Everyone has that one song that takes them back to a moment in time.

For me, it's "Broken Vessels" by Hillsong United.

A few nights ago I was in the car with my mom when I heard it. This particular song struck a chord inside me. As I listened to the melodious sounds coming from the car radio, I closed my eyes and remembered.

“Oh I can see it now
Oh I can see the love in Your eyes
Laying yourself down
Raising up the broken to life"

These words. This song. It brought back a flood of memories, a flood of emotions.

There I was, back in Haiti. It was our last day in Port-au-Prince, and my team and I were taking our final bus ride through the dust and rubble to head to the airport. We were leaving. We were leaving the place that we had called home for that past week and because of our imminent departure, I'm sure you could guess our state — teary-eyed and reflective.

Looking out the bus window, tinted gray from all of the dust, I watched. I watched as men, women and children walked around barefoot, wearing tattered clothing and selling small bags of water, newspapers, Coke bottles or whatever they could get their hands on. The desperation in their eyes was heart-stopping. I thought, "How can I go back to my life of ease and comfort while these people are here struggling to earn a few dollars so that their child can eat?"

I also watched as we passed by teenagers hanging out the backs of the numerous tap-taps (painted pick-up trucks that served as taxis). Watching these tap-taps ride by reminded me of Robenson, an older boy I had met that week. In Haiti, most kids ride tap-taps to go to school. If they don't have money to pay for a tap-tap, they go without school. The tap-taps brought back memories of Robenson and how he made bracelets to sell to people (usually mission teams). He would then use the money he earned from his bracelet making to send all of his friends from another orphanage to school via tap-taps. He sacrificed his time and effort to do all he could to give those kids a better life, and because of him, they are getting an education. We can all learn a lot from Robenson. I know that in America we don't have tap-taps that we can send people to school in, but we can most definitely sacrifice our time and money and resources to help people in other ways.

Continuing on with the journey, I watched. The streets of Haiti are indescribable. Cars everywhere, people everywhere. No system. As I watched this chaos unfold before my eyes, I continued to reflect on the week, and I listened to the words of the song that was still playing from the speakers.

“Raising up the broken to life."

I realized that is exactly what God is doing with these broken people. These people on the streets begging for money, for jobs, for something that might keep their family from dying. These orphaned children. These children whose parents died in the earthquake years earlier, or these children now homeless because their parents couldn't take care of both themselves and their children.

These broken, shattered people. God is bringing them to life.

And that thought brought me back to a few of my favorite memories from the trip. For some reason, whenever my team went to visit an orphanage, we ended up singing. English or Creole, it didn't matter the language. My team and these kids would lift up our voices. Emotive is the only word that that truly comes close to describing this experience. When they sang for us, it was warmhearted, beautiful and real. And it brought up every emotion possible. These kids would sing of their love for God for hours. It was honestly one of the most awe-inspiring parts of the trip, and every time it happened, it was such a testament to how even people with literally nothing but a shirt on their back can still give thanks to God about something. They praised Him because they woke up that morning, because they had people to talk to, because they had a meal that day, because they were alive. And that was beautiful.

So there I was in my Nissan, reflecting on how AWESOME God was, is, and will continue to be. And I thought, I had never heard the song “Broken Vessels" before until that bus ride back in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. But now I hear that song, and it takes me back. It takes me back and brings along all those wonderful, but extremely difficult-to-deal-with emotions. But I'm OK with that. Because with those emotions bring a lot of needed reminders — like to sacrifice as Robenson sacrifices, to praise like those orphans praise and to love like the Haitians love.