’s incredible, when you think about the culture shift they had to endure just to reach their first day on campus. New environment. New laws. New weather. New food.
From left to right around the table: J.J., Esterline holds Nadie, Knox, Kiki, Ziggy, and Samanza
“Yeah,” said Kiki, who had a single B+ in his psychology class, “but I want to have all A’s. I’m going to get up earlier to study.”
These kids have adapted better than we have a right to expect, making friends, participating in campus activities. But they still can’t wait to Facetime the kids back in Haiti, and when they do, it’s a raucous, laughing, shouting exchange, teenagers simply giddy with the excitement of reuniting, even over a computer.
Family home in Haiti
Then there’s the 11th “ex-pat” of our orphanage, Manno (Emmanuel) who takes the bar the furthest. He graduated Madonna last June with the highest honors and a 4.0 grade point average, and while he is now applying to medical school, he is working for the year as a medical scribe.
Manno at work
He lives with us as his own man, earning his own money, arranging his own way. For all intents and purposes, he is a responsible adult in an adopted country. But his dream, as soon as it’s possible, is to return to the orphanage as a pediatrician and take care of those who never had access to such a doctor before.
Here we are. In four different locations, two different countries, various classrooms, various bedrooms. The orphanage that used to fit in a glove is now growing, thriving, opening its palms and reaching to the skies.
In the very first installment of this series, I wrote that we needed to move. And now, a year and a half later, we finally have — but it’s just the start. We need help desperately to build essential areas like a kitchen, a church, a living room, a music room, security facilities. Our costs, like all costs in the world, have skyrocketed. But juxtaposed against Haiti’s current backdrop – gangs that terrorize and murder, politicians that manipulate and don’t care, essential services that shut down at all times of the week, a populace trapped between frustration and desperation — well, those costs seem almost insurmountable.
The money that was raised by this newsletter on Bulletin went directly to help our orphanage. And now, just as our kids have shifted, this format shifts. Bulletin itself will soon go away. But we are taking this newsletter to havefaithhaiti.org, where I will continue to share our joys and triumphs and challenges while we – with your help — continue to build up our new home. There are more stories to tell, and so much work to be done. [**More on the changes to the newsletter, and what this means for your subscription below**]
Our story, like our kids, is shifting location, but it is nowhere near over. I hope those of you who, through these pieces, have grown attached to the Have Faith Haiti Orphanage, will retain the first two words of our name as we move forward. That way, when we look out at our precious children and ask that take stock question — Where are we? — the answer will be here, there, and, with you, everywhere.
The following announcement is for subscribers who originally signed up through Meta’s Bulletin platform, which is now defunct. Your subscription was transferred automatically. Email info@havefaithhaiti.org if you are not received new issues.
Life at the Orphanage is Moving!
If you subscribe to other newsletters on the Bulletin platform, you might have heard that Meta has made the difficult decision to discontinue Bulletin. As part of this process, they are issuing full refunds for all currently active premium subscriptions. ***Please don’t cancel your subscription in the meantime, as only active subscriptions will be refunded.***
If you’re not a premium subscriber, don’t unsubscribe either! We’re going to move your subscription to a new platform that ensure you receive these updates, and want to make sure you stay on the list.
Life at the Orphanage will continue here at Bulletin next week, and move to havefaithhaiti.org in November — stay tuned for the first issue, and how you can support our latest major project.
“WHAT DO I DO NEXT?”
Nothing! We’re working to make this as smooth a transition as possible. The following FAQs have all you need to know. Please continue reading “Life at the Orphanage” here next week, and from havefaithhaiti.org beginning in November.
Am I receiving a refund? Why? When?
If you’re a premium subscriber and your subscription is active, you will receive a refund. As your active monthly or annual subscription is being deactivated, you will receive a refund of your most recent monthly or annual payment at the end of October. Again, please do not cancel your subscription in the meantime – Meta cannot guarantee our refund process will include you if you cancel your subscription. If you previously canceled your subscription, Meta won’t be able to issue a refund.
What if I don’t want a refund because I want to support Have Faith Haiti?
As you know, all proceeds from subscriptions to “Life at the Orphanage” support the Have Faith Haiti Mission & Orphanage. Meta has confirmed that the refund process will not have any negative impact on the orphanage, and that Meta will not be asking for the return of any funds sent on to Haiti — meaning, your previous subscription payments remain with the Mission, and your refund will come from Meta.
My credit card is no longer associated with my Meta Pay Account, will I still be refunded?
Yes, you will be automatically refunded back to the card you’ve used previously, even if that card information is no longer on Meta Pay.
Will I have to sign up again at havefaithhaiti.org? Will there be a charge?
In short, no and no. We are handling subscription for you so we’ll make sure you’re on the mailing list to receive all new editions, whether you’re a premium subscriber or not. And the upcoming version of “Life at the Orphanage” will be available without a paywall — including the archive — at havefaithhaiti.org. Your ongoing support through a donation at anytime will help sustain its efforts.
Speaking of moves…with your help, we can move mountains.
Make your check payable to “Have Faith Haiti Mission” and send to
Have Faith Haiti Mission
c/o A Hole in the Roof Foundation
29836 Telegraph Road
Southfield, MI 48034
Have Faith Haiti is operated by the A Hole in the Roof Foundation, a 501(c)(3) org (TAX ID# 27-0609504). Donations are tax deductible.
About the Mission
The Have Faith Haiti Mission is a special place of love and caring, dedicated to the safety, education, health and spiritual development of Haiti’s impoverished children and orphans. You can learn more here.
