Several of the children have written their thoughts following the earthquake, we will be sharing them with you periodically through our email updates.

January 12th was a big thing for the Haitian people because we lost a lot of people. That is a day we will never forget. On that day I was back from school at 3:00. When I arrived, I went in my bedroom and changed my clothes. I went to the dining room to take my dinner. After that I planned to do my English homework, but a student in my class had my book. I was waiting for that person to bring the book to me and I went downstairs to make it easy for the student to bring it to me. I found Bernadine and I asked her to wait with me while I waited for the book to come and she did. There were just three girls downstairs, Wislandie, Julie, and me. We played downstairs. I was sitting down near the gate with Bernadine and Mrs. Pradel asked me what I'm doing downstairs. I told her that I was waiting for my book from another kid. After that she left.

While I was speaking with Bernadine, I felt the house shaking. I thought it was a big truck passing on the route because that happened when they made the route in front of the pension. Then the shaking became worse. I saw a lot of dust falling from the sky. I hugged Bernadine and we started to cry "Jesus." When I saw that it was not stopping, I pushed Bernadine outside. When I looked behind me I saw the houses collapsing and I cried with fear. I didn't see the other kids yet. After a while I saw the boys coming outside, but all of the girls were inside. When the earthquake slowed down, there was a man who told me not to cry because the earthquake is finished. I went inside with Bernadine and sat down behind the big yard and I saw a crack in the ground. I saw a part of the neighbor's house had fallen in the yard and I started to cry again. Every girl got down, some were crying and they consoled each other. While the girls sat down in the yard, some of the boys came. The house started to shake again. Every adult told us to get out and go to the mission. Even though we were inside of the mission campus, there was a lot of shaking intermittently.  After one week, we came back in the house, but we still had shaking every time. That made us scared, but we didn't run away.

I can tell you that this earthquake is the worse thing that could happen to the Haitians because we never expected that. I still can't believe that it happened. 
 

 -Youdemie