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| Shelly |
We arrived at All-in-One village on a Saturday morning and
all I could wonder was whether I’d get to meet “Shelly,” the girl on the side
of our fridge, the girl my boys prayed for every night and called “their
sister.” There would be no mistaking her smile. Or those eyes! As we piled out
of the van, each of us was claimed by a couple of children. As one grabbed my
hand, I engaged, but I also kept my eyes peeled for Shelly.
We played soccer, I attempted Creole, and all the while I
wondered where Shelly might be. Finally, I approached Yanick Kesnel, Pastor
Joseph’s wife and asked where Shelly was. Yanick paused for a moment and I
couldn’t read her facial expression. A flood of possibilities flooded my mind: Was she affected by last year’s cholera
outbreak? Had the malnutrition been too much to overcome?
Thankfully, that split second of anxiety was quickly
relieved by Yanicks’s smile, pained though it was. I recognize it now as the same smile my Mom
gives me every time we leave South Florida to come back to Tampa. There is pain
because she wants to be with her kids and grandkids. But more, there is pride in
that I am doing what God has called me to do. I could see that same pride that
in Yanick’s eyes, that Shelly is where she’s supposed to be.
Yanick began telling me about Shelly. I would be
lying if I said that my eyes stayed dry
(a common experience for the team—the men blamed the
watering of eyes on “Haitian dust”).
It turns out that Shelly was not an orphan, in the sense
that both of her parents had died. She was an “orphan of necessity.”Her mother
and father split up years ago. Shelly’s biological mother was terribly abusive
towards her. Pastor Joseph and Yanick welcomed Shelly into All-in-One,
likely saving her life. A couple of months before our trip, Shelly’s mother
died. Shelly’s biological father was apparently unaware that she had been at
All-In-One, as he had been sending his ex-wife money regularly. When Shelly’s
father learned of her mother’s death and Shelly’s apparent whereabouts, he came
to retrieve her and take her back home to live with him in the Dominican
Republic.
As Yanick described the reunion between father and daughter,
I began joyfully (and tearfully) laughing.
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| Madame Yanick Kesnel and Blaine, with the children |
Later that afternoon, I visited Yanicks’s office for
some paperwork and noticed a framed picture of Shelly on her desk, another
indicator of their special connection. When I asked her about it, I gained even
more pride for Shelly (unreasonable, I realize) as she described Shelly, with a
pained smile, as brilliant and sweet, as the girl that lights up every room.
She paused and whispered how it’s hard to bond with every child because there’s
just so much pain in their stories, and so much pain in losing them, even when
they’re “happy endings,” as in Shelly’s case. There was a lot of “Haitian dust”
in that room.
Shelly is now with her father in the Dominican Republic and
this is, without a doubt, what is best for her. I am so thankful for the role
that my family got to play in her story. I am thankful for Pastor Joseph, Yanick Kesnel, and everyone at All-In-One village. God is using that community
(and our community) in ways that I didn’t even know. When I arrived home to
Tampa, I shared the exciting news about Shelly’s story with my boys. The smiles
on their faces to hear that “their sister” was with her dad…true joy! We still
pray for her, but we also have new “brothers and sisters” that our partnership
with All-In-One makes possible. And many
of their stories are just getting started.
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