Cheryl Lewis » Cheryl Lewis

I’m having a tough time writing this update.

I never realized, until now, that it’s tough to grin from ear to ear and type at the same time. I keep giggling and that, to be quite candid, is a real distraction.

There are just some things that can’t be put into words and, while that’s generally regrettable for a writer, today it seems just fine. Perfect, even.

It has been that kind of day.

For the sake of sharing the most incredible story I’ve ever experienced, I’m going to buckle down and get this right. But do you really want to know the minutiae? All that truly matters is that:

WE FOUND MARKENLEY!!!!!

(I keep adding exclamation marks. ‘Tis just how I feel! (!. !.)

1/17/11

Last night, as you know, I received a text from the young Haitian man who was scheduled to begin his search for Markenley, on my behalf, today.

But he just couldn’t wait, he said.

He felt God telling him to go NOW.

In Haiti, that’s no simple request. There is transportation to consider – into, in this case, a dangerous section of town. Near dusk.

But Jay Louis doesn’t question when God tells him to do something – he does it. Right away.

I’m learning that is just his way. (And I’m oh so glad!)

In this case, it meant skipping class. (My son would surely love to convince me that it’s God’s idea for him to cut class, but somehow this is the first time I’ve actually felt it is legit.) He also had to convince his buddy to join him.

No hill for a climber, right?

So they paid some guy to give them a ride in his van across town to the center of a slum and then they drove slowly up and down, trying to find an orphanage that I had only partially named. That, of course, would only be the beginning of the search, since I have been told several times by the orphanage director that she does not have a 10-year-old boy there and only suspects that he lives nearby.

And that was a year ago.

At last, Jay Louis’ buddy said that his dad was calling, wanting to know where he was, and insisted they needed to head home.

“I just felt certain that God wanted me to do this now,” recalls Jay Louis. “Right then, I received a text from Stacy with the address of the orphanage and we were directly across the street from it!”

Ah, Stacy Furlow.

I can’t adequately share today’s miracle without explaining her role.

A few weeks ago, this precious woman in Arkansas read one of my blogs about Markenley and then, like most other readers, she moved on.

In fact, she has her own website (http://beyondthismountain.blogspot.com) about her experiences in Haiti and, after reading my account, Stacy says she genuinely weighed whether to shut her own site down. Someone else, it seemed, was telling the story of this broken country well and, without immediate evidence that her own words were being seen, perhaps it was time to work silently.

But something caused Stacy to pause and she backed up.

Returning to my blog, she left a comment of support, sharing that she has friends now in Haiti – men who could provide the three things I said I need to search for Markenley: transportation, translation and security.

I remember clearly the moment I read her note. It was like manna from the heavens! For a year, I have been aching to go look for this boy and, for a year, the obstacles have seemed too great.

No more!

Swiftly, I wrote back to her, eagerly asking for more information. I would take her up on her offer and, somehow, some way, I was going to go at last! I even began perusing flights.

I could feel that it was time!

And then… nothing. No word came back from Stacy. She didn’t return to my site and never saw my eager note to her.

Flummoxed, I refused to let it be just another dead end. I knew, in my bones, that it was truly time! A full year had nearly passed since the earthquake and, surely, Markenley would vanish forever into the dust and mire of the forgotten world if I continued to wait.

So, I did what anyone in the 21st century does when there seems to be nowhere else to turn: I Googled her.

Success!

It revealed a Twitter link and, through that, I discovered Stacy’s website. When I saw the faces of Haiti, I knew I had the right girl!

Hosannah!

I read every word of her blog, stunned by the beauty of her writing and tears that poured down my face at the stories she shared.

Swiftly, I pursued her, sending notes on her blog and Twitter. When she responded, a fast friendship formed!

I wanted to throw into high gear plans to travel to Haiti as swiftly as possible. We even unearthed what seemed to be workable dates. Alas, her work schedule wouldn’t gel and, though she had a trip of her own with her husband planned, it is one of the two weekends a year that I committed long ago to be on retreat with my church kids.

Frustration!

(Have I mentioned lately that God’s plan is always better than our own?)

Fast forward to my realization that her friends in Haiti could conduct the search on my behalf for Markenley. They speak Kreol, can move freely and safely without sticking out like sore thumbs among the tents and cluttered streets. And they care!

