I returned home from my trip to Haiti in mid August 1981. And as I had done the previous three summers, I experienced the real culture shock… not entering into a world that is very foreign from my own…no instead, after weeks in a different world…I was returning to my home. And the shock would set in.

On more than one occasion I would return home and head to someplace like Butterfield Country Club for an all you can eat buffet on the first night back in “reality”. I can remember looking at Yorktown shopping center at night when I had returned home from Mexico…and I realized the shopping center was using far more electricity at night when it was closed, than the village I’d lived in for six weeks used all week.

The buzz of the trip from Haiti was now worn off. I was headed to school in Santa Cruz, California. I dreamed for years of studying Bible and theology and this was my opportunity. But as soon as I arrived, I was summoned back home because of the death of my mother‘s mom, Grandma Duffy.

Back in California I was finally settling in when I received a letter in the mail from Orphans, Inc.

The letter said that the ministry felt it was best to break up the orphanage. They believed it was better that Haitian children grew up in Haitian homes, not in an orphanage. However to do so they would need sponsors for the individual children to live with Haitian families that were willing to open their homes. They were asking me if I would be willing to sponsor one of the children from the orphanage. I was excited to put a check in the mail and say yes I wanted to sponsor one of these beautiful children.

Most of you probably already know where this story is headed. I was blown away when a couple weeks later I received a dossier with a photograph and the story of Christian LaVeaux, the Haitian boy I knew the best by far. At the time I was just amazed. Almost 40 years later I see the providence and the fingerprints of God all over it.

This would make a great ending to the story. That I had the opportunity to sponsor Christian and to help pay for the food, education and medical care for this young boy that I’d grown to love.

But what would happen after he graduated from school? He’s not just a dossier. I know him.

Christian did well in school and graduated. In 1989 I was in Haiti and went on a walk one day with someone who helped me to see Haiti more clearly.

Perhaps that was the day that I realized that there never would be “closure” with Christian…

Because we were becoming family…