Tuesday, August 27, 2013

New places & faces

Every summer at the HOH, we attempt to have as many of our permanent residents as possible go spend some time with their families.  We have always felt it was important that they remain in contact with their home communities.  So, once school is out for the summer, we start making plans for the kids to go home for 1-2 weeks.  They take turns so we don't have too many older ones gone all at the same time; as that disrupts the running of the HOH too much.

This summer, St. Germain decided to take a few of the younger boys with him to visit his home community.  We do not know the families of these younger boys, and thus they have no place to go for "vacation".  So, this year St. Germain made sure they got to experience "vacation" the same as everyone else.  He took them up the mountains to his home area.  They stayed with an aunt, and enjoyed playing with the other kids in the area up there.  You can see from these pictures, they had a great time!

Fetching water from the local source

Spending time with St. Germain's aunt
 
Enjoying mangoes, plantain bananas and sugar cane straight from the garden




Over the past few weeks we've had a number of new children brought to the HOH.  Two little girls have come in bad shape.  Manouchka is just a month and a half old.  Her mom died of AIDS, and her dad is also positive and not able to care for her.  We praise God that she is negative, and that we have the chance to care for her in our home. 




The second little girl is Lovedjina.  She is two years old and has severe malnutrition.  Lovedjina is typical of the malnutrition cases we most often find at the HOH.  Around the age of two, her mom is just about ready to give birth to another baby; she tends to get forgotten in the shuffle.  We have insisted that her mom stay with her at the HOH, so she can learn how to properly care for her, and learn the foods to give Lovedjina in order too allow her to be healthy.



Linda is busy getting the kids ready for school.  Uniforms have to be sorted out and made, school supplies sorted and schedules worked out.  Up until last week everyone thought school was going to start on Sept. 2, but we have heard that the start of school has been postponed until Oct. 2; it gives us another month to get ready.  Which is good, because we are still trying to raise enough funds to send all the kids back to school this year.  Tuition generally costs us $200/student for the school year (we do not have free schools in our area of Haiti).  We have 43 students in school... so, you can see the need we have to raise these funds.

A few of the older kids who had to write government exams this year did not pass on the first try.  4 of them got close and have been given the chance to re-write the exams on Sept. 2. These students are Jn Daniel, Dada, Manno and St. Germain.  Please pray for them as they study over the next few days in preparation for these exams again.  Pray for clarity of thought, for understanding for the materials they study, and for good health to study hard and write their exams well.

Jenny is still traveling in the US. She had a great time with friends and supporters all over Eastern PA.  She is now back in Canada and will be heading over to Manitoba on the weekend.  There is still time to get in touch with her if you'd like to (even if it's just for a phone conversation!).

We appreciate each one of you who supports us in various ways.  Thank you for your part.  Please pray for the various projects we are trying to raise funds for over the next couple of weeks.  Most importantly is for the tuition fees for school for the year, so pray that we'd have that come in.

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

Moving ahead...

This past week felt much more like a normal summer week at the HOH.  For the most part, everyone was healthy and kept busy keeping the kids busy since they are on summer vacation.  The big activity last week was a soccer tournament mixing young boys from our local community in with our kids, here are a few pictures....



The only one still having some health issues has been Phania, she ended up having a Cesarean Section yesterday evening.  Phania was doing fine this morning, but the baby was having a hard time.  Please pray that the baby will start to breast feed, and will take a turn for the better.

Jenny & her husband have had a rough start to their trip in Canada and the US.  Her husband spent a number of days hospitalized last week, and they had to postpone some of their travels.  He is doing much better now, and so they will resume travel tomorrow.  Jenny will be in Eastern Pennsylvania over the next couple of weeks.  If you are interested in seeing her while she is there, please get in touch with her.

We appreciate your prayers, your support and all the different ways you help us out.