View more pictures here!

On Tuesday, May 15^th, the Style Network aired an episode of the Giuliana & Bill Show that featured star Bill Rancic taking a trip to Haiti to build a home with World Wide Village and our team of Haitian construction workers. Since the airing a little over a week ago, we have had more visitors to our website than we usually have in a month, with about 80% of them being new visitors. Even after pulling out the big boost of the first couple of days, we’re still averaging over 3 times as many visits per day than we were before the show. 

Having web visitors is great, especially new visitors, but measure of impact is, “Did they take action while they were on the site?” In short, yes! Since the show aired we’ve had 20 people ask about taking a mission trip to Haiti, 16 new requests for internships, and a good number of online donations. In addition, we’ve had 5 people step up to sponsor a child in Haiti.

When Bill went to Haiti to build a home for Madame Josette’s family, he changed the lives of everyone in that family. However, since his show aired, several dozen lives have been potentially changed, and more are being positively affected every day. Plus, every time the episode airs again in the future, even more people will hear about World Wide Village and more lives will be changed.

We would love to take all the credit, but the truth is it was God who led to the connection between Bill Rancic and WWV, and it was God who moved Bill to build the home in Haiti and to share it with his audience. All we can do is thank God for opening the doors and thank Bill Rancic for opening his heart to World Wide Village and the people of Haiti. World Wide Village has been blessed by having big-hearted people like Bill supporting our efforts to help lift the people of Haiti.

To learn more about World Wide Village’s housing efforts in Haiti click here. You can also learn about how World Wide Village is partnering with professionals in the building and real estate industry to build homes in Haiti by visiting www.plusonehomes.com.

And for a dose of keeping it real, it hasn’t been all rosy. Throw an adult back into America after extended time in Haiti and they have some culture shock so experience all that when you are 4 and it is interesting. She is different right now, more quiet at times, a little more indignant than usual. I spoke Creole to her the other day and she told me quite firmly that we can’t speak Creole here because it’s different here. It’s harder for her to make decisions because, heck, I’m having a hard time making decisions too. We went from 2 bottles of spaghetti sauce to choose from to 50 brands and types. I went into a gas station that had 10 different types of Reese’s brand candy to buy. 10! And she misses her dada something fierce. We skyped tonight and played hide and seek that consisted of Lena running away and hiding from the camera and then jumping back in:) so that helped. Haiti feels like a world away when you are here.

So thankful for the time we have here and the amazing memories she is making but my heart is breaking for the goodbyes I know that are coming. Praying for her little self.

In the past two weeks I have had this sense of freedom, of focus, and God doing His thing. Stripped of some of the frustration, this trip came on the heels of that and has helped me know what I need to dive into and what really matters. More than ever, I know that I need to say no to some things so that I can say yes to the things that I love. Yes to my family. Yes to what God is asking, Yes to love and turning down negative voices. I have this giant sense of HOPE in what He is doing in our lives!

Diving into God and saying yes.
Diving into my family.
Diving into awesome relationships with amazing people who get me and love me for the mess I am.

(love these girls more than they know:) Thankful to spend time with them ! )

As part of the show, Bill talked to the camera and told viewers to go to the World Wide Village website to support our work in Haiti. Within moments after the announcement people were on the website. Within 30 minutes after the show was over World Wide Village had received several pledges and several inquiries into taking mission trips to Haiti. We’re confident the interest, and donations will continue, especially since the show will be repeated many times on the Style Network (check listings for show times).

To paraphrase Giuliana Rancic from the show, “We’re really proud of Bill for what he and his friends did in building the home for Madame Josette and her family.” We are proud to be able to call Bill a friend of World Wide Village and look forward to helping him build more homes in Haiti.

If you would like to learn more about Bill, his show, and his connection to World Wide Village, here are a few links for you:

Bill’s Haiti Photo Gallery

WWV Previous Blog Post About Bill

Bill Rancic Blog Post About WWV

Giuliana & Bill Show

Bill Rancic Fitting Hearing Aids in Haiti (video)

24 hours in and I have already gone to Chickfila, Starbucks, and had way too much fun in the Target $1 section. One wedding down and on a roadtrip to the next one that is in Florida. And if you saw me at the Cheesecake Factory tonight, I promise it was my twin;)

It may look like we are having fun. And we are. But I’m basically a giant mess of emotions and trying to cover it up with lots of American decadence and some diva thrown in there. Today I even had to pump my own gas. Talk amongst yourselves but if Haiti has one thing going for it, it’s that I don’t have to pump gas, they have someone who does it for you.

