New Vision Ministries

Sight Restored

2011-11-28T13:35:00.001-05:00

He was lead into our eye clinic by a daughter. He was blind for almost 10 years. It was quickly evident that he had very advanced cataracts. I could not tell if there were other disease processes as well because the cataracts were too advanced to see past them. We set him up to see an American group of surgeons that were coming to Haiti to do cataract surgeries just a few months later. The patient had his surgery a week ago and came to the clinic for his post op check today.

It was so fun to hear him talk about how he could see everything for the first time in a decade. He told me that the only problem is that people from all around his village keep coming to his house to see if it was true that he could really see. With the help of Medical Ministry International we were able to make an immeasurable difference in a person's life. What a great opportunity!

These experiences are what keep us going down here. When it seems that the pressure is just overwhelming and the thoughts of a "normal" life in America and practicing optometry in an air conditioned office with people who can talk about sports and "the news" begin to tempt me to wonder what I am doing here, God sends one of those moments that helps to remind me of the special opportunity He has awarded to us.

UPDATE:
We have a container in customs that has 3 boats and motors that we will be using in the fishing ministry for the guys to be able to catch more fish. I pray we can get it out tomorrow.

Michelet had his brain surgery for hydrocephaly. He has had a few minor complications but is doing well now. We are anxious to see how much he is able to develop now that the pressure on his brain has been relieved. Keep him in your prayers as he is still susceptible to infection and other complications for some time to come.

Our SUV has major electrical/mechanical problems and is broken down at a mission near Port Au Prince. We will tow it back to Montrouis as soon as we get the truck fixed... a Ford diesel mechanic with a few days to spare should would be helpful!

We will be in the US for 3 weeks in December visiting family thanks to the generous donation of plane tickets for our entire family! We are trying to get a visa for Justice and Jean Patrick but they have not come through yet.

Liberty Academy- our American school in St. Marc is going well. We are starting to talk to teachers for next year if anyone is looking for such an opportunity. Joy is loving the school and is doing an amazing job of running everything and teaching kindergarten.

The child sponsorship program is still struggling to find sponsors for the kids in school but we have most of them in school anyway. You can sponsor a child by visiting http://celebrationchildrenshome.ning.com/group/CKC

We are in the process of opening a boy's transition home for teenage boys that don't have anywhere to go. It will be housed upstairs in the property we rented to store the boxes of food and supplies that we use in our feeding programs.

The school feeding program is going well with almost 1500 kids being fed daily and teachers being paid a salary through the same program. We are also starting a separate feeding program for the school in the fish village. The huge cooking pots are being made right now. It is a cool process as they use old aluminum pieces from junked vehicles to make the pots.

The elderly feeding program is also going well with the ladies in our women's ministry preparing the food three days per week.

The fishing is good right now and we are buying hundreds of pounds of fish per week to use in our programs and we start transporting to other ministries starting tomorrow.

The kids at the children's home are doing great. We have them in a new school this year and they are loving it. Several of our kids are going to school for the first time in their lives and that has been a wonderful change for them. You should see Daniel and Sonson in their little uniforms!

Wesner's house is getting the roof put on and windows and doors are being built right now. His wedding next month is going to be a big celebration for everyone and we have several people coming down from the US for the shindig.

All of our children including Logan who is here for a couple of months are doing great. School in St. Marc has definitely made that better and an answer to prayers.

We have a group from Operation Hope coming down again next month to do surgeries and we have been very busy with teams for the last several months. Our 8 interns leave this week for a Christmas break. We will miss them as they have been such a huge help to us at the school and the mission.

Justice's adoption is still a mystery and frustration but is apparently moving along. Our creche license is still sitting in the office of social services waiting on approval.

Anson, the 13 year old boy that was electrocuted in our yard a few weeks ago is doing much better. We had started letting him come into the mission some to help around and play with the kids. Some local adults had talked him into throwing a wire over the government electrical main where it comes into the transformer in our yard so they could steal the electricity. As he did the government electricity was on and it almost killed him. He spent a couple of weeks in the hospital and will have scars for life. Had he died, I would have been charged even though I was not there at the time. We thank God for His continual protection. Anson is now in our school sponsorship program and will live in the boy's home. He said that a lot of the local people are mad at him because he won't steal anything for them from our home. What a shame for a 13 year old to be put into that kind of position but it is a great chance for us to minister to him and rescue him from a delinquent life.

The small business program we set up for the earthquake refugees is going well. We still need a few more business ideas to put a couple of the women into but overall it is going great.

Pastor Cesar and the other pastors are doing well. I preached at Buas Nerf for their big harvest service yesterday and everyone was there. We had a good 4 hour service and they gave me a pineapple and a gallon of fresh cow's milk.

I think that is a wrap of what's going on right now. Thanks to everyone that has come to visit and sent support the last couple of months. It has been a tough last couple of months but we are looking forward to seeing friends and family next month. Pray we can get those visas for our two Haitian kids so Joy will be able to actually relax a little while in the states. If Justice is stuck here I don't think Joy will have the same experience as she would have if Justice gets to go. The Lord is in charge!

I love it when a plan comes together...

2011-09-28T22:17:00.000-04:00

Situation #1- She lost her husband and the father of 5 kids in the earthquake in 2010. He was crushed under their house as it collapsed in the earthquake. She had nowhere to go after the quake and ended up in the refugee camp in Montrouis. Through a bad relationship in the refugee camp she found herself pregnant. I met her in the camp but did not really know her until the day she was to deliver the baby. We were on our way to the hospital and we were told she was trying to have her baby but it was breach. She needed to go the hospital but did not have the money. We took her to the hospital and she had her baby boy. As time progressed and the camp closed she really began to struggle. In her mid 40's, a widow, a new mom, a refugee, an earthquake survivor, homeless, and unemployed in a community where she new no one and had no where to go.

We were blessed to be able to help madame Charles find a house to live in and rent it for her but she still had no way to provide for her family. Her baby became sick. She contracted malaria. When I went to visit her the despair in her eyes was hard to look at even though I see despair on a daily basis. She was slow to complain or seem ungrateful for past help, but she let me know that she did not know how her family was going to make it. I took her a week's supply of rice but decided we had to come up with a way for her to make some money.

Situation #2- She lived in a small house by the river. In June of 2009 she lost her home for the second time in two years. In September 2008 Hurricane Hanna washed her little rented block home away. She rebuilt a small place for her and her 3 children in the same place by the river but on that rainy day in June, it too was washed away. She found herself living in a Haiti Red Cross donated 3 person Coleman tent in that same little place by the river. Forced to drop out of school in sixth grade, Mary had her first child as a teenager. For the last 10 years she believed using her body was the only way to find food for her small family. Eight months after the flood, the tent shredded and providing little protection for the elements, she was desperate for a change- she humbly asked if there was any way we could help her find a place to live. She tells me how 2 days ago her 10 year old son found a bread fruit- a local starchy fruit prepared like a potato, and she was able to cook it for the family but for the last two days she has not had anything to feed them.

Situation #3- She had 3 little girls by the same man. Not a picture book marriage but she felt he took care of them as best he could. But his other wife did not feel the same way. She felt that the Paulette's kids were practically taking food off of her kid's plates. In a deranged, evil state of mind one hot evening, this second wife savagely murdered two of Paulette's daughters. It was more than she could emotionally handle. Over the coming months, Paulette slowly lost her mind. In a country with limited medical care of any kind, mental health facilities are all but none existent. I first met Paulette as she bathed in the middle of the street one sunny afternoon. I later learned she was not bathing. She is just fond of clothes. She doesn't always remember all of our encounters but she never forgets my name. She can't tell me her story but I learn it from neighbors. Paulette just tells me how hungry she is and how no one ever wants to help her. She is not able to take care of herself and I often find her sick and she is very malnourished. She needs someone to help.

God seems to love to work in these types of situations. Not necessarily in this order, this is how God helped His precious child in each of the above situations. We were just luck enough to be along for the ride.

We rented Mary a house. In exchange for her rent she had to join our work program and ladies development program. Her work assignment is cook food for 30 elderly shut-ins and others in the community like Paulette who cannot take care of themselves. The food is delivered hot and fresh to Paulette three days per week. We are working to add a daily vitamin and healthy juice to help maintain a healthy diet. There are 13 women that were in Mary's situation. They now all have houses for themselves and their kids and jobs to help them see that they can make a difference. They are paid with vouchers. The vouchers are redeemable for groceries at 4 local road side stands. Madame Charles and 3 other refugee widows are the owners of the stands. We helped them set up businesses where they sell rice, beans, oil, and other provisions to the community but specifically to the women in the feeding program. When they receive the vouchers, they bring them to me to buy more product at a reduced wholesale price. We help them understand business principles necessary to be able to keep their businesses viable.

Now Mary's kids eat every day. She can speak some English and has gotten me to help her start a little side business with her sister and friend selling various clothing and supplies needed for the kids that are starting school.

Paulette is currently sick and can't get out of the bed. I took her to the hospital but after several rounds of antibiotics we are sure what the infection is coming from. She is still getting her food and we even try to keep her dressed. She is not healthy mentally or physically, but she has people there to help her meet her needs.

This past week madame Charles came to buy more rice and supplies. She came with both a stack of vouchers and a handful of cash. I looked at madame Charles and asked her how things were going. As she held the stack of New Vision Ministry food voucher cards she smiled and told me her life had never been better. Now how does it get any better than that?

The Power of Belonging

2011-07-29T17:14:00.001-04:00

I was met at the back of the bare concrete block church by a sea of lime green shirts. Our fishermen and the women in our women's group all had on their New Vision Ministry T-shirts and black jeans we had helped them get. They were also all wearing white latex gloves Roger had found in our medical supply box at the fish house. It made them look strangely official. They were all serving as ushers. In the front of the church was Marcus' coffin...draped with his lime green T-shirt.

I was called in the middle of the night to tell me Marcus had had a stroke. Stephen and Autumn took him to the hospital where he died the next morning not long after I visited. He was one of our guys. He left behind two precious girls and a wife.

I gave the family strong encouragement to immediately take the body to the public morgue in St. Marc. I told them I would help with the funeral but I would not cover the cost of a private morgue. I thought they took my advice.

Two days later the family comes to me to say that a private morgue picked up the body from the hospital and had assured them they would do the funeral for cheap. Now the director of the funeral home was demanding $20,000 Haitian or about $2500 usd for the funeral. This was from a family worth about $200.

I helped the family with the money I would have paid for the simple funeral and then bought Marcus's bwafouye (canoe) from the family to do a memorial for him at the fish house. The family continued to come to plead for more money for two weeks while they sold everything they owned and borrowed money from everyone they could find to pay the morgue. I hate that system.

Finally they got $15,000 Haitian and the funeral home agreed to bury him. That is where the funeral picked up. They had a big wake the night before in which everyone present gets to drink and party at the expense of the mourning family. If the crowd feels the family did not produce enough liquor, beer, and sodas, the crowd starts throwing rocks at the family and the house. It is a very stressful time for an already stressed out family.

The funeral service was preached by a Christian pastor to an uninterested crowd. Everyone just stood and talked until he finished at which time the funeral home workers came forward to get the coffin. That is when the show began. Before anyone touched anything all of our women and guys posed in front of the coffin for a picture with their official uniforms.

As soon as the coffin was touched, dozens of women began to scream at the top of their lungs and wail. Four of our girls took the T-shirt off of the coffin and carried it one at each corner at the front of the funeral procession right behind the marching band as we went down the road in the pouring rain.

The procession lasted about half an hour until we reached the family's house. The criers cried and screamed the whole way. But now they turned it up a notch. Women began falling onto the ground and rolling in the mud screaming. One girl in particular kicked and screamed so much that the funeral officials who are responsible for getting them could not pick her up. She hit and kicked until she finally rolled off of the mud path into the water filled ditch in her best white dress. I don't understand all of that but everyone else acted like it was normal and since I was the non-Haitian in the whole processional I acted like I was used to it too.

We finally got to the tomb that had been the tomb in which Marcus' mom, aunt, and cousin were buried. They just pushed the remains of the old coffins to the side and shoved him in. Then a mason was there and ready to seal it up.

All of our group was then gathered together for a photo in front of the tomb with their matching shirts. My first group photo at a burial site.

We then visited the widow as she sat in the floor of the family mud house and each one of us passed through and kissed her. Everyone then was offered one more beer and it was over. All the crying and screaming ended as soon as the coffin was in the tomb.

It was so evident that our women and the fishermen were in a position of respect just because they were part of our group and had a T-shirt. They had a whole new self esteem. I can't wait to see how they respond when they realize they are a part of the family of the one true God.

Freedom vs. Bondage

2011-07-05T23:04:00.001-04:00

The fourth of July came and went here without fireworks or fanfare. Haiti's Independence Day is January 1st. In 1804 Haiti became the first black independent nation. The US did not support this newly free nation out of fear that our own slaves may revolt and our white independence would in some way be threatened. In the years that ensued Haiti began to fall from the most wealthy Caribbean nation known as the jewel of the Antilles to the economic mess we all know of today.

The freedom the Haitian slaves fought so hard for did not result in freedom from the depth of bondage that they had dreamt of. Today the average Haitian is only free in theory. The bondage they endure is something we as Americans can't really fathom. The life of the people we encounter everyday is the epitome of the slavery described by the apostle Paul in the book of Romans. It is the slavery to the desires of the flesh. Our daily mission is to help our friends and aquaintenances here understand the true freedom available to them through Jesus Christ.

Just last night we lost another friend to a motorcycle accident. A young man that had been to our home on several occasions through the basketball outreach of Philip, Logan, and Wesner. He left a disco drunk last night and crashed his motorcycle into an on coming car and killed himself and his young cousin. Luke had been his friend and we had shared the truth of the gospel with him at our basketball banquet last year to no avail. Just like you and I in our preconveresion state, he enjoyed his sin and rejected the Light. He chose bondage and slavery over freedom and eternal joy.

