Promise for Haiti

January 31, 2012

Bonjour from Pignon, Haiti

It’s Tuesday night and all is well……the zoo has quieted down
for the night. They will start greeting us again at 3:00 am.
Paula said she is tired living the “little house on the prairie life style”
but I’m sure she’ll hang in there for another week! Water is in short
supply which doesn’t help any with the creature comforts.

The last few days have been busy as usual. We
spent Sunday out at UCI with the Mompremiers, Worshipped
in their church, had a leisurely lunch, toured the facilities and
were home by mid afternoon. Jesula was with us which is always
a pleasure. She is leaving for Port au Prince on Monday and returning
on the weekend with her boyfriend. This will be our first meeting with
him and I think she is looking for our blessing? We took the rest of the day
off except for the last minute prep for the family life conference on Monday.

Monday morning Phil and I worked on the school benches while
the women of the mission teams spent the morning at the conference
with the women. Phil and I joined them after lunch when their husbands
arrived. This was the first time they invited the men to the afternoon
session of the conference. We were trying to encourage improving relations
between husbands and wives. Phil and I each did a short presentation and
I think from their reactions they enjoyed it, especially the part where we laid
a BIG kiss on our wives. Zeke and Babi also helped out with that part.
There were over 200 people at the conference. It was over at 3:30pm to give
them time to get home before dark. The Hope team plans to do this again
next week but they will have a couple of guys here them so I may be out of a job.

Today part of the Hope team went to the Citadel and the left behind
remnant of the Sunnybrook team went out to Guimby school to deliver
and assemble our first shipment of school desks. We finished the final
assembly at the school with quite a crowd around us. Phil said it was like
a school assembly. The desks were for the upper grade students. We furnished
two and a half classrooms and with another delivery of 11 desks we will have
all the larger size desks delivered and upper grade classrooms furnished.
The students could hardly wait for us to get finished. They came rushing
out and carried the desks into the classrooms. They were beside themselves
that we would do this for them. Quite emotional!

On the way home we were invited to the home of a student that we
are currently sponsoring in high school. She and her mom said it was
only a little way off the road. Next time I need to get more definition of
what a little way is in Haitian terms. It was a nice walk/hike! The father is
going blind and can’t work. We visited about how he and the family were
spiritually handling this and prayed with them. Our hike back to the truck
found hot and tired team members that stayed behind and waited for us.
We weren’t real popular at that point but they soon got over it!

That trip out to Guimby is a real back breaker! A couple of Ibuprofen
tonight and we’ll see what tomorrow brings. No goats tied in the yard
today so it will be a meatless day tomorrow, which is fine with most of the team.

Bondye Bon……..Bondye Beni Ou

Dean