Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Well, it's about time!!!

I know, I know...the day after tomorrow will be one month since I've updated -- shame on me. So I am quickly trying to get this done today and beat the one month date! I have no great excuse to give you except for the same old one I always use...it has just been crazy busy around here...keep reading and you'll see some of what's been keeping us busy.

First, I'll catch you up on some of the things that were in the last update...
  • Brother Rosemond is healthy once again. He even returned to his job as head of the guards for the local hospital, so thank you so much for your prayers for his healing.
  • School continues for our students, and they are in the midst of mid-term exams. They'd love to have your prayers for them, as they are all working very hard to succeed this year.
  • The 5 little ones we asked you to pray for are healthy and either have already returned to their homes, or will do so shortly. Now we have others that have already replaced them. There is no shortage of malnourished children in Haiti these days.
  • God did indeed provide for our needs during the past month (He always does...He is so good to us). But He does tell us to ask, so please ask with us that He would continue to do so...and perhaps an even more relevant prayer request would be that we weak and sometimes worrying (why do we do that?) human beings would trust Him completely to provide for this coming month!
  • Our Bible Studies continue to go really well. It's really neat to watch how the kids (and us adults too) get the chance to apply what we learn in our every day lives...it's not always easy, but it is exciting to watch changes taking place. Please continue to pray for us, that we'd be lights in the midst of darkness.
So what could possibly have kept us busy this month? That is a somewhat silly question for most of you who have ever been here know that simply waking up and getting everyone safely through the day; healthy, happy and well fed is an enormous and exhausting task. In any case, we have managed to accomplish some other things as well, and here's a brief rundown of our activities, and even some pictures:

Late in September the mother of our good friends in Port-au-Prince (the Boucher's) passed away. It was somewhat sudden, and was very difficult on the family. In order to support the family through the wake and funeral, several of us took a quick trip to PAP. When I say a quick trip, it sounds so simple, but it really took quite a bit of planning and preparing. In the end, it was most cost effective to drive our vehicle down with those who were going along (there were 10 of us). So we left our town of La Pointe at 4:30 am on Friday morning. It only took us 7 hours to cover the 150 miles of road! That was a pleasant surprise, because it has been known to take a lot longer, so while the road was still really bad in places, it also was really good in some places.

It had been quite some time since I've had to drive around PAP, especially in our vehicle which is a little larger than I like in confined spaces with traffic whipping in and out every which way, so I was a little nervous about that part of things. But everything went really well. We spent Friday and Saturday with the Bouchers taking part in the funeral activities, and left Sunday morning to head back to La Pointe. We got back early afternoon very exhausted! Bouncing over miles and miles of washed out road does get exhausting after a while, and doing it twice in 3 days is a lot. In the end it took us a few days before we could feel rested again. It was really good for us to be there with the family though, and I know the Boucher family would still appreciate your prayers if you think of it as they re-adjust to life without their Mom & Grandma.

As means of outreach to the youth in the local community, our young people have started to have a regular game night each Friday night. Most of the boys who take part in our Bible club on Saturday, as well as some others come for a time of fun and games. Our youth play along with them, and the interaction between them is great. Our yard is a wild and crazy place on Friday evenings...it's not that big, and there's at least 80 kids participating, running here and there. It is just too much for me --my role is to sit in a chair and watch St. Germain, Rosnel, and Da make things happen! They thrive on mayhem! Here are a couple of pictures of the games.For a couple of weeks the youth of the HOH decided to try and make some money by selling BBQ chicken on the grill some friends gave us. They BBQ'd while the kids played, and then they could buy it afterwards. It was delicious, and a great experience for our youth (here's St. Germain handling the grill...)
Unfortunately, they were unable to make any money off of it, so they likely won't do that anymore. It was a good business experience for them...t but, they are going to have to put on their creative hats to try and come up with other ways to make their business ventures worth their while!

We were pleasantly surprised by a visit from some people who live in a town just up the road from us. They came here with about 15 severely disabled children whom they care for. They were taking the kids on a small trip for ice cream at the shop close to our house, and decided to stop in for a visit. They shared with us their desire to help abandoned, disabled children have a home, loving care and reach their personal potential. They are fellow believers, who have been amazingly gifted to love and care for these children. While they were visiting, they asked if we didn't have any children that they could add to their family.

I must stop here and explain that we do have 4 such young boys who have been abandoned at the HOH. I have tried for years to find a permanent home for them that could properly care for them, but I've not been successful. We had pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that they would be in our care for the rest of their lives. (We were even planning on taking them with us to our new project. Check out the Hope Village blog to find out how this event affects that project...www.hopevillagehaiti.blogspot.com). For those of you who know our kids, I am talking about; Henry-Claude, John Kerry, Moïse, and Owen.

When we introduced the director to our children, she asked us to allow them to take them into their home. We have longed for these 4 boys to have someone care for them who could do more than we were doing. We could give them food, love and care. But we were never able to get to the point where we could do Physical Therapy with them, work with them to progress as they are able to. Here was an incredible opportunity opening up for these boys. It didn't take us long to agree to come see their place, and place the boys in their care. This morning we headed out to their home and took the boys as well. It is small, but they are building a new location that will be able to care for 100 disabled children. But it was a very nice place...they hire a good number of employees to care for the children. In the end, all the boys stayed up there, and now have a new home! We are so thankful for God's provision of this new family for these boys. What a blessing it was to us. Here's a picture of Benitha getting Moïse ready to go this morning...Because it is quite late and this is getting quite long, I'm going to bring things to an end. Hopefully our next update won't be so far away in the future. One last thing I do need to tell you is that Linda and I will be leaving Haiti next week to spend 2 and a half weeks in Florida. We will be visiting supporters and speaking in meetings there. We have a very busy few weeks ahead of us, as we are driving to multiple locations around FL. Please remember a few more prayer requests for us...
  • Pray for safety as we fly & then drive many miles.
  • Pray for health for both of us, as we have a busy schedule and not a lot of time to be sick :).
  • Pray for the kids and the HOH that we are leaving behind. As you can imagine none of the kids like when we are gone, and especially don't like when we are gone at the same time.
  • Pray that we'd be a blessing and encouragement to those we visit, and that God would enable us to effectively speak about all that He is doing down here through this ministry.
Thanks so much for your partnership in this ministry.