I shared frankly at our Celebrate Life women's ministry meeting last week at the fishing village. These women are the ones we found living in shredded tents with their kids by the river. We rented them all homes and now have them working in our senior feeding program. I shared with them about the plan God has revealed in His word about how to live in freedom. Most of these women have multiple children from different men and many of them have lived a life of prostituting themselves for food for themselves and their kids. As I shared the model of one man for one women for a lifetime they could not bring themselves to believe that model is for them. I tried to convince them that at this point in their lives they need to stop looking for a man to sell themselves to for food and shelter. I tried to get them to begin instead to seek God and wait for Him to send the man He has for them. One of the women objected that she can pray all day for God to send her a man but she can't wait if she can't get food for her babies. Bondage. Slavery. I tried to explain that now they have houses. Now they have jobs. Now they have food for their kids. And these things did not come from a sinful relationship but as grace from God their father. As a proof of God's perfect planning, there was a short term missionary here visiting and she had the testimony of a life just like these ladies live. She shared with tears how God had delivered her and how he could deliver them too. Only the Holy Spirit has the power to reveal the truth and we can only pray for deliverance.

One of our fisherman has been delivered. Junior is one of my favorite guys. He was living the typical life of alcoholism and womanizing. One day he came to me and grabbed me in a big hug and said that he did not understand God or anything but he knows God picked us up out of North Carolina and put us here to change their lives. It took about six more months of sharing but now Jr and his wife are converted Christians and active in their church. Now he wants to learn to read so he can read his Bible with his family. Freedom.

No matter where we live the eternal issues of freedom and slavery are always the same. Christ bought our freedom through His death and resurrection but we all must choose freedom or live our entire lives in bondage. The chains may look different. Here chains are dirty and smelly. Poverty, oppression, prostition. In America the chains are shiny and polished. Big houses, nice cars, soft church pews. But in the end they are all chains. They hold us in bondage and often we deceive ourselves into believing we are free. It grieves the heart of our Father to think he offers us freedom and liberty and we chose bondage and chains because we are comfortable that way. Let's chose freedom so we can share it with others before more people like our young friend Wade die and are dragged to the depths of eternity by their chains.

Two Years and Counting

2011-06-22T22:38:00.000-04:00

June 22, 2009 we pulled out of our driveway of our farm on Bakers mountain in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina. It was the beginning of a journey that really has been more exciting than we ever would have imagined. I wanted to give a brief update of how things are going.

I came as an optometrist planning to have a little clinic doing eye care and helping the pastor we had been working with through the years of back and forth trips. God obviously had other plans! It's not fair though because He knew about the little event on January 12, 2010 - the 7.2 earthquake that destroyed much of the country and killing 200,000 people. Had I known about that in advance, maybe I would have had other plans here too!

Celebration Children's Home is our orphanage that houses almost 20 orphans, abandoned, handicapped, or neglected children. These little ones have been instrumental in changing our lives. Our vision is to develop a home where children can be united with loving adoptive families. The home is housed in a former apartment building that we have converted and also serves as our headquarters for the ministry. We call it The Mission and we employee about 20 Haitians that work with us there. That facility also houses long term missionaries that come for extended periods to serve with us.

In a country where only about 50 percent of kids get to go to school we get to pay for almost 100 kids to go to school through our child sponsorship program. We meet monthly with these kids in our Celebration Kids Club. We are working on getting that program more organized so that friends back home can be a part of changing the lives of these young Haitians.

Pastor Cesar has almost 1500 kids in 8 schools that we support. We pay and train the teachers and now are getting to the point that we are feeding all the kids a healthy meal ever school day.

Our most impacting work - most impacting on me if not the Haitians- is our work in the local fishing village. We have 13 fisherman that we are helping to develop their fishing businesses as well as discipling them. We are there almost every day and have weekly meetings and Bible study. Also in that village we have 13 women that we took out of tents by the river where they were living after losing their homes to a flood. We rented them all houses and have them working in our community development program. Three days per week they come and cook food for elderly shut ins in the area. They also participate in weekly meetings that include training on hygiene, family planning, literacy and other issues from a Biblical perspective.

Refugees from the quake live in tent villages throughout the country. In our town we have taken the last families out of that camp and helped them rent permanent housing. We are currently working one on one with them to help them come up with a business plan for providing for the family in the aftermath of this disaster. We have set a few up with wedding dress rental businesses, cosmetic sales businesses, small food stands, dry goods stores, and other small business ventures. As with all our projects we also follow up with teaching and training of Biblical truth teaching on how to live.

Oh yeah I almost forgot, we also do eye care and medical care. We have the only permanent eye clinics in our part of the country. This week we even have team of general surgeons here doing hernia repairs, tumor removals, and other much needed surgeries. What a blessing!

In the midst of all of that we are also trying to raise our 5 American and one Haitian baby that live here with us. School is our biggest challenge at the moment. We have discovered that homeschooling here is so hard due to our daily challenges. We found a mission school in St. Marc but they are needing teachers. If you know anyone interested in coming to teach for a year let me know.

So they we are in a nutshell. I am sure I left some stuff out but those are the high points. Keep us in your prayers and come to see us. We live in a hotel and we will leave the light on for you.

Hero Makeover

2011-06-02T22:47:00.003-04:00

My father is my greatest hero. He set a high bar for me to shoot for as a husband, father, and spiritual giant. He taught me everything I know about how to stick it out in tough times and come out the better for it. When I grow up I want to be just like Dad. He is sitting now by his mother's deathbed with faith and humility that is a testimony of faithfulness.

My other heroes in life have varied as the seasons of my life have passed. As I mature in my Christian faith, I realize that many of the heroes of my past were not the best role models to follow. In the years of my life when I was consumed by the American dream of sucess and comfort, most of my heroes were the men that had reached the heights of worldly sucess for which I strived. One such man was the most sucessful businessman I personally knew. He had been very blessed by God and truly seemed to have it all. I only knew him from a distance but desired to be just like him. While I was prayer leader at our church he once flew us in his jet to New York City to meet Jim Cymbala and attend a prayer meeting at The Brooklyn Tabernacle. I wanted to be able to do stuff like that for people. What a life!

May 31 marked two years since I walked out of my optometry practices and businesses. It marks the day the whole world changed for me. Even my heroes changed. The American dream and living in bondage to the deceitfulness of riches were becoming a thing of the past. I embarqued on a journey that would take me to places both bodily and spiritually that I never dreamed I would go. In just two short years I have seen God in ways I never dreamed possible. I have learned more about myself and the Kingdom of Heaven than I ever would have imagined. But it has not been easy. There are days I want to jump in the ocean and swim home to America! There are times when I lose sight of the end goal of pleasing God and I only want peace. But that is when God steps in and reminds of where we are headed.

On a hot day about a month ago I was in Port au Prince with Joy buying supplies for the mission. We had been struggling with several things in the ministry and in our family and needed a big dose of grace. Then my phone rang. It was my hero businessman. He never called me when I was living in America and I secretly covetted his life. I didn't even know how he got my number.He began to tell me how God had been working in his life and showing him things he needed to change. He had been reading some books and studying the Bible and God had shown him that his life of indulgence was non-Biblical and that he needed a radical change. He said God put us on his heart and he wanted to know if he could come down to visit so we could talk. I was blown away. My God loves me so much that he took the inner thoughts of my sinful heart and rearranged things in such a way as to unequivocably show me that what He had told me was true. The path He had put us on was the true Way. He showed me unmeritted grace and helped me see He was there.

My hero and now friend did come down and spend the week with us. He shared unashamedly how God was breaking Him and setting him free. His testimony was one of the most powerful I have ever heard first hand of God through His spirit revealing truth to one of his children. It was a great week. I learned so much and received great wisdom from a wise saint. He is now more of a hero in my eyes than he ever was. Not because of what he has or has done, but because of who he is becoming. He has now made my short list of heroes with my dad, pastor Ruffin, Bill Stafford, and Aquaman.

Pirates, Fishermen, and Patient Seekers

2011-05-24T22:30:00.000-04:00

I was passing a TV today and saw an advertisement for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. As I look out our hotel window where we live I see the Caribbean Sea, I can't help but think about the pirates that cruised these waters in years past. As a major sugar producing colony, Haiti was a major working grounds for pirates that hijacked the many merchant ships that cruised these waters. Pirates were not good people. They were very hard men that were theives and murderers that lived tough lives. They were not the glamorized heroes like Captain Jack Sparrow. They lived very superstitious lives where they created their own religion to explain the world around them. I think about how many of those men spent their lives trying to cope with the guilt of the lives they lived. How many spent their lives drowning the guilt of a life of sin in rum that flowed through the islands here? How many ever found the truth? How many ever learned there was a loving God who died to forgive them of ALL of their sins? How many found the peace that I found when God delivered me from the horrible life that I lived prior to my surrender to the Lordship of my Lord?

As I think about these men that will spend eternity seperated from God in a real Hell much worse than the feared afterlife that plagued their nightmares, I think about men like our fisherman. Men that live lives plagued by alcoholism, polygamy, fear induced from voodoo beliefs, and the guilt from knowing they live a life of deciet and lies. I think of men like Roger and his brother Lifrans that I get to work with everyday processing fish and trying to find ways to reach out to the community in which they live. They know they are sinners. They know that the God that I serve does not approve of the lives they live but they are so entrenced in false religion that they can't believe that the same God loves them immensely. They don't truly understand why in the world I would chose to enter their village and pass my days with Luke and our family trying to make their lives better as we teach them about truth.

Then there is Ayiti. Ayiti is a grounds keeper at the hotel where we live. His job is to sweep the unused tennis courts everyday and pick up trash that blows in from the sea. Ayiti came to me a few weeks ago sick. I examined him and found he had a severe ear infection. I gave him antibiotics and drops (eye drops that I had him put in his ear) and he got better. He was so grateful that I took the time just to talk to him and check up on him daily until he got better. He started making it a point to catch me everyday as me and Joy go for our morning walk to just check in with me. Then about 2 weeks ago he started bringing me everyone he could find that is sick. He does not bring them to me during normal hours. He knows I work long days so almost everynight as we are getting our kids ready for bed, Ayiti lightly knocks on our door with the day's patients. Last week it was a hotel worker with a bad stomach infection that was keeping him from eating. This weekend it was 3 workers from a little road side restuarant across the street with a severe skin fungal infection. Tonight it was 2 security guards. One had a headache and one with a bad back pain. Ayiti has made himself our personal triage nurse. He brings the patient to me and thoroughly explains their symptoms and then asks me to examine them. The term "EYE" doctor does not really register with my new friend. He has found a place where he is important. He is no longer the bottom of the employee social ladder. He now has an important position of helping others. Ayiti is not yet a Christian but he knows that I never turn anyone away and that I treat them all with love and respect. He now spends the time after he finishes work going around looking for sick people. He is trying to find a way to make himself a "good" person. I try to share with Ayiti that he needs God. He is not yet ready to truly listen but he knows that something about us is different. That is why we are here.

Every day we work with our orphans at the mission. We provide medical and eye care to some of the poorest people in the world. We feed children in the schools. Pay for kids to get an education. Help the fisherman catch more fish and then learn how to sell them and invest in their community. We train the women in our housing program to take better care of their kids and they are learning to cook food on our propane stoves to feed homebound widows. With all of those programs and the hours invested weekly, the ONLY thing that matters is when one of our people starts to believe we love them. The scriptures come alive as we see why Jesus said forget everything else and Love your God and Love others. True religion. Love God...Love others. In America and on the mission field we make it so complicated. We have to remember that we feed, educate, train, house, and heal BECAUSE we love. We don't do it to get the right to share the gospel of Jesus. We don't do it because we feel sorry for them. We don't do it because we are trying to earn God's favor. We do it because GOD has placed a love in our hearts for our people. BECAUSE we love them, of course we share the truth of the Bible and the Living God. We could never say we truly love them if we did not care about their greatest need... to know God and Love HIM.

The hardship comes when we do all we do and NOT see people understand their need for God and they continue in their sin and hatred of truth. It hurts so much when we try to reach out and only get people to listen when we have food or clothes or medicine to give. We have not seen sweeping revival and hundreds come to knowledge of God but that only makes us more desperate. But when Ayiti comes to my door with his daily patient I simply have to remember that MY job is to love them and share the truth. GOD's job is to open their eyes and bring them to an understanding of their sin condition.

Pirates, fisherman, patient seekers, me, and you. We all need and want the same thing... to know the anser to "why am I here and how do I make my life count". All the answers are made available to us in God's word but we spend our lives WORKING and STRIVING and often miss the opportunities to just love people and find our place.

Hard Life in Hispaniola

2011-05-02T22:51:00.000-04:00

Processing Sugar Cane

Joy with some of the kids in the batay

Hispaniola was discovered by Christopher Columbus and colonized before the mainland of North America. Today it is divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. We live in Haiti but this week we took a trip to the DR.

The difference between Haiti and the Dominican are like night and day. The Dominican has modern cities and visible infrastructure. It is a major tourist destination and many ex-patriats retire there or move there from all over the world. The land is beautifully lush and forrested. The only thing that really seems similar is the depth of poverty in which the Haitians live.

Houses at Amistad Batay

Haitians flee to the DR to escape the conditions of Haiti only to find themselves in a prejudice society where Haitians continue to live tough lives for the most part. We have met a few Haitians who have found good jobs and are thriving. It is a huge blessing to talk to them and see how blessed they are. But this is still the extreme exception and not the rule for Haitians here.

Patients In Clinic

Luke Working in Clinic

Jacy Giving out Glasses and Josie Giving out Lollipops

We took our bus and made the 9 hour journey from Port au Prince to Santo Domingo in a quick 14 hours. We had issues at the border- of course- got scammed a couple of times- of course- but made it finally. After one night in "La Capital" we headed to the north coast. Six hours over the mountains to arrive in Puerto Plata for 5 days. We are here with all 6 of our kids including Justice- whose papers that took us an extra month to get but have not even been looked at yet. We also brought Dago, Wesner, Baz, Madame Raymonde, and Jarrod- a PA friend from TX.

Clinic Under a Mango Tree

Loving His New Specs- He's Smiling on the Inside

Uncut Sugar Cane Fields Due to US Subsidies

We got to spend two days doing eye clinics in Batays around Puerto Plata. A Batay is a settlement in the middle of the sugar cane fields where the workers live with their families. The conditions are horrible. No septic, no electricity, limited water, and no security. The two batays in which we worked were even worse off. They are located in the middle of a plantation that a Cuban family owns. The family owns over 1 million acres of sugar cane fields in the DR and are paid subsidies by the U.S. and Dominican governments to NOT harvest the cane anymore. Because of that, the people living in the Batays are out of work. The kids that are born here are not given birth certificates which makes it practically impossible to go ever go to school. We were given a glimpse into yet another facet of the difficulty of the plight of the average Haitian.

