We Moved Part 2: Jessica’s Perspective

So after 3 long days of hiding our girl we were told her cousin had finally arrived. I don’t think Matt mentioned but we tried to schedule this meeting about 3 other times over the course of the last few days. Audancin repeatedly would not show up for the meetings (and we had Pastor Herold waiting each time!). The meeting was supposed to happen at 2:00 on Sunday afternoon but nothing ever happens on time here. Another thing that Matt did not mention was the fact that for the first time since removing our girl from the orphanage, we went up there to get the kids for church. After much discussion we decided to take our older girl with us. We thought it would be good for her to see the kids as well as good for the kids to see her. We gave her very specific rules about what she could and could not do. Driving up to the orphanage I was very nervous. I did not know what would happen. I did not know how the kids would react to us and more importantly what Audancin would do when he saw us. As hard as it was to go up there, we knew it was important for the kids to see us and for us to see them. When we pulled up, it was very clear that the kids had been told not to speak to us. Some followed this and some did not. This was extremely hard. We loaded everyone up and went to church together (we never saw Audancin) and sat through a very tense church service together. We later found out that Audancin, Rosie, and some surrounding community members told the kids that we were the evil white people trying to take the orphanage and if they sided with us they weren’t really Haitian. Nonsense I know, but some of the kids really believed it. Keep in mind that many of these kids had been exploited and manipulated for years so Audancin knew how to get to them. We came back home with our girl in tow. I had held myself together pretty well up until this point but when we got home I had a good long cry with our girl watching and everything…just couldn’t hold it in any longer. She and I stayed inside the house together again and made peanut butter cookies while Matt went down to the meeting. Luckily she napped during that time so I spent it praying. Matt and I were not in communication during the meeting so I just had to sit and wait. Finally at about 5:15 Matt came to the house along with our girl’s cousin and Pastor Lamentation. I still had no idea what had happened at the meeting. Matt just very quickly told me everything was OK so I very quickly went into my bedroom to cry and came back out….you could say I was no longer in control of my emotions at this point. We sat down with the cousin (the girl was beaming) and had a wonderful conversation about our love for her and how we always only want what is best for her. The cousin agreed with everything we said and it was then that we found out she knew several of the parents or family members of the kids. Things for our girl finally started to seem better but there was still the problem of Audancin turning the kids against us. In many ways I felt so much better and in many ways I was still very scared about what would happen next.