I suppose this is where I should expose my own unsuitability for launching a search in a foreign country for a kid I’ve barely met. These things, you know, take money. (Doesn’t everything?) While it doesn’t take nearly as much as it would in the United States, any money seems like a lot of money when your bank balance is flimsy. I suspect plenty of you know the drill. In this economy, income seems to turn into “outgo” long before it even arrives.

So I needed to raise some funds.

(I suspect God chuckles sometimes when I’m clueless.)

The solution had been sitting in my computer for an entire year.

Markenley’s pictures!

When we met in the orphanage that day, our bond formed around the camera. It crossed the gap of two different languages and gave us a way to share with each other. When I left him that day, there were pieces of his perspective saved on my memory card!

Again, opportunity fell into my lap. Barbara Barth, a new friend, was opening an antiques shop in Lilburn, Georgia, and wanted to include the works of local artists as a fun aside. She invited me to display my portraits of Haiti – for sale! Since it was her grand opening, she wouldn’t even charge me for the exhibition space.

My small-group kids from church encouraged me, and it was their idea to add an Opening Day bake sale to begin a school fund for Markenley!

I’m not sure if you are reading between the lines and see all the God moments sprinkled throughout my fumbling retelling of this story, but they are everywhere!

Throughout the day of the photo exhibition’s debut, ones and coins trickled into the bucket we set out for Markenley, in exchange for brownies and hot chocolate. At the end of the bake sale, a man drove up and I suspected he wanted to complain about my girls waving their signs in the street.

Instead, he had tears in his eyes and complimented me on their hearts for service and said their selfless acts – outside on a freezing winter day – had left him emotional when he had driven past earlier.

Rather than just smiling and thinking warm thoughts, he had done what NO ONE would do in response – he went to the bank and withdrew cash to contribute! To the girls’ utter astonishment, he shelled out bill after bill, to the tune of 100 bucks!

Oh, the celebration of a dozen sixth-grade girls and their teacher who have seen God in action!

So.

I guess this has turned into a bit of a book. Sorry for the length. I just can’t get around God’s tendency to work in my life in ways that take their own sweet time and teach me a thing or two about patience.

With the money we raised from the bake sale, picture and t-shirt proceeds, I was able to contact Stacy’s friends and engage them to launch an official search for Markenley.

You nearly know the rest of the story!

(dot dot dot)

The next 90 minutes of waiting may be the longest of my life.

But, lest you think something horrible has happened, let me say up front that the reverse is true: Something miraculous is afoot!!

Yesterday, I decided that enough was enough. I was going to take some of the money that my Sunday School girls raised to send Markenley, the child I met last year in Haiti, to school and I was going to find him.

If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you know well the obstacles that surely block my way to achieving this impossible goal. When we spent our day together, nearly exactly a year ago, he was only 10 years old, living on the streets in post-earthquake chaos. Somehow, he touched my heart and then my life. During the 12 months that have crawled past, there has not been a day when I didn’t wonder where he was or how he was living – or if he was still alive.

Haiti, after all, is broken. The streets, the government, the economy, the population – all splintered by years of corruption, misfortune and infirmity.

To find a child who was in a slum so long ago amongst the ever-writhing sea of shifting masses is surely a silly dream.

Silly is a word we use in America.

I doubt if they have a parallel in Haiti. Nothing is silly there. Everything is achingly serious. Hunger. Cholera. Upheaval. It is an island of the vulnerable and damned.

But I haven’t been able to get that kid outta my head.

Somewhere, if he is alive, he looks for food each day. He tries to survive. He does his best to remain safe. And dry. At night, I imagine, he sleeps. Do the roosters wake him, too? Does he have any hopes of education or dreams that extend beyond daily survival?

For awhile now, I have longed to know the answers.

My dream – my fantasy, perhaps – has become to help him.

He smiled when we were together, after awhile, and I want to see that smile crease his face, again. I’d love to see the worry leave his brow. Can you imagine getting to witness his slender frame filling out as frequent food finally nourishes his body? To see his intellect shine as education strengthens his knowing?

So, yesterday, I went down to Western Union and I transferred some money to two young men in Haiti who promised to help. To me, it seemed a little. To them, it is a lot.

That’s a long shot, isn’t it?

Trusting someone you’ve never met in a foreign country – a fourth-world one, at that – and expecting good results also seems silly. Foolish. Frivolous.

Faith is crazy that way, sometimes.

But they came highly recommended by someone I admire and, besides, I could feel God nudging me: “Now!”

I knew the search would begin today and I felt energized.

That was before I got the first text from Jay Louis last night, asking me already, “Guess who did a good job today?”

My heart started racing.