Joy Visiting the Villagers

The clinics were great. We saw hundreds of very grateful people. The people here are thankful for help and their attitude is different than the people we encounter daily in Montrouis. The people here, young and old alike, just want work. They are not surrounded by humanitarian groups doing free distributions of everything from food to condoms like we see in Haiti. The people are not trained to seek out the white people to meet their needs. They know that if they can find some work, then they can make it. It was refreshing to see that attitude even though the work is so sparse for uneducated and often hated Haitian immigrants.

Joy Doing a Little Shopping

We return to Santo Domingo tomorrow to start looking for sources for supplies we need for The Mission. We are also planning to talk to a pastor in the south of the island that works in many of the Batays there and hopefully be able to go and see a working plantation and see how we might be able to help in the future.

Then we return to our home on the other side of Hispaniola. We plannded the trip to be a time of retreat for our staff, relaxation for our family, and an exploratory excusion into the lives and plight of Dominican Haitians. It has been all of the above. We are reminded why we have been called to reach out and share the love of Jesus with some of the most awesome people on earth. What an honor!

Resurrection Parade

2011-04-26T13:04:00.000-04:00

Early Easter morning we got all of our kids from the mission and went for a Resurrection parade. The kids had made banners and took instruments and we marched up the hill behind the mission making a lot of noise in the name of the Lord.

Jacy Klaire making sure Nakisha did not get left behind

After the parade we made our way back to the mission for a worship service and teaching time. We are so blessed by the kids God has sent our way for the mission. We have 19 kids now and each one is a special blessing from God. There are 10 boys and 9 girls. They include true orphans, abandoned children, and handicapped children. Each one has a story of how man and sin corrupt and destroy. We have kids whose parents were murdered by voodoo. Kids whose parents died of preventable disease. Kids whose parents abandoned them because of poverty and injustice. It makes it hard to remember at times that God is truly sovereign and in total control. We tend to wonder where God is when evil seems to be able to run so rampant. But then we remember that God has told us in the Bible that injustice and corruption and hardship are repercussions of living in a fallen world. We are doing a study with our staff and it reminds us that God chose to give man a choice of sin or righteous obedience. The choice of sin leads to destruction and there are always innocent bystanders...like our little Nakisha, or Jeffnika, or any of the other angels in our home. It does not take away from the fact that God is completely loving, and completely good, and completely powerful. He has a perfect plan for each of our lives and if we choose to follow Him and seek Him we can find and live out that plan. When that happens, we find peace even in difficult times. We find joy even when happiness evades us. It allows us to see that God really does have a good plan even for these kids that qualify as the "least of these". On Resurrection Sunday, we are reminded that the Cross is the key to that understanding. Only through Jesus can we really begin to see the world the way God does. Without Jesus coming and dying for us, we could never see the world the way God does and have a desire to see God glorified even in the darkest of circumstances.

The Girls

Michelet and his New Wheels

The Boys

Craft Time

Our Kids in Craft Time

When things get discouraging, God seems to always come through with a source of encouragement and insight. We have spent 3 months trying to get things together to go to the Dominican Republic for a time of seeking sources for supplies, resting, and partnering with a Dominican mission to do eye exams at an orphanage and street mission. We had everything packed to leave Monday and the papers did not come through. We spent the day getting more paperwork done and planned to leave today. Then the papers were rejected because one of the notaries did not stamp it right. So we had to get Justice's biological father and Dago together to go back to Port au Prince to redo the paper work. Now we are waiting to see if we get to leave tomorrow. But when things get frustrating we have to remember that the life of a Christian is a life of death to self and all rights and expectations. We have to remember that God has graciously chosen us to be a part of that 'good' plan for each of these little ones, and for that we are truly grateful.

Meals on Wheels Haiti Style

2011-04-17T22:50:00.003-04:00

When we moved to Haiti in 2009 we believed that God was calling us to live by a different model of ministry. We truly believed that God has a deep love for His Haitian children and a plan to lift them out of their despair and into lives of freedom through knowledge of His love. We believed that if God has a plan to do work then He Himself had the means to fund that work. We believed that if we would be faithful to throw ourselves completely into finding what God wanted to do and then spent our time in that, then He would send the money to do it. I did not want to spend several months each year doing fund raising when instead we could be rescueing babies and taking care of the sick and dying. I was totally unsure how it would all work out but truly believed God would provide the funds.

In July 2010 the river in Montrouis flooded due to many factors including a poorly designed bridge and extensive deforrestation. The flood washed away many homes in our fishing village leaving dozens of single moms and their kids homeless. Tents were provided but that was almost a year ago and the tents have been destroyed. We felt God wanted us to reach out to these desperate women and give them hope.We had a friend that agreed to help us rent homes for 18 of the women. But we did not want to stop there. Paying for someone's house as a handout is more detrimental in the long run than helpful. So instead we decided to start a program for these women to reach out to their own community.

Joy has a heart for the elderly and widows and we were already taking fish to many widows in our area on a weekly basis. But Joy had a desire to start a "Meals on Wheels" Haiti style- the food will all be delivered by foot but Meals on Foot did not sound as good. So we are now taking the 18 single moms that are the outcasts from their society. Many have multiple children from multiple men. All are uneducated and fundamentally illiterate. Most have been raped and abused. We want to help them become active participants in changing their community and their lives. We want them to know that God has a better plan for them and that although they have never believed it, they are valuable and lovable and loved.In order to be in our housing program the women had to agree to several conditions. First of all they have to come to weekly Life Lesson classes. These classes involve life skills training like hygeine and mothering skills. It also involves Bible study that teaches them abstinance and the true value of their body and their lives. In addition to the classes the women agree to work in our feeding program. They will come three days per week to prepare and deliver the hot meals to the elderly shut-ins. They will also be taking clean water and vitamins. We are training them to look for signs of illness and to spend time with the client. Our goal is to help them understand the principle of investing their lives in others.The first two days they work each week will go towards paying for their house we rented. The third day they will get paid and taught how to mange the money.

The program will feed about 150 hot meals per week and employ the 18 single moms. We pray that in the long run the effects will change many families and help many to come to know the love of Christ. I did not know how we would pay to fund the program but we went ahead and started renting all the houses. This past week a man we met while here in Haiti called and said he and his wife really wanted to find a program they could get involved with. I emailed him the outline of Meals on Wheels and he called me tonight and said they had all the expenses covered and would start sending a check every month to cover all the costs. God had a plan. He chose by grace to reveal it to us. We started it by faith. And He provided the funding. In the words of Hannible from The A Team, "I just love it when a plan comes together!"

What is an Orphanage?

2011-03-22T21:19:00.002-04:00

It's been a while...over a month...since our last post. It has been quite a month and lots of things have taken place and I apologize for not keeping people updated. Here is an update of what's happening in our little piece of Caribbean paradise. (I unashamedly embedded my kids pictures in the text without any obvious reason except for the fact that I am an excessively proud daddy...)
Jacy Klaire on her 9th Birthday

When we first moved here I was naively under the false impression that an orphanage is where orphans live. I am not sure how I came to that crazy conclusion. Possibly the NAME of the place! But in Haiti, sad to say, an orphanage is NOT typically filled with orphans. It turns out that the much more common definition of orphanage is a great way for self serving Haitians and other foreign nationals to earn a very good living exploiting children whose parents are very alive but are happy to let someone else raise their children and use them as a fund raising tool through the internet and even in person.

Jaxon in a rare calm moment

A typical orphanage in Haiti is when someone, usually a "pastor", decides to take in a bunch of local kids to live at least part time- when the white people come to town- in a facility that they have that looks really sad and really needs someone to come along and just help those poor, dirty, naked, malnourished, little orphans that this loving but under funded pastor has graciously taken in. It's all a scam. A very devious, evil, manipulative scam. I don't want to sound jaded...even though I am...because jaded is not one of the fruits of the spirit listed in the Bible. However, it is a total reality for us because DAILY I have people that try to give us children to raise for them so that they won't have to and they have been programmed to think that way because of so many corrupt child exploiters that have built a horrible system here over the last 50 years. And of course, who are the victims? The duped white people that come and give their money to a con man? No way! The victims, as always, are the kids. They are abused, kept "pitiful" looking, and even worse, taught how the 'system' works. Most girls raised in these homes are raped by age 13. Many of the kids get sick from preventable diseases and very few ever go to school. They are the oppressed poor that do not have a voice of their own. And now, we are in the middle of this whole deal because we have a facility to minister to kids too. So what are we doing about it?

Sissy Joe in her Luau outfit for Jacy's Birthday

First of all, we have investigated the situation extensively. We discoverered that hundreds of thousands of dollars flow through these homes every year and end up in the hands of crooks and not as food in the bellies of starving children. So we decided to form a special kind of home called a creche. A creche is a home specifically for children that are available for adoption. At first, I arrogantly said we would take in NOTHING but orphans. No kids who had parents at all. Any parent that brought us kids to take, I would proudly explain to them how God had given them that child and that I would help them raise the child but I would not take the child into our home. Then we had one of those children get kidnapped. Then another one died. So that caused me to reevaluate my stance. Then there was Justice. She had a mother that abandoned her and a 65 year old alcoholic father. Now she is ours. Even more at home was the fact that our very own adopted children, Judah, Josie, and Jaxon all have parents but they were taken from them due to an inability of the parent to provide for the children. So we got wise counsel from licensing board here in Haiti along with others and redefined what type of children we would take into our home through the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Judah is not having a 'happy' day

Through that process God has blessed Celebration Children's Home so much. We now have 16 children living at the home. Many are true orphans. Others were abandoned. Still others like 2 little 2 year old girls we have recently taken in, are from mothers that have experienced one type of tragedy or another and now simply cannot or will not take care of the children. BUT, in order for us to take the child, the parents have to go with us to the government office and sign over all rights to us and acknowledge that the children are eligible for adoption. That eliminates many people who come and want us to simply raise their kids for them. The kids we take have officially been given away by any family that is existing. It is a heart breaking scene every time. More so for us than the family usually. I take a child into my arms that have often NEVER had a man hold them. Many have never even had a mother show them genuine affection. After just a couple of days you can begin to see sunshine replace the cloudy shadow that seemed to penetrate so deeply into the neglected children. We love it and count it an honor and blessing to be able to be the rescuer on Jesus' behalf for these babies and children.

Luke is an amazing teenage missionary. He has taught me so much.

Our plan is to be able to get these children adopted without charging orphanage fees. Other creches in Haiti if they have legitimately adoptable children they often charge at least $12,000 - 15,000 USD for orphanage fees per child being adopted. Our plan is to allow donors to continue to pay to keep the Mission running and adoptive parents pay the legal fees and government fees for the adoption but nothing directly to us. We are in the process of Justice being adopted and are working with another missionary that is working on adopting 4 children and that will give us more exact understanding of the whole process. In the mean time, we are enjoying investing in the little ones we have. We also support a couple of different orphanages from St. Marc to Montrouis that are not legit but the kids need food, and clothes, and school. And we get to try to change the system one step at a time. We constantly get calls from groups that came to Haiti and gave thousands of dollars to an orphanage here only to find out later it was a shell and now the people are disenfranchised and disappointed. But that is why we are here. To be light in darkness. To be a voice for the abused, helpless, weak, and oppressed. We don't get angry- too often-or frustrated- excessively, instead, we become more and more determined. We pray for more diligence. More patience. More wisdom. More insight. And more opportunity to see people set free from the bondage of deciet and manipulation.

We have had some amazing teams come down to help us lately. I can't tell you how encouraged we have been. God is really covering us with blessing. We are planning to go to the Dominican Republic next week in our bus with the family and our leadership staff. We want to check out possible places to get some boats for our fishing ministry as well as other supplies. We are also going to do a leadership retreat and let my family have a couple of days of refreshment. I will let you know how that goes. Joy could use it and so could her husband.

Cocobe' (Co-co'-bay)

2011-02-18T16:52:00.000-05:00

Cocobe' in Haiti is the word given to anyone who is crippled or handicapped. It is a word of contempt in most cases lacking any connotation of compassion. In a culture where resources are so limited and life is already so fragile, very little compassion is reserved for those that are viewed as a waste of resources. Why use up food, time, energy, and resources for a life that is not going to make any difference? Even good intentioned, moral people have this mindset most of the time. But Kevin was able to break down that wall in many of the lives he encountered in his short time here.

We were given Kevin as a last resort after he lost his mom in the Earthquake in January 2010. He came to live with us in August and he brought much joy and readjustment of priorities into our lives. The lady that found him after the earthquake could not care for him and he weighed just 13 pounds at age 3 when we got him. He had severe cerebral palsy and could not do anything for himself, but he had a smile that beamed and melted hearts.

Kevin managed to win over the hearts of all of our Haitian staff as well as any visiting missionaries that came to visit. He would just hang there on my arm and smile ear to ear as we would go about our work around the mission. I understand more than ever that every life is precious. Every person is a perfectly planned out piece in the mechanism of God's creation. Even though Kevin passed away today, I know his life made a difference. I know it did for a fact because it made a difference in me.

I have never felt like I could care for a special needs child. I never thought I had the patience or compassion. But I learned that God loves to use the least likely of techniques to change the things in us that need changing. As I helped build a coffin today to hold my little buddy and then washed and arranged his body before Joy and I dressed him for his burial, I could sense in my heart that God had done a work in me to help me love in a broader way and appreciate the sacredness of this fragile life we are given.

We buried Kevin today just 3 weeks after burying little Callie. It has only been 2 months since Daphne died in my arms in the same hospital where Kevin died. It is strange how death has such a profound affect on our view of life.

Joy reminded me as we were acting as funeral directors and dressing Kevin for his funeral, that children are a "gift" from the Lord. When we got Kevin he did not have a name. They never named him because his life did not seem to have a reason. But I praise God for the "gift" He gave us in little Kevin. I praise Him because it helps me appreciate the "gift" of all of our other kids- both Haitian and American. I pray that I never get to where I can let another day go by without TRULY cherishing my family and friends and the ones God has given us to minister to. Most of our lives are not as short as Kevin's but one day we will be just as gone as he is right now. I am reading a book right now that I recommend called "Outlive Your Life" by Max Lucado. I pray I can outlive my life in such a way that somewhere, in some way, some one can say that God used me to change something in them the same way that God used Kevin to change something in me.

For God So Loved the World that He Gave...

