Rachel Zimmerman

I wrote this out in my journal on Saturday morning-- excuse the journal-esque writing. Saturday morning - what a fun morning. We did not have electricity after midnight so I woke up burning up at 3am -- beads of sweat. So I got up, opened the windows and battled the mosquitos. I had 3 mosquitos in my room when I woke up around 7am and had an ant infestation as well. "This is Haiti." I got out of bed, very sticky and muggy, and went downstairs to see what was going on. I had some corn flakes, milk (warm b/c no electricity), peanut butter, and suger. I boiled hot water for coffee-- thank God for Nescaffe-- never thought I would say that. (The individual packets of nescaffe are so handy, Aunt Amy! Thank you!) When I say it was a fun morning.. i'm serious. It was a fun morning-- all the above details are just details about what it's like here. Thank goodness for beautiful Haitian children that have such personality and life and purity. Reginald has got to be the ...

'This is Haiti' is a common phrase used around here. Usually I find that it is a way of explaining the culture, the customs, the past, the way of life, the heat, the dust, the difficulty, the beauty… this is Haiti. So this is a blog about my first 2 weeks in Haiti. It has not been easy. Each day is so full, so rich, with good experiences and bad experiences. I've been sweating for the past 24 hours straight… with the exception of a few hours that I slept last night because I woke up this morning not sweating-- I was pretty excited about that. The generator battery needs repair/replacement and the city electricity in Haiti comes on whenever it wants… which means that sometimes it comes on 5 minutes per day, 1 hour per day, or even 12 hours per day. It totally and completely depends.. On….nope, nobody knows. I feel relatively accomplished that I spent my first night without any electricity -- no fan, moving air only through your windows.. So I took a quick shower with a ...

I've been meaning to write this blog post for quite some time. It's been a bit crazy lately-- the last two weeks I've had a goodbye & fundraising party, had a garage sale, gotten rid of almost all of my material possessions (or pawned them off on family-- thanks sister and cousin), and I'm now on the plane to Florida to move to Haiti tomorrow. Did I even mention saying 'see you later' (goodbye is too hard) to my AMAZING community of friends and family in Texas and Oklahoma? Yup - I've been a puddle of tears most of the day (yes, day, because God was gracious enough to help me hold it all together during the last month of 'see you laters'). This story of God Does should be many blog posts… but I'll try to condense it as much as possible. Here we go: International missions has been on my heart since I was a child. Can't tell you a time or day but it's been a long time. As a competitive gymnast most of my life, mission trips w...