Vwayaj Nou Travels Again

From my trip to Haiti, came a collaboration with the awesome Amber to form our gallery show, Vwayaj Nou.  This post talks about our initial showing. Since then, we presented the gallery to our church, Bethel UMC, and then were asked to present at the United Methodist Western NC Conference in Lake Junaluska, NC.  This is where upwards of 3000-5000 pastors and other clergy come together once a year for classes, meetings, workshops etc.  It's a whole other blog post about how I felt mingling in with my holey jeaned, nose ringed, embroidered "flower power" shirt donning self among neatly, kempt, khaki and polos of the pastor worlds.  :-)

We set up in a main thoroughfare and were honored to be there.

 Amber blogged about our trip to Lake Junaluska here.
It was also a fine time, b/c we had dinner with members of our team that went to Haiti with us.

Everyone remember Jane?  I blogged about her here.  Well, she annually has a "Haiti Day" at her church in Highlands, NC.  She asked for us to display our gallery there and come to visit.  Of COURSE!
OH.MY.  Highlands is gorgeous!  I don't much go west of Asheville in NC, but I'm sure glad I ventured that way.  The views! The air! The quaint houses!
I digress.
It was a real treat for Amber and myself.  Any getaway, even if it was for less than 24 hours, is much needed for busy moms.  The treat was meeting back up with Jane and Dea!  Dea was in Haiti the same time we were, she came with Jane.  The whole team LOVED Dea and her sense of humor and freedom of life. 

 Also, visiting the states was a wonderful man from Haiti by the name of LaNeus.  He has been instrumental in starting schools in Cange and helping his community in a very impactful way.  He and his family were visiting Jane.

Jane arrange for Amber and myself to stay with one of her good friends, Helen.  She graciously opened up her cozy home and was a perfect hostess. She had a fascinating screen porch where Jane, Dea, Helen, Amber and myself had some awesome late-night girl time.  We definitely call Helen a new friend and by the end of the trip Amber and I were already inviting ourselves back up for another girl porch time.

Me, Jane, Helen, Amber and Dea

We have a blast each and every time we have the privilege of telling the story of our trip to Haiti.  It's an honor to show images of the wonderful, selfless people that we met.  None of it has gotten old or redundant, which ignites my passion to be there again.

The final stop of the gallery images will be in Cange, Haiti.  Amber and I will travel there to install the photos in the school and Jane's house.  We will also be bringing prints of the images that the students took themselves.  I look forward to the day that they see them in person!  The last day in Haiti we allowed them to print one picture per person on our portable photo printer and you should have seen the reaction to the print coming out of the printer!  Every.single.student chose to have a picture of themselves printed.  To think, they don't have that!  Something we Americans take for granted!

Good night folks.  Tomorrow I will be posting about the initiative that our team dreamed up to give back to the school in Cange.  How we will be hands on in changing the lives down there.  And it all is happening here in Midland, NC.