Willie L. Robinson Haiti Missionary Foundation

My name is Willie Lee Robinson, I am the youngest of seven children born to John T. Robinson and Zalee Warren Robinson. I grew up at 459 East 2nd Street in Laurel, MS (called the KC bottom) an area where the poorest of black people lived (slums). My father died when I was seven years old, which left my mother to raise four boys and three girls on her own. My mother rented a three-room shotgun house with no running water, no electricity, using kerosene lamps for lighting, a wood burning stove for cooking, bathing in a foot (number three) tub, and eating on tin plates. My mother taught us how to survive during the civil rights area when racial tension was high. We planted gardens, raised hogs, raised chickens from biddies that we got from the Laurel city dump. My mother showed us how to love and care for others by sharing food and clothes that we got from scavenging through the Laurel city dump. My childhood friend Ray says that "everyone has a cross to bear ''. Maybe this is not my cross to bear but I do believe God has brought me through all the things in my childhood to prepare me for what I see through the eyes of the children and people of Haiti.

I asked myself growing up, does anyone care about how we are living? or how people are suffering? My heart goes out to the children in Haiti, their living conditions are parallel to the same living conditions that I grew up in, and their conditions are worse. To see the children of Haiti competing with dogs, cows, and goats to eat out of the same piles of food to survive reminded me of when we would go scavenging through the Laurel city dump. I could never forget my past because it prepared my heart to go to Haiti in the later part of my life. My first time going to Haiti was in 2017, I cried and could barely sleep after seeing the living conditions of those children. I still wonder and ask the same question today. DOES ANYONE CARE? If God allows me I will keep going, even if I have to go by myself.