What's up?

This past week had some unexpected, yet good twists to it. First, here's some news on how things are going here at the HOH since our first Peacemaker seminar. We have had the occasion to use our newly acquired teaching a lot throughout the week. Some comments we've heard from others were, "wow, that seminar came at a good time, everyone is getting along a whole lot better now", which makes us very glad that our kids and young people are taking what they learned seriously. It's been neat to watch their interaction with each other, and hear principles from the seminar coming out of their discussions...especially the idea of choices you make having consequences that go with it. Yesterday, a number of our young people left late for school, and arrived after they had already shut the doors. They were sent home, and received, as they were expecting, a punishment for being late...Choices and Consequences! They left extra early for school this morning!

You can see by this picture that our little miracle baby Ciliana is doing just great, she is almost 10 pounds! A huge difference from the less than 2 pound bundle we received just 4 months ago. I will be taking her to Port-au-Prince (PAP) this coming Monday to try and get an HIV test done for her. The test they do here only checks the antibodies, so we wouldn't know if she is truly positive until she is 18 months old. We'd like to know sooner, and I am going to PAP anyway for CrossWorld business meeting and team training with the other Haiti CrossWorld missionaries, so we thought this was a good time to have it done. We of course are praying that it will be negative, but we want God's will done more than anything, and will continue to love and care for her just the same regardless of the results.

All of the malnourished children we had received last week are doing really well. So far this week we've admitted three new children: Linda, a 9 month old little girl who has TB; Kerlin, the older brother of Jamesley who came in last week with TB; and Phanor, a little boy also with TB. You could pray for Richoudly, he is doing better, but his sisters who have been staying with him until he got a bit better, have now left, and he is dealing with that. We are confident that he'll be fine in a day or so, but needs your prayers. Julienne and Junior are continuing to improve, once again amazing us all!

A number of you know or know of Celibon, a friend of ours who works at the hospital here in La Pointe, and a former HOH child himself. We'd like to ask you to pray for him, he has been very sick lately, and has been needing quite a few medical tests done to determine what the problem is. He is usually such an energetic and joyful man, but lately his energy level has dropped considerably, and while his joy still shines through, it's easy to see this is very taxing on his body and spirit. Pray for Celibon to rely on God for His strength, timing and provision during this difficult time. Pray also that the doctors would have wisdom in dealing with his complicated case.

We enjoyed a the visit of our friends from Valley Bible Church in Vermont, very much. Unfortunately it was a short visit, and I was busy the whole time and didn't get to spend much time with them at all. They helped us prepare, stuff, and mail our prayer letter, so we are very thankful for their help! They also spent a lot of time loving and caring for our children, for which we are extremely grateful. With all those new malnourished children, they sure needed the extra boost of love and care.

After they left we received a visit from another missionary, Joel Trimble, and Haiti for Christ ministries. He did quite a bit of filming the HOH for his TV program that airs in both Haiti and various places in the US. He also captured some film on DVD for us to use for promotional/fund raising purposes. It was an unexpected twist to the week as we had never heard of his ministry until last Friday, but we are glad God arranged for us to meet, and glad he could come see the ministry here at the HOH.

Now we are waiting for two visitors from Compassion Canada to come see the HOH. They were just coming for the day today, and are scheduled to leave tomorrow. Unfortunately things aren't going as smoothly as planned (should we be surprised?). Apparently, another airplane from a company that we don't use had an accident on the runway in Port-de-Paix yesterday afternoon. They hit a UN helicopter that was sitting in the middle of the runway. No one was injured, just the plane and helicopter that are now blocking the runway and every other plane from taking off or landing. So we are sitting around waiting to hear if and when the runway can be cleared and flights start up again. I do hope it isn't too late, as they are only going to be here one day.

Well, that's about all of our news. You could pray for both Linda and I as we aren't feeling too well, and have both been checked for malaria today, not sure yet if that's what's wrong, but we are both feeling like it could be a possibility. Once again, thank you so much for your prayers on our behalf. It will be at least a week before I can write again (I'd appreciate your prayers for safety as we'll be in PAP all next week), so we wish you a very nice week, and we'll connect as soon as we can. God bless...