2011-02-04T17:59:00.001-05:00

Things have been rather complicated as of late. We moved to Haiti 7 months before the earthquake. We lived in a little apartment on top of a small orphanage. After the quake we moved from there to a place we found that we could rent from a Frenchman for one year. During that year God blessed and we were able to start a children's home and all of the other projects you can read about on this blog. But then that year ended and the Frenchman did not want to renew the lease. That left us home hunting again.

The place we left was a resort-like property on the water where we were able to enjoy the beauty of the Caribbean. But it was very high maintenance and I had to spend lots of time and money generating electricity, pumping water, and fixing problems. All of which had to be done after spending the day caring for the needs of the mission and the people we were ministering to. So as we learned we would have to move we knew God would open a door for us...but as is often the case, it was not until the last minute that it opened.

We looked and looked for a house that could accommodate a family of 8 and be secure and safe for the family during times of me being on the road or out late. We also needed to be close to the mission and the fishing village. As I was getting tired of looking for houses, Joy recommended that we go to the local hotels and ask if they had apartments or other properties to rent. I hesitated as I thought that it would be too expensive even if they did have something. So Joy took the initiative and called a friend that worked at one of the hotels and got us an appointment with the manager. Long story short, we were able to work out a deal where I will serve as their eye doctor and our teams will stay there if they need a hotel, in exchange they let us rent the one 3 room apartment that they have that just so happens became available for the first time in three years. So although we all 8 live in under 600 square feet, we love our new home. It is safe, secure, and Joy has people there that speak English!

We have already been able to meet people from Germany, Bermuda, and several other missions as well as making connections that have allowed us to transport a patient via helicopter to PaP, hopefully provide a source of water for the Mission, and a connection with Samaritan's Purse to get OCC shoe boxes for our 1500 kids in Pastor Cesar's schools for next year...all in our first week at the new place. God is so good!

We were at the mission Monday and little 5 month old Callie had a fever. We started medication and thought she was doing okay. Tuesday night she took a turn for the worse and died at 4 am Wednesday. We do not know if she was suffering from an infection related to her mother's death a month ago or some other type of infection. It was a painful loss of such a precious little child. Mirlande was holding her as she died and so she is struggling with the reality of the loss. It is still hard to believe she is gone.

So much more is going on with the orphanage, teams that are working with us, the fishing ministry which is really taking off, and a couple of new programs for women, and a building project to get the families out of tents by the river. I will try to blog on each of those opportunities in the days to come.

John 3:16 is probably the most quoted verse in the Bible. It says "For God so loved that world that He gave..." What did God give? If He has an unlimited supply of EVERYTHING, what could He give that would be a sacrifice? The only thing He could possibly give that would be sacrificial to demonstrate His love for the world was Himself. Anything else would have been simply giving out of His abundance but not a sacrifice. Who did He give himself to? The world. So God demonstrated His love by giving Himself to the world. He is our supreme example. We are ALL called to do the same thing. ALL of us. We are not called to give a token out of our abundance. We are called to give ourselves...to the world. But that only comes when we- the same way God does- love the world. And how do we as selfish, fearful, lazy, comfort seeking, pleasure driven creatures come to a place in our lives where we are willing to give OURSELVES to a sinful, stinky, deceitful, ungrateful, hateful world?

I think there is only one way that can happen. We have to get to KNOW God. As we get to know God deeper intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and physically we begin to love Him more. It is inevitable. As we get to know a God that is the manifestation of love- God is love 1 John 4:8- we don't have to work up a churchy presentation of love. We can't help but develop a deeper love for God. It is the natural response of knowing "love". As we know Him, we love Him. As we love Him we develop a burning desire to demonstrate our love TO Him.

As we begin that process we often feel that religious activity can actually express our love to Him. We often try to come up with ways to express our love out of true and righteous motives. But eventually through continuing to seek Him, we find that His example in the most quoted verse of the Bible is the only way for us to truly show Him we love Him. We must give ourselves. And who do we literally give ourselves to? The World. It is the only way for us to show God we love Him. Our love for the world is birthed in our desire to show God our love for Him. It is all God's plan. Why is it so hard for us to see that God so loved the world that He gave...Himself...so that we would give ourselves...to the world...so we can care for the poor, meet the needs of the orphans, be a voice for the oppressed, and a light in darkness so that the world will know God so loves them. By doing so, we find the try meaning of faith, love, hope, life, and eternity. So in the end we are the ones that truly receive the end product of God's love for the world. What an awesome God to allow us to be such an integral part of His plan for His world.

We are all in that plan somewhere. We start off as the recipient of someone else's understanding of God and their desire to love Him so they share love with us. Then we progress to the place where we are working through the religious facade of what love for God looks like. And finally we get to where we understand that to know God, means to love God, and a desire to give ourselves WHOLLY to His world and we spend the rest of our lives on earth trying to learn what that looks like for us individually. In the process, God saves us, and redeems us, and matures us. Where are you today?

One Year Post-Quake

2011-01-12T21:04:00.000-05:00

One year has come and gone since the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010. Today was a day of remembrance throughout the country. I don't want to remember the days after the quake but I do want to remember the hundreds of thousands of people that lost family and friends. It is a sad situation to see how little progress has taken place in the rebuilding process. Hundreds of thousands of people...yes people...not just Haitians...not just 'refugees'...not just poverty stricken masses...they are people...with hearts, and needs, and emotions, and psychological scars, and fears, and dreams, and heart aches...and they are living in tents made of year old tarps and they are waiting for the government to come to their aid...the Haitian government. Sit and think for a minute that your only source of hope is for one of the most incompetent and corrupt governments in the world to come to meet your most basic of needs. So that is where we come in. We have the chance to offer them true hope. Hope in eternity as well as hope for today and tomorrow. The crazy thing for us now is that because of this past year many of these 'people' have become friends of our family. We have seen babies born in the refugee camps and others die. We don't know what the next year holds but we pray we can see deliverance from bondage for many of the people that we know. We have the chance to give mommies hope that their baby will be able to get medicine when they are sick. We are able to give hard working fisherman hope that they will be able to send their kids to school so that they can have a better opportunity for providing for their families. We are able to help elderly women see to sort their own beans again for the first time in years. We are able to help hundreds of kids believe that someone actually sees them. And we are able to help dying souls believe that once it is time for them to "cross over" they can actually enter into eternity with peace by having a relationship with the one true God.

It has not been an easy year since the quake for anyone but we are grateful for the progress God has given us in the ministry of many lives here. We believe we were here for a reason and that God has a plan for us bigger than ourselves. Thanks to all of you back home who make it possible for us to keep on course here. Thanks for your prayers and your on going support.

(I have to link you to a blog for a friend that visited last week. He is the running back for Texas Tech and came down to work here the day after their Cotton Bowl game. He is an amazing photographer and took some pictures that are just awesome and he is helping with our child sponsorship program. He also took the picture at the beginning of this blog. Here is the link to his blog. Thanks so much Baron Batch!)

www.baronbatch.blogspot.com

Beyond 2010

2011-01-07T14:38:00.000-05:00

What a year 2010 turned out to be for our family. I can't believe it has been almost a year since the January 12th earthquake. It seems like just yesterday when I think of the experiences of the weeks following the disaster but yet in a way it seems like years have passed. It seems strange that everything we have seen happen here has all taken place in just one year. It was a year that we got to really see people at their darkest moments and most desperate. But at the same time I feel that I personally grew more in 2010 than in any other year of my life. I have learned so much about myself and about the things in life that really matter. I don't have time to share all of those lessons here and much of it is too personal to publish. I know that the things I have learned are just part of God continueing to prepare us to be used to meet people's needs as we invest ourselves in others.

Here's a breif update of what's been going on lately:

"I'll NEVER go to Haiti...I can tell you that right now"- Logan commented through tear filled eyes days before we moved here in 2009. He felt he was losing his mom and his family. He did not see how it could be part of a 'good' plan from God. In December he made his first trip back since he was here the day of the earthquake. He spent 3 weeks helping with projects and getting to know his little Haitian sister Justice. It was a sweet time and a gift to Joy through the holidays.

Cool Hand Luke- "What we have here...is a failure...to communicate..." I love that movie...and Luke has proven that is not a problem for him. He is already learning the language well and loves helping the guys in the fishing ministry and working at the mission. He is home schooling with Jacy Klaire and doing well. He is truly a missionary in every sense of the word.

Escaline - or Callie as we call her- lost her mom to an infection 2 months after her birth. She was left with a father along with 7 other children. The father was unable to care for her and brought her down the mountain for us to take. She is doing great and is one of the sweetest little angels you have ever seen.

For Christmas we took the family and our guys to Saut d'eau falls. A sacred site to catholics and voodooists. It is a huge cascading water fall that makes you forget you are in the desolate country of Haiti. Here you see Luke and Wesner at the foot of one of the falls.

Street services with our bus have become one of our primary ways of interacting with the community. We pull the bus up to a spot beside the road and hang a sheet of plywood on the back rack. We open the handicap ramp and roll out 2- 400 watt speakers and set up a projector and show videos and worship songs and have services. This picture is of us showing the Jesus Film in Creole at a refugee camp of people displaced from the quake. It was a fun time with a team from Joy's home town of Maiden, NC. Thanks pastor Jonathan for all the help you guys were to us.

We have been working at The Mission to make a parking lot. Here is Luke and the guys spreading gravel.

Fidelo showed up at the mission in very serious condition. He had gone to a hospital 8 days earlier with an eye infection but the hospital just gave him a drop and sent him away. By the time he came to us he could not talk or see and could barely stand up. He had a very high fever with neurological symptoms. And as you see a more than slightly swollen right eye. I took him immediately to a little mission hospital where we could start I.V. antibiotics. After a couple of days the neurological symptoms began to subside and his fever was down. This picture is after a week. The eye is still an issue but we were able to save his life.

Michelet is one of our fisherman and Dedette helps us in processessing the fish. Their mom is very sick and near death so Joy and I were going to visit her with a group visiting from Operation Hope out of Lubbock, TX. As we were going through the village by the river, Joy came upon a naked baby covered in sores and flies and gnats. Open wounds and scabies covered most of her body. The mother was near by but she was not in much better condition and could not open her eyes due to a horrible eye infection. Joy picked up the baby and took her to the mission to clean and medicate her. We also took the mother to the eye clinic and started her on medication as well. As we were returning, the mother begged us to take the baby and let her live with us. We tried to tell the mom we could not take it and so we returned them home. In the trip back home as I talked to the mom, I learned she was not mentally able to understand. We found family members and discovered the girl was first pregnant at 13 and this is her third child and she is 18 years old. She is not mentally competant and does not know who the father is for 2 of the children. No family is able to take the children in so they live in a shack on the dirt floor with a mother that is mentally unable to care for them. After having the entire family and practically everyone in the village tell us that the mother truly can't care for them and wants to give them up, we took little Jefnica and her 4 year old sister Gatina to live at the mission. That was just 3 days ago and they are doing great. I went to visit the mom today and her family and they are so thankful for us being able to help them. If we ever move back to the states, someone needs to give Joy an honorary social workers license. She spends much of her day in that role!

The day we discharged Fidelo from the hospital we were going to visit some women in a village that had tried to get us to take their 4 children. We wanted to see how they were living and if the mothers were able to care for the babies if we helped them with food and supplies. As we drove up we saw that an accident had occured. A far too frequent event since the new road has been finished. As we were parking the bus we saw one of the girls we were going to visit running up the road with a pillow. She ran to me and told me that her mom had just been ran over. We rushed to the scene and found the mother conscious but with injuries to her head and lower body. We loaded her into the bus and took her to the mission hospital. We assisted in getting her calf sown up and her other injuries 'briefly' checked and then took her to The Mission to take care of her for a few days. She is doing better now and the picture above is from Tuesday this week when we took her back to her house. We also decided not to take the babies fom that village but we are going to help teach the girls to be mothers and care for their babies without having more.

Kitleen went into hidding after she refused to give her babies to the man that had tried to bribe her. We originally heard she had given in and let him have them. Later we discovered she could not do it at the last minute but was afraid of what he might do. Her twins were Joy's first babies that Joy helped to rescue. Today I went to visit them in their new house. The little boy is still struggling. He is 14 months old and still has no teeth, can't sit or talk, and weighs barely 10 pounds. We are going to start him on a program available for malnourished children and see if we can't get him on track. The mom is pregnant again and lives with her 18 year old sister who has a 3 month old baby too.

Whenever I get to feeling like things are overwhelming or too tough God sends me a reminder that things could be worse. We came by after this bus ran off of the road in a bad place on the way from St. Marc. God is always there and we are grateful to be used to touch so many lives. It seems lately that God is just putting us in the right place at the right time to be a tool to rescue people from dire situations. We are grateful. Although we have seen some lost, we rejoice for the ones we get to have a part in their deliverance. We look forward to 2011. Earthquakes, colera, riots, hurricanes, and dead friends were not on our radar as we entered 2010. But neither were-

Kristi and Krista- Colleen's twins that Joy found dying of malnutrition

Kitreen's Twins that Joy also rescued

Niaca and Kimberly- sisters we found in a tent village and now live in the mission

Jean Moi- orphan living on the beach

Jean Patrick- orphan who's parents were murdered

Justice- our baby we are adopting that was abandoned at 3 weeks

Kobe- handicapped teenage orphan that was a street kid

Adelson- street kid orphan

Wilna- nearly blind orphan that had never been to school and now is top of her class

Kevin- Cerebral palsey 3 year old orphan that was going to be thrown into the sea

Michelet- handicapped 3 year old orphan with megalocephally that is finally being taught to sit up and speak

Jefnica and Gatina- sisters found in the fishing village

Callie- 2 month old baby from the mountains whose mother died of complications from birth

All of the ones we have been able to help with dire medical needs

The fisherman in our group that now have an income and are changing the economic landscape of Montrouis

The one's like Nabal, and Charles, and Louis, and Mireille that have accepted Christ and received the hope He offers.

You see the circumstances were only used to teach us that the only things that really matter are people. Our highlights from 2010 are the people that we got to invest our lives into. In return, they have enriched our lives in ways we never would have dreamed. God has shown us that people are our inheritance in the promised land and we are grateful for such revelation.

A Good Plan

2010-12-16T21:20:00.000-05:00

Logan- our oldest- got to town yesterday. After the rigors of getting him here and fighting customs to get our some boxes through- which didn't happen- I had a rare day of rest planned. We were going to spend today with Logan and the kids. I thought maybe we could load up the car and take a picnic on an abandoned beach about 15 minutes down the road. What a fun time...