“Tell meeeeeee!” I insisted.

What he shared next can only be called miraculous.

Miraculous.

In this crazy, same ol’, same ol’ world, where we’ve grown to believe that only what we see is possible and only the probable makes sense, something ever so special is about to occur!

January 12, 2011

Helpless.

That’s how it feels when you can’t help someone you love.

But we are not helpless, are we?

We have the ability to come and go as we please. Our homes are secure and bellies generally full. We can educate our children and trust that their futures are bright. Medical attention, when needed, is easily accessible and, even for minor boo boos, our drawer of Band-aids is full.

When all else fails, we can leave. If we want to go far, far away, Delta is ready when we are. We can apply for a passport and, within weeks, receive one. We can step onto that aircraft and step off wherever we want.

We have planes, trains and automobiles.

All it takes is a little bit (ok, sometimes a lot) of money and the desire.

So I’ve been yearning to go back to Haiti.

A year ago today, their world collapsed – literally – in ways that horrified even their jaded sensibilities. The earthquake took away for many the few signs that they were a human race. Buildings were reduced to rubble that remains a full year later. Families evaporated in one fell swoop. Livelihoods and provisions and security and God seemed erased.

It was apocalypse now.

Perhaps if a nuclear disaster struck America, we would understand. If it decimated our buildings, killed our men and mothers and children, erased any certainty we’d ever felt about another meal or any right to protect our own bodies, we may glimpse their fear and desperation.

That hasn’t happened, so we can’t quite bring ourselves to care enough that life is already that way for an entire nation just two hours from our southernmost. In so many ways, it seems just another horror thriller we see on the big screen – Hollywood’s finest.

Sure, we “do what we can.” We throw our pocket change at “the problem,” when we aren’t saving for something sparkly. We take a deep breath and drop ourselves into their midst for a week or two, weathering the sweat and mosquitoes and culture and feeling oh so proud and even awed by how changed we feel upon return.

Sometimes, we ache for those we met and yearn to change their plight.

Most of all, we feel helpless.

I don’t know what to do with what I brought home when I returned from Haiti last March. Memories of a 10-year-boy who smiled into my eyes with quiet trust and took the first pictures of his life now live within me.

He looks out of my eyes and sees the food I throw away and the home I take for granted. His brow wrinkles and his pleasure dims.

I don’t even know if Markenley is still alive. We met for a brief afternoon in the dirt of a devastated orphanage just a month after the earthquake. I was visiting and, as it turns out, so was he. Hunger made him hopeful and he found a way in. He had intelligence in his eyes, but they were shadowed by horrors most of us have never experienced.

I placed my camera strap around the neck of a little boy whose eyes lit up with gratification and something more – recognition that he was, for a moment, truly seen by a world that cares.

I’ve been looking for him ever since.

But how, exactly, am I meant to accomplish that? My world usually feels secure, but his isn’t. Trekking through Haiti is dangerous, especially for a woman. I cannot do it without protection and translation and transportation – where all of those things are vulnerable to abuse.

When I think about it, I feel helpless.

So I remind myself – I’m not. With enough resources, each of those obstacles can be beaten. I can hire a guard and an interpreter and a truck. Sure, it takes money, but that’s no hill for a climber. There are lots of us and, eventually, I will have enough dollars to pay the bill.

I will find him. If I can adopt Markenley, I will. But if their broken system clings to him and I am unable to free him, I will find a way to send him to school and ensure housing there and, together, you and I will offer him a future of hope.

He may be helpless today, but we’re not.

Will you help me?

I’m selling the images that Markenley shot while behind the lens of my camera. All proceeds will go to him when I find him. They are, after all, his images and he owns them. You can order any of the images on the Haiti slideshow on this site.

To place an order or donate, please click the Markenley Edouard Haiti Fund Paypal link above. We also welcome your fervent prayers.

P.S. If you are near Atlanta, I will be exhibiting additional images shot during my time in Haiti and using those funds to search for Markenley. Barbara Barth is generously featuring them at the grand opening of her new antiques shop at 94 Main Street in Lilburn, Georgia on Saturday, January 22, and during the month of February. My middle school small group from church is hosting a bake sale to help raise funds for Markenley’s education. We would love to see you there!

P.S. I’ve just read the most amazing blog entry from someone who arrived at this orphanage the day after it collapsed! He rescued some of the same children I held. Please read his story and listen closely to God’s urging: http://www.redeemhaiti.org/haiti-earthquake-relief-update-12010/