When I arrived at Mt. Zion Orphanage in Haiti last month, I caught myself thinking, I'm glad no Orphan's Tear donors are here with me! That's a rare thought, because almost without exception I'm wishing you could be along with me. But that day I wanted to cry as I witnessed some deplorable conditions there, and I felt embarrassed that we hadn't taken care of these needs sooner! It had been a while since I last visited Mt. Zion, and I felt horrible that the needs even existed.

I suppose having a tender heart is part of the job description for the director of Orphan's Tear. But sometimes I feel that my heart exceeds the tenderness requirements! That possibility entered my mind as my eyes teared up reading a letter I recently received from a little boy in Mexico called Beto (translated by our dear friend and ministry partner Nicole Fitzpatrick). I hope Beto's words touch your heart as well...

"You know...we have to move here," Daryl said to his wife Wanda after witnessing the horrific conditions inside a handicapped ward of a Guatemalan hospital. With deep conviction, she replied with just 2 words: "I know."

Not many things are for certain in Haiti, but most can count on poverty and death. So how do children, most of whom are orphans, survive such depressing realities while also living in an orphanage? I discovered the answer when I visited Haiti earlier this month with my wife, Kayla, and Orphan's Tear director Elisabeth Walter.

"I really don't know how they survive," Pastor Geordany, the director of Mt. Carmel Orphanage, replied when I asked him how Haitians could pay the high food prices in Haiti. The average cost of a gallon of milk is over $9, and a pound of oranges costs about $5!

We've seen all kinds of poverty this week in Haiti: economic, political and spiritual. It's not hidden, like in much of the US, but as if intentionally exposed for all to see.

Fight the French! Kayla (my wife) could not believe her ears. She had just returned from a much-needed restroom visit midway through a 3-1/2-hour Sunday church service—which I learned was pretty standard in Haiti—feeling very confused.

"I was sad that I had to bring him here, but I knew he would have a better life." With those words Thessoit Belony, translated through Pastor Wildelson, the director of Mount Zion Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, told me her story. Mount Zion is a small orphanage crammed into a crowded sea of colorless, half-crumbling cement-block-and-rusty-tin homes on the southwest side of the city. You can see poverty everywhere. You can smell it.

What do you want to be when you grow up? is a familiar question to most of us. We often hear (or said) things like a firefighter so I can save lives or an astronaut so I can explore space. (Ask enough children and you'll probably get one that says firefighting astronaut!) Almost always the answers are fanciful, or extend far beyond the likely reach of that child—or so we think.