I got a call early to say that Daphne, the sweet 20 year old that was blinded from diabetes, (click here to read about her) had gotten sicker through the night so I decided to go and get her to take her to the hospital. As I pulled our of our gate I was met by a guy that told me that a lady that was living in the refugee camp from the earthquake was pregnant but was having trouble with the delivery because of high blood pressure and no medication at the little clinic next door. She did not have the $60 usd to pay to have the baby at the hospital. I went and checked on her and decided to take her to the hospital with me too.

Daphne was sick for a couple of days and then her blood sugar was elevated and we could not get it back down. We gave her an IV of fluids yesterday for dehydration and I had Alexandra, a nurse friend, come and spend the day with her and she was looking better last night. But when I got to the mission this morning she was non-responsive. I picked her up and put her in the car with the lady having the baby and headed to the hospital.

Once at the hospital we got Daphne in a little room. I paid the fees for the room and the IV and fluids and a nurse tried for 30 minutes to start an IV. She finally called another nurse and she seemed to get the IV started and we got Madame Charles settled in the delivery room and paid them the $60 usd to deliver the baby.

I worked my way back through the crowd to Daphne's room and the IV was going good. Robins was there with me and things seemed okay. The nurse left the room to go find the doctor and all of a sudden I realized Daphne stopped breathing. I checked and she had no pulse. There were no machines hooked to her to beep or flat line or anything it was just like things were in slow motion. I started mouth to mouth and chest compressions. As I gave the breaths, the putrid air that had built up in her lungs during the infection was exhaled into my mouth and I nearly vomitted. I regained my composure and continued the breaths and compressions while Robins called for the doctor or someone to come. I cried out to God for Him to save her. Still no pulse. After several minutes the doctor showed up and stopped me from trying to continue to revive her. It was too late. She was gone. Just like that. I stood there with the taste of death on my lips. I have grown accustomed to the smell of death, but this was the first time for me to taste it. It was worse than I would have imagined. I have spent all day washing my face and trying to get rid of the smell and taste...I read that you don't smell in your sleep, I will be glad to pillow my head tonight.

I had to call Daphne's mom and the people at the clinic that helped us find her originally and tell them the news. I would have to put her in the car and take her to Port au Prince to a morgue and meet with the family. We would be responsible for the funeral and burial.

I ran by our house to get some cash for the trip and the preparations. As we were pulling out of our drive way, we met pastor Remy. He was walking with a man and carrying a baby all dressed up and wrapped in a towel. I stopped and got out and greeted them. The baby's mom died last week and the 2 month old was too much for the dad to handle along with the other 7 kids in the family. He had asked if we could take the baby. They were coming to drop her off. I told pastor the situation and sent him on to the house to meet with Joy. We continued on to PaP.

We met the mother and the representative from the funeral home on a side road in PaP. The mother came to me screaming and wailing. She said she wanted to see her baby. As the morgue workers put her into the body bag I pulled back the sheet and let the mother see her face. She was hysterical as I just held her and tried to comfort her by reminding her that God's child had died too. I did not know what else to say. A large crowd gathered to gawk at the spectacle. Not a fun time.

After the mom got back in her car and left, we finished up with the morgue representatives and started the planning for the funeral. They are anticipating riots starting Monday night following re-release of the re-recount of the election results so we want to have the funeral before then. Hopefully Saturday.

We left the morgue representatives and headed to customs to try to convince them to give us our Christmas gifts for the kids- ours kids and at the mission- and Christmas tree we had shipped in. I did not agree with the fees the customs agent told me I had to pay but I was too tired to fight about it. I once swore under my breath that I hated this country. I regretted saying it because Wesner and Robbins were there. I tried to take it back by saying it was the government and the injustice that I hate. But I actually don't know what all it is that I hate. I learned today that I hate the taste of death. I hate corruption that oppresses the poor and helpless. But I am sure there are some things that I hate that God would have me to love and some things that I love that God would have me to hate. I just have to pray He reveals to me which is which.

God was good and we were able to get everything out of customs without having to pay TOO much more than it was worth. Then we headed back to Montrouis.

As we entered Montrouis we went by the refugee camp to check on Madame Charles and her baby. She had a boy. It was easy to tell it was a boy because of the pink blanket and pink flannel gown and pink booties he was wearing. Baby and mother are fine. He's beautiful. Lying in a hut in a temporary refugee camp surrounded by desperate people that were eager to beg me to bring them more fish this week, he was blessed to be alive. He is blessed because He has a future. It may not be what we as American's would call a future but Jeremiah says God has a plan for ALL of our lives and that it is a good plan. I don't see how Daphne growing up in Cite Soleil- hell on earth- then going blind at 19 and dying at 20 is a good plan. But I trust God is good. I am glad I got to know her. I am glad I got to help her for a few short months and that she died in a hospital not in a shack in a slum and being buried in a dump. I miss her already but she had asked God to forgive her of her sins and be her savior. She can see again tonight. She is not sick. She is not lying in bed crying with pain in her legs. She is seeing Jesus- and that is a good plan!

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T10:22:00.000-05:00

The holidays are a time with family and friends. It is a time for eating our favorite foods and catching up with news and events that have transpired over the past year in our families and lives of our loved ones.

On Thanksgiving specifically, many of us try to take a moment to reflect and give thanks to God for the blessings of the past year. This year we decided to have a big feast with all of our new family and Haitian friends. We will have about 50 people at the mission for lunch.

We had a ministry give us a free turkey for our family. What a huge blessing that is. Turkeys here are hard to come by and very expensive to buy. So early this morning I put the turkey in the oven and prepared the green beans and corn. We will also bake a cake. Very few Haitians have eaten cake and if so it is for a special occassion. Ovens are very rare and it is hard to cook a cake on a fire with three rocks like they cook their rice and beans.

We are also having rice and beans, fried plantains, haitian beet salad, potato salad, and fresh fruit. It is going to be quite a spread. I am going to explain our American Thanksgiving heritage and give each person a chance to share what they are thankful for. I have heard many Haitians tell me that the reason we have turkey on Thanksgiving is because the first American's did not have anything to eat so they prayed and turkeys started falling out of the sky everywhere. Sounds like a good story to me.

Here are a few things I will be sharing that I am thankful for:

My family that I moved here with 18 months ago- Joy, Jacy, Judah, Josie, and Jaxon

For Luke being able to come and join us here this year

For Justice Kacia and the privilege to adopt her

For all of the kids that we have been able to give a home to- Kobe, Jeanmoi, Adelson, Uvensia, Jean Patrick, Wilna, Naica, and Kimberlie

For Daphne's diabetes getting controlled and doors beginning to open to get her to America for her eye surgery

For others that live and help at the mission like Colleen and her two twins Kristi and Krista, along with Grann- the little widow whose house was washed away in the flood

For our team of guys Dago, Wesner, Paul, Robbins, and Bazaleis and the girls that help us Mirlande, Mireille, Oranie, Joanne, Claredonge, and Dedette

For all our fisherman and the work God is doing in their lives and the changes we are seeing in their village

For all the over 70 kids we got to put in school this year

For the many many friends that God has sent to visit us here from so many places in the US and Brazil

For the people back home that love us and continue to pray for us and let us know they are supportive of what we are doing down here

For God beginning a new work in my life to change me from being so selfish and unloving to beginning to see people the way He sees them- I have a LONG way to go though...but I am thankful for the journey

For brightness of the future and the great opportunities we know lie ahead and the grace we can trust in to help with the difficulties that come

I could go on and on. I have so much to be grateful for here. But we also have our precious older two children Logan and Megan in the US. It is harder to say Thank you Lord for them being there when I want them with me here. But we know God does all things well.

It is hard to say thank you Lord for my parents that are getting older and my dad having complications from diabetes and I am not there to help him. I am not there to just sit and talk to him today on Thanksgiving after we get back from deer hunting like we used to do. I won't have my mom's mashed potatoes or Joy's mom's banana pudding but we still say Thank you Lord because He does all things well.

All of us have to make a choice today- we can choose to focus on the things we DON'T have or have lost this past year or we can allow our minds to meditate on our many blessings and be overwhelmed by the "goodness" of God. I choose the latter. I pray you will too.

Hurricanes, Snow Storms, and Lost Friends

2010-11-04T11:39:00.000-04:00

Cold Feet-
What a crazy day. I spent 16 hours yesterday getting from Montrouis to Indianapolis for a conference where I will be speaking and taking continueing education classes for my optometry license. It turns out I lost, gave away, or in some other fashion disposed of any warm weather clothes I had in Haiti so I got to Indiana and discovered they are expecting snow and 20 degree nights and I have a Caribbean Joe t-shirt as my warmest clothes. But in typical provisional manner, a good Christian friend who happens to live in Indiana hooked me up with a bunch of warm clothes so I am good.

I will be in IN for the weekend with my 20 year old daughter Megan. I had not seen her since last November so it was great meeting her in the airport here last night. She flew over from GA to be with me at the conference this weekend. Then I fly to NC for a few days for some meetings and finish up my CE at a meeting in Asheville next weekend.

Unfriendly Tomas-
Tomas strengthened to a tropical storm again last night and is projected to pass over Haiti as a hurricane tomorrow. Joy and the kids are there and we live right on the coast. It looks like Joy is going to close up the doors and windows and leave the house to go and spend a couple of days in the missionary team rooms at The Mission. It will be cool to be there with the mission kids but also tough with Justice, Jaxon, Josie, Judah, Jacy, Jamoy, Jean Patrick, and the two special needs boys Kevin and Michelet all getting moved over there and set up. We have been praying for a person to come and live at the mission to take care of Kevin and Michelet there since it is technically the children's home and we can have someone caring for them 24 hours each day even when we are not in town. So Joy is working on getting them moved permanantly during this transition time. Pray about that.

The biggest problem with a hurricane in Haiti is not just the wind. The tents in PAP of course will be affected by the winds but the biggest issue is rain. They are predicting as much as 15 inches of rain. If that happens, there will be significant flooding and the risk of landslides. The deforestation and subsequent silting in of the rivers has made flooding a major problem. Our fisherman that we work with live near the river and many of them lost their homes in 2008 during Hannah. At that time the river flooded all the way down past where we currently live and took away many homes and left hundreds with nothing. The river flooded again a couple of months ago and washed away more homes. We have several of our fisherman living in tents right now due to that flood. It is a blessing that just before I left we were able to help Jean Beny rent a house and move out of his tent. I am glad he will be in a house during this storm tomorrow and not a tent. He loves Joy and is a precious part of our ministry.

Lost Friends-
Just when we starting thinking the cholera deal was pretty much behind us, we got a call this morning from one of our closest pastors and learned his wife died this morning. She was working in the garden when the symptoms hit her and she died on the way down the mountain to the hospital. Pastor Remy and his wife are the ones that came down the mountain with the gift of eggs to thank us for helping them get a horse. Now he has all 7 of his children to care for alone. He is trying to get her buried today. Be praying for them.

The end of last week I got home to find one of our translators we use sitting in our yard crying. He was holding a baby outfit in his hand. Degraff's 18 month old baby had respiratory arrest and died and the family did not have the money to bury him. We were able to help bury the baby but had very little means of consoling a hurting father.

So there is a quick update of what's happening. We will keep you updated on the storm. Thanks for your prayers and encouragement. You can see updates on facebook

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=100001587051166

Who's Afraid of Frog Peepee?

2010-10-26T20:27:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since I have had a good chance to sit down and blog and I don't really have one of those chances now but I wanted to update everyone on the cholera outbreak here.

We have had to stop buying fish from any of the guys in our group because of the fear of the people that the fish that live in the ocean go and drink the water that comes out of the rivers and so they can make you sick. Our fisherman have just paid their money to put their kids all in school and now have no income because people are too afraid to buy fish. We do not have any cases here in Montrouis of contracted disease. The little mission hospital where we have our eye clinic has had 4 die and have treated hundreds. It is harder finding IV saline so keep that in your prayers.

This is Haiti's first significant cholera outbreak in 50 years. It is caused by a river in the Artibonite valley that became contaminated. We have seen about 3000 cases reported with almost 300 deaths. That is a terrible ratio even for a disease of this severity. The lack of understanding by the people of the cause of the disease and even bigger...fear. Fear killed many of the victims. They were afraid to drink more water because they heard water is what made them sick...so they died of dehydration. Tap tap drivers, local transportation, refused to carry passengers that were sick so they left them on the sides of the road to die...because they were afraid. Many hospitals and workers were afraid to take in patients and work with them at the onset because they did not know the cause of the disease...so patients died outside the hospitals. Fear is a powerful thing and a major part of life here in this little corner of reality.

People have some of the most irrational fears you can imagine. They are so scared of frogs because if it peepees in your eyes you will go blind...tough one to disprove but they get so upset with me for picking up frogs. Lucky for me, none have been able to pee in my eyes yet.

People fear all sorts of things concerning the spirits and voodoo. They fear many animals because it may be a lougau in disguise. They fear zombies. They fear witch doctors. The fear upsetting the family spirits. They fear dishonoring someone in power. They fear the government due to past leaders indiscriminately killing dissenters. They fear hunger. They fear food they are not familiar with. They fear a slight fever.

But out of all the fears that affect the people here, the one that is the greatest risk for them is the fear that comfortable Americans have of being drawn out of their comfort zone. The fear of millions of "Christians" that if they really give in to what God wants them to do to reach the world with His love, then He might send them to some crazy place like Haiti. When the reality is that if we would just surrender fully to God, He is most likely to keep us exactly where He had already placed us, but use us more effectively to fullfill our deepest desires and impact the lives of people from our home town to the far reaches of the world's densest jungles. But the fear that somehow God is going to demand something radical of us is a fear used by satan to keep us from really amounting to anything eternal. The fear is so strong that it triggers our defense mechanisms in our minds that cause us to build up walls to reality. We allow ourselves to be consumed by our surroundings in order to dull the sensation of reality. The sensation that just possibly we have totally missed it. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that our selfish, self serving, self helping, loveless, sacrificeless form of religion we inherited from our parents and perfected ourselves is somehow the Christianity described in the Bible.

That fear is the most dangerous fear in the world. More orphans, widows, homeless, starving, sick, helpless, and desperate souls die each year because of that fear than because of any fear I encounter here that we like to call "irrational". You want to talk about irrational? Is it rational to believe that a God who has ALL power in the universe and LOVES me more than I can comprehend could possibly devise a plan for me that is anything short of spectacularly amazing? I wish the greatest fear of my friends back home was frog peepee. Then maybe we could change the world.

