HOLLIS – At a mere 18 years of age, Hollis teen Stacie Gibson has witnessed catastrophic disaster firsthand. Through an organization within the Monadnock Bible Conference, Gibson visited Haiti shortly after the earthquake of 2010 that hit the country.

“I’ve never been the kind of kid that had a big head about where I came from,” Gibson said. “It’s been part of me my whole life to just want to give, give, give. When I first went to Haiti, I was a 16-year-old kid and came back different. It just changes you.”

Gibson and other teens traveled to Haiti to work with different orphanages.

“Many teens were sent down even before the earthquakes to work in their orphanages that they sponsor,” she said. “The teens rebuild orphanages, work in food distribution, med clinics, and I go to summer camp there; it’s a conference center, basically.”

Gibson will leave for her third trip to Haiti after her graduation from Hollis Brookline High School in June. She recalls her first trip after the earthquake shook much of the region.

“Everything was very fresh, and shocking to say the least,” she said. “It really matures you when you go down there and see this stuff. That trip we did was a pretty mundane trip compared to most.

Gibson said her group didn’t stay in Port-au-Prince, where most of the devastation occurred. Instead, they traveled 100 miles to a small village in the mountains. The rocky trip took eight hours by truck.

“We painted an orphanage there and played with the kids and did a medical clinic there. So that was a pretty low-key trip,” she said. “But on my trip last summer, we did a ton of work down there. They’re building a new orphanage that will hold 100 children instead of the 30 that they have now. It was actually funded by another organization so it’s completely paid off and we poured the cement for the first dormitory building so we were passing cement buckets in 100-degree weather. But it was fun.”

After days of cleaning and pouring, Gibson spent time doing a vacation bible school for the children of the earthquake.

“We did games and crafts and sang with them. And then one day was dedicated to food distribution and we distributed bags of rice and spaghetti and simple things to the families and a five gallon jug of water that they could have refilled, and we did 250 families. And then we did just whatever we could. If we could help anybody along the way, especially the kids, we did. We play with the kids. It’s mostly about loving the kids.”

Teens that gathered for the excursion and help mission traveled from all over New England. As for Gibson, he next stop is college, but not before she returns to a place that she holds close to her heart.

“Haiti is a really big part of me. It’s where my heart and soul is,” she said. “I always say that my body comes back but soul is always down there. I don’t know what it is; it’s just something I’m always passionate for.”

When she begins her enrollment at the University of Maine, she’ll major in psychology but she hopes to minor in business.

“My ultimate goal is to hopefully start my own orphanage down there,” Gibson said. “That’s my long-term goal. Not next week, but whenever it happens. All I know is the kids there do more for me than I could ever do for them.”

To donate, checks can be made out to Love in Motion and mailed to Monadnock Bible Conference, P.O. Box 70, Jaffrey, NH 03452; with nothing in the memo line of the check just a sticky note attached with “money for Stacie Gibson attached.” You may also mail checks directly to Stacie Gibson, P.O. Box 65, Hollis NH 03049.