Back to my mess. Being here is a little weird. I feel torn. I feel like I shouldn’t be enjoying this decadence when my husband and friends are having long hard days of generators being silly and other Haiti things that are bound to be going on. Then I drive on beautiful clean roads and think how much we take the small things for granted here. I can’t watch much tv because anything news related makes me want to vomit. Then there are moments where I wonder why we are crazy enough to go through all of this. Sometimes it is hard to not get wrapped up in the what if’s and risk of it all. Being away from Haiti makes Haiti feel like a lifetime ago.

And in the midst of it. I miss it all. I would trade every nice non-bumpy road, every piece of cheesecake, all of it for Ayiti. For the people there that I love and believe in enough to fight for them to have better lives.

Here is to a few weeks of trying to enjoy the decadence of Chickfila and warm showers while not having meltdowns in Krogers.

(a window of Haiti)

head on over here to facebook to see the event and share it with friends!!

           The story started shortly after the January 2010 earthquake when Rancic, winner of the first season of “The Apprentice” went to Haiti with Sara Lee Executive Jon Harris to deliver several thousand pounds of disaster relief food. He was emotionally overwhelmed by what he saw and knew immediately that he wanted to do more to help those so tragically affected by the earthquake.

            It was on that trip that he met Didi Pierre Louis and his family. Didi was in desperate need of medical attention so Rancic took him, and two other children, to Chicago to get the care they needed. Unfortunately Didi did not survive. When Rancic next traveled to Haiti he promised Madame Josette, Didi’s mother, that he would build the family a permanent home. They were living in a “tiny hut with a mud floor, no running water or bathroom or kitchen facilities,” Rancic said.

           In May of 2011 Rancic went to Haiti again, this time as part of a group traveling with the Starkey Hearing Foundation. Starkey is one of WWV’s partners in Haiti and during the trip Rancic met Randy Mortensen, WWV President, and heard about the recently launched WWV Family Housing Fund and it’s commitment to build 500 homes for displaced families in Haiti. Shortly afterward Rancic arranged to fund and build a home with WWV in Jacmel, Haiti.

           In February of this year Rancic and several of his friends traveled to Haiti to work with a Haitian construction team from World Wide Village, and Randy Mortensen, to build the home. His partners on the trip included Jon Harris from Sara Lee, Chicago-based building contractor Bert Connolly of Wescon Builders, (now a sponsor of the Plus One Home Project), and art collector Ari Goldman.  It is the building of this home that is featured on the “Guliana & Bill” Show.

           The experience of building the home so inspired Rancic that he promised to return to Haiti with World Wide Village to fund and build even more homes for some of the 500,000 people still living in tents or temporary structures as a result of the quake. “Bill and his friends left Haiti absolutely on fire with the idea of helping other families,” Mortensen said. “He saw first hand that two years after the earthquake Haiti is still hurting, both physically and spiritually.”

           The homes will be part of a broad effort by WWV to build homes for quake victims. In 2011 WWV launched the “Family Housing Fund” with a large donation by an anonymous donor. “We’re hoping that Bill’s story will inspire people to support our efforts to build homes in Haiti. Unfortunately, too many people have already forgotten the tremendous need in Haiti.”

            World Wide Village’s Haitian housing efforts were expanded just a couple of weeks ago with the launch of the “Plus One Home Project” that seeks pledges from builders, remodelers, suppliers, brokers and agents to help fund the construction of a home in Haiti for every home they build, remodel or sell in this country.

We stood in the market out in the village trying to buy shoes because we had forgotten flip flops for her.  Lena is looking at the shoes and holding them up to see if they will fit.  I look up and see that 30+ people have surrounded the wooden table all watching Lena pick out shoes and giggling as she put the ones that she didn’t want back.

But then are these moments when she blends in, and the kids play with her just as they would another Haitian kid, or she is sitting in the kitchen carrying on with some of our Haitian friends.

She lives an odd life. One that I’m so grateful for.

A life full of adventure, harsh realities, loving and missing, and singing, lots of singing:) It’s not all roses, believe me. Just last week I had to explain to her why the baby we saw the day before had gone to Heaven. And yesterday she said goodbye to some ladies that work here since we won’t see them until we get back from the States and she just cried. It’s hard to always be missing someone.

But you know what? I wouldn’t change it for the world. She is learning life. That it is hard sometimes. And that people suffer. And there is immense good in the world. And that status and money don’t really matter, but loving people where they are does. And that God is good, all the time.