Our greatest fear should be of the day we stand before a Holy God. We will give account for every thought, every action, every dollar, and all of our skills. I somehow don't think excuses like our kids are too small, our parents are aging now, when I get that raise we will give more, when we pay off some debt, if I could just hear from God, we're just waiting until we know for certain, I just don't feel "called", I just don't think this church is feeding me, I can't align myself with that pastor, that youth group is too culturally relevant, that church is not culturally relevant enough, etc. is going to pass when God asks why we would not obey the hundreds of instances in His word that He commands us to reach the world with His love. If we all feared that day as much as the Haitians fear zombies we could take care of the millions of orphans in subsahara Africa that become prostitutes because we are not there to give them a home. Or the sick in India that die because they don't have access to antibiotics that cost 75 cents. As I was typing this a man showed up from PAP crying. He has interpreted for us before at crusades. Degraff sat in my yard and cried as he explained that 3 days ago his 18 month old only son died of respiratory arrest and is in the morgue because he can't afford to have him buried. At the same time Joy was walking and met a man from another village sitting by the road holding a dead baby. The child died after leaving the hospital and the father had no money to get a tap tap to get back home. The world is literally dying and we spend our days complaining about the lines in Walmart.

Update:

On a lighter note, Luke arrived here in Haiti 3 weeks ago. He is doing great. He is a 16 year old missionary and not just a missionary's kid. He has already begun to have an impact on the people here. He is working with the fisherman and has gotten involved in the basketball community here. He is home schooling and doing well. You can see the first episode of his video documentary by clicking the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk-Zrm31OkY

We will try to keep folks updated about the cholera as things change.

Stuck Between a Rock and a Mango Tree

2010-10-01T21:06:00.000-04:00

Roger, Gary, and Lifrans got caught at sea in the stormy weather we have had this week. They were trying to get their little wooden fishing canoes to the beach where they store them when the waves really kicked up.

Roger and Gary made it to our house but could not get past the reef to the area down the coast where they were headed. We managed to pull their canoes ashore and secure them in our yard. Which Jaxon loved because he thinks he owns them anyway. He climbs in everytime they come up with fish. Then I have to pull him out screaming and covered in the tar they use to water proof them to try to cut down on some of the leaking...I can't tell that it helps any. So we stored Roger and Gary's canoes for a couple of days until the storm passed. Lifrans was not so lucky.

As he tried to manuever past a point through the shallow reef that he had passed hundreds of times before, a large wave caught him and crashed him into the rocks. His little wooden canoe shattered into pieces. All of his lines and jugs and fishing equipment was tossed into the crashing waves. Lifrans was picked up by another fisherman trying to get his canoe to safety as well. Everything was lost. Two days before the fishing season officially begins and he is at ground zero.

So that is the story I learned of yesterday as everyone gathered for our weekly meeting with our 12 fisherman and 1 scribe in our economic development program. We wanted 12 fisherman but none of them could write so we had a scribe join the group. I spent the meeting talking about the things were we doing and the challenges and the great things that were happening. I thought everyone was really getting into the depth of the business potential and how this was going to change the economic stability of Montrouis and the overall quality of life for their families. But at the end of my sharing I asked for questions. Finally Roger asked when I was going to follow through on my promise I had made several weeks ago to start teaching them all how to write their names... They all agreed and wanted me to start this week so they could all learn to write and sign their names and asked if I thought they could be taught to read a few things. I was humbled beyond words. How do you say no to a group of friends asking if you could take the time to teach them to write their names?

After the meeting was over the discussion turned back to Lifrans. Everyone was disappointed to hear about the loss because they all could relate and they knew the implications. But Lifrans, one of the most likable and hard working guys in the group, already had a plan. He had found a guy who had a piece of wood for sale and had negotiated a good price of $1300 haitian (or $165 USD) for the wood and talked to Pierre who was not a "boss" canoe builder but had dug out canoes for several of our guys in the group in the past. Pierre agreed to "dig" the canoe for $1000 haitian ($125 USD) So nearly $300 was going to be needed just to get the canoe. Then Lifrans has to find jugs and buy lines and hooks and everything else to get ready to fish. And due to bad weather, no one has been able to catch any fish in over 2 weeks. So that is where I came into the picture. As Lifrans was telling his tale, eventually all eyes turned to me. They all wondered what I was going to do to help Lifrans get his fishing business back in the water. Finally, Lifrans asked if I would at least go with him to look at the wood.

Today we had all of the guys in our group meet me at The Mission to pick out shoes for all of their kids that start school Monday. These 31 kids are not in our sponsorship program because I know their fathers now have an income. Instead I am just helping them get everything done on enrolling and buying the books and uniforms. It was a great time. After the shoe fitting party, the entire group joins in on our trip to see the wood.

I had in my mind a little guy sitting in front of his little haitian shack on a big piece of mango log in his front yard ready to argue over a price. Instead, Pierre, the carver, takes us into one of the few remaining patches of forest left in our zone. After a brief walk through a familiar area of woods, he stops and points to a large mango tree and says "that's it". That was not what I wanted to see. One of the 2% of mango trees left standing in the entire country and now they are asking me to buy it so they can make a canoe. The alternative is to say no and explain how mango trees are precious to the Haitian ecosystem and that conservation efforts are never going to succeed without making sacrifices...

Now let me tell you...to all of you tree hugger hyper-conservationists reading this...I ain't into that. I can get on board with saving babies but not baby seals or spotted owls. I never have been the activist type. I would actually love watching the guy cut down the tree with a machete and then meticulously carve out a canoe day after day. It is not about the "karma" or the feelings of the mango tree or making the spirits of nature angry.

This was different. I see the huge importance of mangoes to this culture. You don't dare steal someone's mango. It's like a capital offense. Mangoes are called God's gift to poor people. People plan their lives around the mango seasons. But they have not seen that cutting down the mango trees is bad. I have tried to fight the cutting of the trees to make charcoal. That is the main reason the trees are cut down and the roots dug up. It is to make charcoal for cooking. That is the main issue. Not cutting down a few trees per year for canoes. BUT, now that most have been cut down for charcoal, the canoe issue becomes more relevant.

In my gut I want to buy the mango tree... don't let them cut it down... then lend Lifrans the money to buy a fiberglass canoe- through my contacts in the U.S. and ship it down on the next container that comes in. But there are several problems with that plan. First, then EVERY guy in our group wants a fiberglass canoe. Second, the container has weeks before it gets here and the season starts now. Third, every person in Montrouis will try to sell me their mango tree that they are about to cut down if someone doesn't buy it quickly. I could see me ending up with a whole forest of mango trees with little brass plaques that show the date they were saved from destruction. I would be known as the nut case doctor with the mango tree sponsorship program.

So as I sit here tonight trying to come up with the best plan for tomorrow, I think I will try to find someone who has a wooden canoe for sale and help Lifrans get it. That at least buys me some time. Then maybe we do try to start a system of getting canoes shipped down for the fisherman here. Each mango tree canoe only lasts 5-6 seasons if it is a good one. Many only last 2-3. Who knows. But I am glad that I am here to get to help Lifrans figure it out. He is my friend. He is a quiet guy with a firm handshake and I know that tonight he is thinking that tomorrow I will have the answers to help him out of this dilema. That is where my faith comes in. I don't have all the answers that these guys think I have. I don't always know what to do. But I know my God has a plan and that He is never confused by rocks and mango trees.

Hold on There Junior

2010-09-16T22:58:00.001-04:00

He can't read or write. He does not even know how to spell his name by himself. But then again Junior is one of the twelve men in our fishing program, and only one of them CAN spell his own name- we had to let a non-fisherman join the program because we needed someone in the program that could write. Junior is in his late 20's and although he has absolutely no front teeth, his smile is contagious.

Junior met me in my yard when I got home from Port-Au-Prince yesterday. I knew it was not to get paid for the catch of the day because I pay them once a week now for that. He was there just to see me. To make sure I had a safe trip home...AND to ask for a favor. Junior knows I am going to the U.S. for 4 days next week to speak at a meeting in Texas and he wanted me to buy something for him. He wants me to buy him a portable DVD player to give to his kids for Christmas. Now last year Junior could not pay for his kids to go to school. He did not know where his next meal would come from if the fishing was bad. He lives in a tiny little shack with no electricity and no running water. He has 2 rooms and a little outside hut for the kitchen. His net worth in U.S. dollars would probably be about $100 because he owns a wooden dugout canoe that could be sold if necessary. Now he is asking me to buy a DVD player for him. But he is not asking me to buy it with my money, he has the money to buy it through the fishing program.

Now I know what you are thinking. I should councel Junior on how foolish a financial decision it would be to buy a DVD player before he has next years rent saved up for his house- we are setting aside money every week to cover that but he has not reached his full amount. Or maybe after he has 3 months worth of income saved to help in times when the fish are not there. Those are legitimate arguments but you have to understand where Junior is coming from.

Three months ago Junior would never have dreamed he could afford a DVD player. Everyone here wants a portable DVD player. The people that have one usually had it sent down from a very loving relative in the states to a family member that is still here. It is known by everyone in the neighborhood as they gather around the little screen to watch 50 cent bootleg copies of old movies. Now all of a sudden Junior has paid for all of his kids to go to school this year. The first year he could put them ALL in school in one year. He has money for them to eat plenty every single day. For the last 2 months they have not had to miss a single meal. He has a plan to pay for his rent without having to beg for additional time. In Junior's mind he is loaded. People in town have commented on how Junior has actually bought all of his kids shoes for school already.

The fishing program that we have started has given hope to a group of people that had very little hope at all. Seasonal peasant fisherman. Illiterate. Uneducated. No one in the group has an identification card which is necessary to get a legitimate job or buy land or anything else. Many of them have never had a birth certificate. They have just always caught fish to live with the same techniques that have been used for 200 years. They are from the zone around the river that floods. They live on the land that no one else wants because it is too dangerous to live there. They go out fishing and if they aren't successful, they go home and feed their kids the remaining bait. These are not "men of promise".

But now. Now they have an income. They have security. They have a future. They have hope. I have never seen the reality of the transforming power of hope like I have seen in this group of fisherman. I praise God he chose me to do this job. Everyone of the fisherman in our group will see all of their kids go to school this year for the first time ever. Every one of them has a financial plan to pay for their rent on their house. Some are putting roofs on their houses that have leaked for years. Some are buying pots for their wives to be able to cook easier. All of them are beginning to believe that they themselves are a viable part of the community. There are still a couple that are just still trying to figure out how to get every last dime possible out of me before this ride is over. I understand that and do not question it. I believe that if the roles were reversed, my skeptical mind would probably have me in that category too. But for most of the group, they truly believe that their hard work and determination is paying off. God is blessing them. And they are already starting to give back.

There is a school in their zone. It is ran by a fisherman as the headmaster. A smart guy that is educated beyond his peers in the industry. The school needs a lot of work. Many of the benches are in pieces. The preschool section was flooded by the river and the silt has not been dug out and cleaned. The tin roof leaks and is about to fall in. The teachers are the ones that the other schools would not hire because they do not have degrees. It is the school that the fisherman try to send one or two of their kids to every other year or so but not something to be proud of.

The school is lacking a maren- a "God Father". Someone to back the school and support it. Usually that job is the job of a "blanc". A white person. A missionary or a visiting pastor. Someone the school finds to financially back them. This school in the fishing zone of Calalun, does not have a maren and it shows. I talked to our group about being the maren for the school. Not me- THEM! We are going to take one haitian dollar (12 cents) and put it into an account for every pound of fish that I buy from them. The money will be used to put orphaned and fatherless kids from their zone into school. It will also be for the repairs and improvements. I want to help them make this school the model for all of Montrouis. We are going to stucko the building and paint it bright colors. We are going to build benches and make them the size the kids need. We are going to feed the kids in school- fish along with rice and beans. And it will all be done with money that the fisherman earn and put aside to give back.

After I proposed the school plan that I thought was really good of me to model for them how they should give back. They asked me for a favor. They have not had any government electricity in their zone for 6 months. The main transformer went out and the government power company does not replace them. They want me to price a new transformer when I go to Port Au Prince and then they want to raise the money to buy one. Any money they can't get from their poverty stricken neighbors, they are going to put in themselves to buy the new transformer to bring electricity back to their neighborhood.

We are still a long ways away from having the fishing ministry able to be sustained. I can't buy all of their fish they catch. I have set a weekly limit of how much I will buy from each fisherman but if they all catch that limit I am over may head financially. But, we are seeing new ministries call every week to order fish for their programs and we are starting to have people from the U.S. want to send money to buy fish to give to our schools and the widows and other people in Montrouis that we support. We are starting a website soon www.fish2feedhaiti.tv that will be used to help people get to know the fishermen personally and see the fishing season of Oct-Jan unfold and see how each fisherman does for the season. I can tell you that I will personally fund the program until my retirement plan is drained if necessary because I have never seen one of my dollars change a life like they are in these guys. We are helping women sell rice and beans to these guys now that they have money. We are helping women open little stores to cater to the increased money flowing into the economy of Montrouis. We are working on getting other micro-business owners to tap into the system and start catering to the needs of the fishing industry here. We see this as a platform for teaching business principles, financial principles, and life lessons to many of the people we have had trouble reaching in our area.

When Junior was leaving last night he hugged me, and although he is not a Christian yet, he told me that he truly believed God picked me up from the U.S. and put me in Montrouis to change his life. What more could a lowly missionary ask for?

No Roll-Over Minutes

2010-09-11T21:39:00.000-04:00

We had a missionary come to visit us today to talk about the fishing ministry. They got to meet Judah, Jaxon, Jeanmoi, Jean Patrick, Justice, Kevin, and Michelet. We also had about 10 of the kids we sponsor in school that had come over to hang out and play. They asked about the eye clinics, and the mission, and Celebration Children's Home, and the various other things we are doing. As they were leaving she looked at me and asked how we managed to do all of that. She has been here for many years and knows the difficulties you face everyday. I gave her the typical "God's Grace" answer and she left.

