Wednesday, June 01, 2011

It's me again!

Hi Everyone! It's been over a month since I've written you. Boy have things been busy around here. I wanted to take this chance to show you my new picture. If you have a keen eye, you'll be able to see I am doing much better. My face isn't as puffy, my hair is growing back (the kids here can even make it stand in a Mohawk after I've finished washing it!), and I'm starting to get my normal color back. At first the doctor thought I had Celiac disease, so they put me on a diet that I did not like at all. I couldn't eat anything fun at all...no bread, no macaroni, no fried dough...boy was that hard.

In the end they decided that was not my problem, so they allowed me to start eating all that stuff again. I was so happy, I started eating as much as I could of all that stuff, just in case they changed their minds and made me stop again. So, what did they find out that has made me start to get healthy again? Well, in a last ditch effort to help me in some way, the Dr. here put me on treatment for TB, and that was exactly what I needed. I've been on treatment for about 2 weeks now, and the difference is incredible. I feel so much better, my body isn't swollen anymore, my hands and feet are healing up. I can walk, dance and I have made it my personal responsibility to make everyone in the house as happy as I can. Nicknames are very important here at the HOH, and over the past few weeks I have earned the nickname "Father Christmas", or literally "Uncle Christmas" (Tonton Noel). I'm not sure why, but I don't mind...it makes me feel very much a part of things here.

I'm very happy to be healing up, because there have been so many activities these past few weeks that I haven't been able to participate in because I was too sick. I'm going to share them with you anyway, you'll have to excuse me though for not giving you a first hand report on everything. To make sure you won't miss out on any of the news, I hired some extra help.

Carly and Micah are in on everything around here. They don't miss anything. So you can rest assured, that even though I wasn't personally at all of the following events, the news is true and accurate because my help was there and told me all about it...
We had a really nice girl here from France, her name is Lucille and she spent 2 weeks at our house. She could really speak French well, and I was so excited to be able to practice my French with her. Some of the other kids were too embarrassed to speak French with her, but not me; I boldly spouted out French whenever she was close enough to hear me. I think she liked it, because it always made her (and everyone else) laugh. Anyway, we really had a great time with Lucille here, and we were sad to see her go.

May 18th is a big celebration day here in Haiti. It is Flag Day, and we sure do like to celebrate it. The different schools in the area always hold parades with special marches and dances. And a whole bunch of people in the community open up stands and sell all kinds of good things for people to eat. This year some of the older kids from the HOH opened up their own stand, and sold BBQ chicken, fried plantain bananas, candied popcorn and lots of things to drink...

They worked hard and did a really good job from what I hear. Honestly, all I remember about that day was that the house was really dull and quiet, because almost everyone was at the celebration! There was another day the house was really quiet as well. One Saturday Tati Da and Tati Jen took everyone (well almost everyone, I had to stay home because my feet were too swollen) to the beach. Boy did Micah and Carly ever have stories to tell when they got back home that night. They played in the sand, ate sandwiches and then BBQ chicken. And they got to swim in the ocean. Carly loved the ocean, and Micah didn't. When I questioned him about it, all he could tell me was that the ocean was scared of him. (I really think it was the other way around). Here are a few pictures they shared with me of the day...
Rose Carline and Valandjina enjoy sandwiches and juice.

Once again St. Germain ran the BBQ. Well, he pretty much planned out the whole day. He's really good at that kind of thing.

Here the kids are waiting in line for the food.

They had a lot of fun swimming and doing tricks in the water. I can't wait until I can go. When I'm completely better, I'm going to beg Tati Da and Tati Jen to take me to the beach too. I'm pretty sure they'll do it.

So, that brings us to a last bit of news. We've received 4 new girls into the house, and it's about time too. We've had boys for so long, it was really nice to finally get some girls in.

All 4 of them are sick with different things, but 2 of them are malnourished like me. It will be good to see them get healthy again. Their names are Noƫldine, Marianne, Lanka and Genide. It'd be nice if you could pray for them that they would get well, and also that they would learn about Jesus while they are here. We have many occasions to hear about Jesus here at the HOH. We have Church and Sunday School on Sundays, and Bible studies and family devotions during the week. So pray that if they aren't already in God's family that they would soon be.

Once again, thank you for your help that allows kids like me and these other girls to be here at the House of Hope. None of us thought we had any hope before we came here, and now we know that we do. Please continue to help and pray that others will do so as well. As you can imagine, things have been really tight the past little while. So I'd ask you to pray for God to give us everything that we need to take care of everyone in our large family. Pray also for the kids who are in school, they all will be writing exams soon. And Tati Jen has to travel to Port-au-Prince for a week next week, so pray for her as well. And pray for Tati Da while Tati Jen is gone, it is always hard to run the place alone (you can be sure I will help her out though). Thank you very much, and God bless.