‘The Five People You Meet in Heaven’ author has a new book out

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A new book from Mitch Albom titled Finding Chika tells the story of a young girl who Album met at the Have Faith Haiti Mission and Orphanage in Port-au-Prince named Chika Jeune. The orphanage is directed and visited regularly by the said author. Days after the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, Chika was born and was given to the orphanage by her family three years later after her mother died in childbirth with her brother.

The kids of the Have Faith Haiti Mission and Orphanage became the family of Albom since he and his wife, Janine, have no children. This includes Chika, who was still three-years-old then. Chika’s presence quickly touched the lives of the people around her.

But Chika was suddenly diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor when she turned five-years-old. Albom and his wife then brought Chika to the United States to receive treatment since there’s no one who would be able to help Chika in Haiti.

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Albom’s experience of taking care of Chika completely changed his perspective on parenthood and his priorities.

“I realized families are like pieces of art: They can be made from many materials. Sometimes they are from birth, sometimes they are melded, sometimes they are forcibly constructed, and sometimes they are merely the confluence of time and circumstance, mixing together, like eggs being scrambled in a Michigan kitchen,” he said in an article. “But they are all real. Chika was a daughter to a number of people. And for the last two years, she was ours, gloriously ours… We did not lose a child. We were given one.”

The book will surely leave you in tears.