After she left I started thinking about that question. It has been a tough week. There has been times this week when I wanted to get on one of those little row boats and just head out to sea. Joy has been gone almost 7 weeks now and does not know exactly when she'll get back. She has been struggling having to handle everything herself in the U.S. on this trip. We have had flooded rooms at the mission due to busted pipes. We had a freezer go out and lost 200 pounds of fish. I had to tell two of the women at the mission they had to move out due to unresolvable issues. We found out a group of people we have been working with for a long time has been lying to us about a lot of important issues. Jaxon and Judah have a nasty case of oozing impetigo. Kevin, our 3 year old with cerebral palsey has something going on and I can't figure out what. He spends the nights writhing in pain and screaming. I can't find the source of the pain or if it is some type of seizure. He is doing that as I type right now. I just have to hold him and pray. I just took this picture as I had to stop typing to hold him.

And I have just been spiritually weak and have lost a lot of mental and emotional battles within.

But with all of that said, I know God is in control. I know He can change all the circumstances in an instance. I know He forgives my failures and helps me to learn from them. I know His grace truly does cover us and give us the desire and power to do His will. We know everything is harder here. The spiritual atmosphere is oppressive and small details become huge obstacles. I know these things and cling to the truths of my faith to get me through. And we get to see victory after victory as we press on.

As I thought about the question of how we get everything done in these working conditions I believe it is due to grace, unwavering belief in what we are doing, a sense of urgency, a focused passion, and the understanding that there are no roll-over minutes. There are 24 hours in a day and we try to use every bit of them to advance God's kingdom because there are no roll-over minutes. You can't save up the time and use it tomorrow. All of it has to be used TODAY because after today all of those moments to invest in someone will be gone.

Now I know some of you are thinking "but if you over do it you will get burned out. Slow and steady wins the race". I believe that FABLE was never meant to be applied to the Christian life or Christian ministry. Let me tell you how I see it. The turtle did not "win" the race, the rabbit "lost" it. The race was the rabbit's to lose. He had all the skills and God given talents to win the race and be victorious. The rabbit was foolish and got distracted by things that don't matter. The victory of the turtle had nothing to do with going slow and steady. If the rabbit had just stayed the course he would have won by a mile. We give the turtle way too much credit. I believe the turtle would have experienced life if he had thrown off his shell and ran full speed like the rabbit. His diligence to stay on course would have not only let him win the race but do it with passion. I don't want to be like the turtle or the rabbit. I think way to many people already are. Either they have the skills and God given talents to really be make a difference in the kingdom but they get distracted by things that don't matter. They get off course and end up chasing after riches, success, comfort, security, acceptance, peacefulness, enjoyment, and the beautiful distractions of American Christianity so they don't run the race at hand.

Then there are the turtles. Why won't they throw off the shell? Because it is a great place to hide. It is secure and comfortable. But against the swiftness of the rabbits they don't have a chance. It would just take one rabbit staying on course and the turtles will never experience victory. Paul says that we are in a race. "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize." (I Cor. 9:4) "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." (Hebrews 12:1) He says throw off EVERYTHING that slows you down. Not just sin. EVERYTHING that slows you down and RUN. Run, run, run, with a passion after whatever it is that God has placed in your heart to do to advance the Kingdom and wreck hell. I pray everyday over my kids that they will be Hell wrecking world changers. It's not easy and it's not safe, but it is all that is going to matter once THE race is finished. Don't let anyone distract you- including friends and family. "You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?" (Gal. 5:7)

The preachers that joined John Wesley in his work to preach the gospel to the world died at the average age of 35 years old. They were burned out for Christ. But they changed the face of the Christian world with their Methodism. By grace, John himself lived to be 88. But he cried in disappointment at the age of 86 when he could no longer spend 16 hours per day preaching and teaching. There is a group in India that we pray for and help and they work 7 hours per day in a secular job and then spend 7 hours per day in evangelism and discipleship. That's not slow and steady. That's full bore, all out passionate pursuit of the One that all out, full bore, passionately pursued me when I was but a lowly sinner headed to the hell that I deserved. He was not slow and steady. My Jesus was passionate for saving me. My Jesus was reckless in His pursuit of me. How in the world can I be anything less in my pursuit of Him?

Blind as a Bat

2010-09-04T22:15:00.001-04:00

It was once considered one of the most dangerous non-warzone areas on earth. For 2 years the UN could not take control of the area from the drug lords armed with M-16's and 50 caliber machine guns they were given to them under the table by the former president. Two square miles in which 100,000+ people share no electricity, running water, or sanitation. Women are routinely raped and children abused and hundreds live in slavery.

The place is the infamous slum area on the perimeter of Port-au-Prince called Cite Soleil- City of the Sun. Daphne was born in the heart of this hell on earth. Her father died when she was young and her mother did the best she could to care for her and her siblings. She got to go to school with the help of family. Not every year but at 18 she was in the sixth grade. Not bad for the kids in her zone. But then she got sick. She had trouble getting the energy to get out of bed. She was always thirsty and hungry but only limited food and good water was available. She started fainting and losing consciousness. Her mom took her to the clinic but no one could find out what was wrong. Most people thought someone had cursed her. Then at age 19 she started losing her eyesight. It was so frightening. She prayed for God to heal her. Her mom had raised her as a Christian and she knew God was powerful. But her sight kept getting worse and the sickness too.

Finally she went to a little clinic that was too far to walk to. Her mom took her in a tap tap- the taxis of Haiti. The nurse there did some tests and determined she had sic- sugar or Juvenile diabetes. By this time she was completely blind.

A few weeks ago we were doing eye screenings in that same clinic. That is where I met Daphne. She was led into my examining room and I was told by the nurse that it was probably a waste of time because she was blind and there was nothing that could be done. I looked at Daphne and discovered her blindness is due to cataracts induced by her diabetes. I asked if her diabetes was being controlled. The nurse told me that they gave her oral medication but because of no refrigeration there was no way to do insulin. Her blood sugar was staying around 5-600. High enough to send her into a coma if she was not careful. Definitely high enough to continue to destroy her. All because at 20 years old she did not have a refrigerator.

Hey, I thought. I have a refrigerator. I have THREE refrigerators that run all the time due to the blessing of solar panels, and batteries, and inverters, and generators. I have a bed too- Daphne slept on the floor in her hut in the slum. I asked if I could talk to the family. I told them the situation and how we could let Daphne- who weighs about 80 pounds due to her illness- come stay with us so we could buy and refrigerate her insulin and find someone to do eye surgery on her so she could possibly see again if the diabetes has not damaged other tissues inside her eyes. The family could not believe it. They praised God and thanked me. We left with Daphne and took her to The Mission.

Daphne's blood sugar is still a work in progress but it is under 300 and most of the time closer to 200. We are working on trying to get her cataract surgeries lined up. I brought her to our house yesterday to spend the day with our kids here. She loved putting her feet in the water at the ocean.

I asked Daphne what she missed the most about being blind. I thought maybe the beauty of creation or being able to get around by herself. She immediately answered it was the people's faces. She said she missed seeing people.

God used that answer to speak to me. I had laser vision correction before I left to come to Haiti. I now see 20/20 without glasses or contacts or anything. But so often I do not see "people's faces". I see the pretty sunsets and beauty of the Haitian mountains. I see the my kids running around and playing in the yard. I see my work and the duties before me everyday as I do eye exams or work at The Mission or repair a broken generator. I see the food we give away and the shoes and the clothes. But do I really take the time to see the faces?

The faces are individuals. But beyond that, the faces are a reflection of the heart. The face shows the smile of happiness or the grimace of pain. The face shows the lines of hard labor and the innocence of childhood. Romans chapter 12 tells us to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice. But do we look close enough at the faces to know? That takes time. That takes effort. It's easier just to DO something than to really look into the face and desire in my heart to feel what they are feeling. Do I REALLY want to hurt with these people? I mean, I know I really want to help them. But do I really want to HURT with them? Do I really want to grieve with them? Do I even want to rejoice with them? I mean when it rains while I am trying to do a crusade that I put a lot of energy and time and money into putting it on...for God of course... and the storm rains us out and everyone is rejoicing because it means their crops will grow and that God is blessing them... but I am pouting because my plans were ruined...what does that say? When it is easier for you to just give that beggar a dollar than to ask them about the circumstances that led them to that place of desperation. The widow that goes home alone every Sunday after church is lonely. Do you want to feel the depth of her loneliness? The single mom at your office is so frustrated and confused, but her frustration is not your problem... or is it?

I let Daphne feel my face and she was surprised at my scraggly beard that Jacy Klaire tells me I had better shave before she gets home. (She is 8 she has never seen me with a beard.) I pray one day Daphne sees faces again. I would venture to say she will not take them for granted. I venture to say she will appreciate the gift of seeing faces. The question is will I.

I found this little guy clinging to a tree beside where we eat our meals. He was only about 50 feet from his home but he had gotten caught out in the daylight for whatever reason.

I have about a dozen of these huge ugly fruit bats that live right outside my window in a hole in an almond tree. Every night right at dusk they all fly out and then go back in before light. Their eyes are so good that they can see at night. They also have other senses to help them navigate and catch prey but they have eyes that can see with just the smallest amount of light. BUT, if they get caught outside during the morning hours and daylight, they can't see anything. They are overwhelmed by the light. When they are out of their element the very thing that allows them to see at night..a little bit of light... blinds them during the day because it is more than they can handle.

When I was in the U.S. the "need" of the people in Haiti was a good thing. It helped me to see that I needed to step out of my self absorbed, comfortable, world pleasing, church enjoying, riches chasing, American dream of a life and do something radical out of love for others. But once here that "need" sometimes blinds me. I can't see the faces. I am out of my element. I am overwhelmed. I am blinded. I like just a "little bit" of need. Like my little bat friend wants just a little bit of light. Too much and I end up hanging on the side of a tree only feet from where I want to be... in the comfort of my little hole...blind as a bat.

Spiteful People, Changed Plans, and Rescued Kids

2010-08-31T20:20:00.000-04:00

We went to the tent village in the slum area of Port-Au-Prince today to check on some children we found last week. We were told by a local clinic that there were a couple of families of children whose parents died in the quake that were basically living on their own. As soon as we arrived, last Tuesday we immediately found the kids in question.

A litlle girl in a tattered dress approached with her face covered in dried blood carrying a naked, filthy baby. She looked to be about 5 years old but her missing front teeth clued us in that she was probably a little older. She said she fell down the day before and hit her head on a rock. No one was around to nurse the gaping wound. The baby was a little boy, quick to smile even through his apprehension of a big white man playing with him.

Another little girl with all the signs of malnutrition and worm infestation stood naked nearby, a sister in the same situation only clothed in tatttered clothes held her close. We assumed we had found the orphaned children. As I inquired from the gathering adults about the family the stories were inconsistent. Finally word slipped out that there was a mother and she slept somewhere nearby. I sent for her. When she came up you could see that someone had tipped her off about the "blancs" asking about her children. She quickly informed me that she was a single mom living in the tents since the quake with no one to care for her babies. Not even a look of concern for the festering wound on her little girl's head.

She claimed to have 3 kids so I asked about the third and a little girl darted off to find her. A few minutes later she returned with a naked toddler with no hair and distended belly, naked and filthy. "I found her playing in the street" she explained, happy about her accomplishment for tracking down the child no one had known was missing.

As we inquired further we discovered from other sources that there is indeed a father that comes around when he can although he does not take any care of the kids. I felt we could not do anything until we talked to the father and no one seemed to be of much help contacting him.

The other two little girls belonged to another woman that quickly showed up on the scene. She told us that she had 4 kids with a man that was killed in the quake and that she also inherited his other two kids from another woman that suffered the same fate. She claimed to have no way of providing for them and wanted us to take them. I told her that we would return in a week after some prayer and giving them time to set up a meeting with the father. So we decided to wait on God to reveal His plan.We left with heavy hearts knowing the kids would spend more time in conditions that would cause people to be arrested in the U.S. if they treated their DOGS that way. Much less God's precious children.

So that brings us to today. We had contacted the mother of the 3 children and asked her to set up for the father to meet us today. When we arrived there was no father or mother just the three kids playing in the dirt. They quickly sent a friend to try to track down the mother. When she arrived we asked about the father. She adamantly explained that she had talked to him and he wanted us to take the children. I insisted on talking to him so she left to fetch the supposedly unreachable father. After thirty minutes of playing with the kids, the father came. I explained the situation and how the mother wanted us to take the children because she could not care for them. I asked what he wanted. He hesitated and explained that he understood the situation and would like for me to take the children so they would have a better opportunity to live a healthy life.

So then the other mother shows up with the 6 kids. She tells me she wants me to take all 4 of her biological children. I told her that we felt we needed to help the smallest two children. After about 30 minutes of trying to figure out the many lies that were being told we decided we were going to just take the three original children. This other mom had lied and only the father of 2 of the children had died, but that is not the two she most wanted to get rid of. She had a teenage boy that skipped school and gave her problems and if we didn"t take him we weren't taking any. That was fine with me. Then she decided to convince the father of the other three that the little baby, 15 months old, did not need to go. The mother disagreed and wanted us to take the baby. But the spite won out and the father decided to make the mother keep the baby even though she does not want it and he is not there to care for it. After a very thorough explaination of my opinion of that situation, we took the two precious jewels and loaded the bus bound for The Mission.

The situation did not turn out exactly like we had planned. But we are grateful. Little 7 year old Naica will have her wounded head and heart cared for in love along with her 3 year old sister Kimberly. Although our heart breaks for 15 month old Marckenly we rest in the fact that the Lord is in charge. The first ride in an automobile started out exciting for little Naica but turned quickly as car sickness set in. We are arriving now in the mission just before dark. Their first night in a bed. Their first shower. Their first secure night surrounded by love and compassion.

These are the first children we have taken into the mission that are not true orphans. But I know they were worse off than most orphans. A mentally unstable or uncapable mother and absent father left them living in a tent village vulnerable to vile predators of the kind we don't talk about in civilized society. So our plans were modified to an extent. Those of you that know us, know that Josie, Judah, Jaxon, and Justice all came from bad situations but not as orphans. We trust God will put these new little ones into homes where love and protection are the norm and God's plan is revealed.

2010-08-28T18:23:00.003-04:00

Cracked and Broken

2010-08-10T21:32:00.001-04:00

Have you ever had a time when God seemed to pull you to the side and whisper into your ear, "Let me show you something"? I had one of those moments today.

Cracked and Broken Lives All Around Us.

They are a bother to us. An annoyance in our day. It's the homeless man in Charlotte. It's the hitch hiker on the interstate. It's the pregnant teenager. It's the folks that are bringing down the property value in our neighborhood. You know the ones. The Mexican or Asian family down the street with 6 families and one car with no insurance. The crazy women that is always at the grocery store the same time I am. It's the trailer park crowd with the broken screen door and Buick on blocks in the drive. It's the hoodlums on the corner in the "bad" part of town. It's the guy that is always asking me for a ride. It's the old women that smells funny and really gives me the creeps. It's the crowd in the Emergency room when I really do have an emergency. It's the line outside the welfare office.

For us here it's the crowds outside our gate. It's the ones coming at 6 in the morning looking for food or begging for work. The throngs of single moms that don't take care of their children. It's the absent fathers that don't work. It's the swindlers. It's the beggars. It's the pimps. It's the prostitutes. It's the dirty. It's the smelly. It's the con men.

But they are so lucky we are here. Because since God made us smarter, and wiser, and Godlier, and better we can give them a "hand up". We can give them the stuff that we don't need any more. We can serve them some food at the homeless shelter and just our smile will light up their day. "It's the least I can do". I will make friends with one of them so that they will accept Jesus. He is the only hope "those people" have.

Before Joy left for the states we stopped beside the busy street in Port Au Prince to look at a local artisan's display of furnishings and vessels. He takes broken glass and tiles and makes tables and chairs and pots etc. Joy asked him to make her something out of broken mirrors. She showed him what she wanted and he happily agreed to do it. I passed by today and saw it hanging on the block wall by the road stopped to check it out.

It did not turn out like I had hoped. Several of the pieces of mirror were messed up and the dimensions were not like we had told him. I took a picture of the bad pieces of mirror to show Joy so she would know why I did not buy it from the guy. The street vendor. The peddler. The nuisance.

When I got home I went to look at the picture and that is when God pulled me aside. I had looked at the broken mirror before but when I got home God showed me the reflection of the man. His reflection was through the cracked mirrors. The missing pieces. The dirt on the surface. But God showed me that He sees us all that way. We are all broken. Cracked. Dirty. It turns out that there is not a scale of who's dirtier...or more broken...or more cracked. We are called to just love all of His cracked children.

You see that item Joy had the guy make was this cross. It was as though God was reminding me that we are to look at everyone in the reflection of the cross. We are to see His children as He sees them. We are to see them as Jesus saw them when He was on the cross. As precious. As valuable. As cherished. Each and every one. Yes, many are shattered. Bad choices. Bad relationships. Injustice. Corrupt governments. Evil people. A sinful world. But He loves them. More than we can imagine. When we see them in the reflection of the cross, it all changes!

The Cross

Everybody Loves Louis

2010-08-07T21:37:00.004-04:00

Louis was the grounds keeper at the abandoned apartment building that is now "The Mission". A humble man of few words, Louis never really had much to say to or about white people. He had seen missionaries come and go from Montrouis and never really thought much of the version of Christianity they were trying to spread. He just kept to himself and did his job. Guarding an uninhabited building.

Louis has taught me a lot. I had planned to let Louis stay for a month or so until we learned how the property operated. He knew all about the water system and the electrical. I really did not think we would need him after a few weeks because the guys on our staff could do those things. Plus I really did not know him and I could not have someone living on the premises and having access to everything that we did not know. We would eventually have children there and everything and I had to keep them safe. All the good reasons to not take a chance on someone that others overlook. But God had other plans.

I could not open the gate at the mission without Louis being under my feet wanting to know what he could do to help. He would carry water, pull wiring, fetch tools. Whatever I needed Louis was ALWAYS there. Even when what I needed was just a little space...Louis was there. God began to touch my heart for this guy. I still did not know anything about him. I thought he was a typical Haitian womenizer because of the women that I saw coming in and out early in the mornings before the place was ours. I eventually decided that at the end of the month that we would let Louis keep working but he would have to find somewhere else to live.

At the end of that first month I did not have the heart to tell Louis to leave. He was sleeping on the concrete floor in our storage room. When I bought the refrigerator for the kitchen he was so excited... because the box would make a great bed to sleep on. I finally decided to give Louis a place to live and a job on a three month probationary basis. Joy decided that we were buying him a bed and putting him in the apartment with our other guys that stay there. So she took the bed, fixed him a place with a little table and everything, and had his own little living area. He was so thankful. He loves Joy to death anyway. He thanked her and thanked her... slept in the bed one night and asked me if it would be okay if he moved back out to the storage room out back. He did not sleep good in the bed! I said sure and he moved back into the storage room.

The time came for us to open the mission to teams to come. The first team that came was from Atlanta. I had told the team to be praying because Louis was not a Christian but I had been sharing with him. A pastor on the team really took to Louis. Although Louis can't speak any English he really allowed this pastor to minister to him. Before the week was over Louis felt the calling of God to become a Christian. He repented of his sins and asked Jesus to become his "Gwo Chef" (big boss). Louis could not wait to meet me at the gate the next morning to tell me the news. He has not put his Bible down since.

When the team from Tri-City came to work with us for a week, Louis shared that he had never had anyone make him feel so happy. He said no one had ever hugged him like those white people did. He just praises the Lord for sending us to rent that apartment building. He says it was all done for him to become a Christian. He says that Joy's spirit and humility helped him to see Jesus as a reality and God touched him.

Now Louis is of course a full time resident at the mission. He does all of our maintenance and grounds keeping. If the current fails at 3 in the morning, Louis is there to get the generator going. If the water tanks on the roof all empty, Louis pumps the water. And if I need a screwdriver...Louis is always right under me to get it.

He still sleeps in the storage room. We have 12 showers at the mission. Louis bathes out back in a bucket with his clothes on. He lathers up- clothes and all- then rinses- and air dries- clothes and all. Saves time on laundry. Louis now is the best friend of all the kids in the mission. The twins just love him to death. If he is not working, he is carrying around one of the babies. He is a valuable part of our team.

We go to the mission field thinking we are going to give people what we have because that is what they want.

Louis does not want my shower I can give him.

He does not want my bed I can give him.

He wants my love I can give him.

He wants my hug I can give him.

That's why we are here. I could send a bed. I could send money. I could send food.

But I can't send a hug.

I can't send 2 hours working under a sink with him and letting him tell me about his mother and his childhood.

And oh yeah, all those strange women coming in and out of the apartment building, Louis was catching water as it ran off of the roof and keeping it for them and letting them wash their clothes there. Lord make me like Louis!

Bokor, Loogau, and Zombies

2010-08-04T13:34:00.002-04:00

The thing about darkness that makes it so bad is that it is dark! I have had the opinion of many missionaries that come to Haiti that voodoo is false religion that is full of lies and based on fear. Now I have changed my opinion somewhat. I still believe that lies are fear are much of voodoo but it is not a false religion. For the people in Haiti it is an everyday way of life. Whether you are a Christian or not it is a regular part of your life and a reality. Let me share a few of the things that have been hardest for me to understand and believe but are taken as facts and reality to practically everyone I know in Haiti- including pastors and our closest friends. I want to understand these issues better- not out of curiosity, but out of a need to be able to minister to our people. I have to understand the depth of their belief and what areas I can help them see the light. It does me no good to curse the darkness without shedding light (thanks pastor Ruffin). This hits home for me because our two boys we are adopting both come from voodoo practicing families and so it is total reality to them.

First there are a few terms you need to be familiar with. A voodoo priest or witch doctor or sorcerer as we would say in English is called a Bokor (Bo'- ku) if he is male and a Mambo if she is female. They are said to practice magic "with both hands". Meaning good magic and bad magic.

A Loogau is someone that has been turned into a soceror by a Bokor and is bad. They are usually a normal person by day but are responsible for killing babies. If you go to the Bokor's house too often they will turn you into a Loogau. It is possible to be a loogau and not know it. If you are the first one to cry at your grandmother's funeral and she was a Loogau, then you will be a loogau. A loogau turns into an animal at night to do bad things. The most common are bats, rats, and cats. But even pigs, dogs, or donkeys are known to be loogau. The most common thing they do is to enter a house and make a baby sick or kill it. Then the baby goes to the bokor for a healing or it dies and the bokor digs it up to eat it and use it for spells. Some villages have thousands of loogau. If you know your baby was made sick by a loogau, you can take it to the loogau and threaten to kill them. If you do they can make a tea to give your baby and they will be instantly healed. But to do that makes you a target to be killed too. A loogau turns into an animal but leaves his human body somewhere secret. If another loogau knows where the body is it can come and put hot peppers and salt on the body and the loogau can't reenter the body and it dies. If you kill the loogau while it is an animal and you burn the animal completely, the human body dies where it is at sunrise. A loogau only enters houses of non-Christians because of fear of being defeated by the good spirits that guard the house of Christians.

Bokor make loogau so that they will go around making people sick so the bokor will have business. Sometimes bokor make people sick with an evil spirit so that the people have to come to them and pay for a healing. If one bokor can't heal you, he will send you to a bokor specialist for the healing.

A zombie is someone that the Bokor kills and then raises from the dead to be his slave. When someone is a zombie he or she does not remember anyone from before. They cannot speak but they can do work. If you see someone that you know died and they are now alive working at the house of the bokor, you cannot say anything to them or anything or the bokor will turn you into a zombie too. You have to act like you never saw them. You can't tell anyone because the bokor will know. There was a documented case on Haitian T.V. that included the police and ivestigators and the zombie was made after the person spent a few days in the morgue before being buried. The father of the deceased waited at the grave for the bokor to come and then attacked him after he raised the son from the dead. He then tied the son up and took him home. After some time the son can't walk and can't talk but he is alive. It aired on St. Marc T.V. several times.

A "flash"- Young people cannot be in the streets after 11 or 11:30 pm because the bokor will "flash" them and they will soon die. Then they are zombified. The flash is just with a light of some kind but it labels you for the evil spirit to know you. It is like marking you with a mark to let the spirit know to possess you and kill you. Sometimes if you know you were flashed you can take off your clothes before you go into your house and the spirit will not enter the house and you will not die. If you get possessed you can ask for intercession and sometimes the spirit can be cast out and you will live.

Powder is a concoction made from corpses of dead people and is used to kill people. It can be bought from the bokor. You can put it in the top of a coke bottle and when it is opened the powder puffs out and the person gets sick and eventually dies. Any way to get the person to inhale or step on or in some way touch the powder. Powder is the most common way that people use the bokor to kill people. Although you can just pay him to send an evil spirit to kill or make someone sick too.

You have to be careful who you talk to if you do not know them. They may be a loogau and if you tell them where you live they can go ahead of you to your house and turn into a bad animal and kill you then go in your house and rob you. Loogau also turn into animals to enter houses of young non-Christian women to rape them. They also suck the blood of young children for power.

Now this is not the story as it comes from those who practice voodoo. This is the belief of practically every single person I know. It is all taken as fact. I spent 3 hours today talking to a pastor at my house along with a good friend and they confirmed everything I had been told. They also agreed with me that the bokor has power because people believe it. They agreed with that. But if you say I am not going to believe in the bokor any more because I do not want him to have power... it is too late. You already believe. He already has the power. You can't not believe so that he won't have power.

So there is Haitian voodoo 101. Most Haitians do not want outsiders to know what they believe. They do not like to even talk about it because of the power it has. So there is our battle. To shine light into darkness. We hold to 1 John 4:4- "Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world".

Friends, Floods, and Fatalism

2010-08-01T23:07:00.008-04:00

Bristel, his sister, and their mother all lost their houses in the hurricanes of 2008. They lived beside the river in Montrouis and their houses and everything they had in life washed away. Bristel helped his mother rebuild her house and now he had saved enough money from his fishing to buy 3 truckloads of sand, 2 loads of gravel, and 30 bags of cement and was ready to start rebuilding his house next door to his mom again. He had the building materials stored at his mom's house. Bristel is my friend.

Roger also lost his house and his mother's house in the 2008 hurricanes along with everything they had. He started over again with a new wooden canoe fishing the shores of Montrouis. He is my fishing partner that helped me catch my big sailfish by hand. He rebuilt his mother's house too in the same place. The same land their family has owned for generations. It is all they have. The little piece of land by the river. He's my friend.

2 weeks ago Roger called me at about 5 pm to tell me the river was rising and I needed to see it. I had a missionary family visiting - The Robinsons- and so I did not think a trip to the river was timely. We decided to go and visit another orphanage instead but decided to at least drive by the river...When we pulled out of our driveway we could see the mass of people down the road. The river was working it's way towards our house. We decided a look at the river would probably be timely.

The river which is usually 3 feet deep and 15 feet wide was now a rushing torrent that had flooded a half mile down the road. As we joined the crowd, Roger found me. He told me his mother's house was "taking in water". He took me and Tracy through the banana fields to show us the damage. We went to check on some friends and found their house almost flooded but a wall collapsed across the road and allowed the water to flow away. We could not reach Roger's mother's house. It was too far into the water. The next day we went to see it.

Roger's mom's house was just a flat concrete slab. Everything she had was gone...again. The same for Bristel's mom...and all of his building materials. We let Roger's mom and niece come live at our mission for a while to see what we can do to help them find somewhere else. Bristel came to me today to tell me they were starting to work on his mother's house again. In the same place. By the river. He was asking if we could help. I tried to tell him that I did not think it was wise to build there again. He said their family had lived there for generations. Sometimes floods come. I tried to tell him that it is different now. The deforestation had caused so much silting of the rivers in our area that they can no longer drain the land in heavy rains. The flooding will be worse now than ever. He just blankly stared at me and said the little land by the river is all that his whole family owns. He does not believe the river is any different than it was for his grandfather. If it floods it floods. Fatalism. He's my friend. I hate it. He does not believe me and does not believe that cutting down trees to make charcoal has anything to do with his mom's house. So what do we do?

We keep working, and loving, and helping, and sending, and giving, and teaching, until they trust us. We can't reach anyone that does not trust us. We can't make anyone trust us. We can't change people's belief structure in a year. So we are here. We are praying. Everything we do helps us build trust. So our friends won't continue to be sick from preventable disease, and lose their homes by self destructive measures, and die without knowing the love of the God of salvation that sent us here.

JP

2010-07-23T15:35:00.004-04:00

Jean Patrick's (JP) mother died when he was a year old. He was raised by his father and his father's family. His father had a baby with another woman in the village. That woman sold bananas in market. The woman beside her consistently sold more bananas and that became a strife point. One day Jean Patrick's step mother decided to eliminate the competition. She had JP's father buy some "powder" from the local houngan- witch doctor. The powder is made from the corpse of dead people and is used to curse someone that you want to kill. JP's dad bought the powder and the jealous banana peddler used it to kill her competition - believe what you want- it is the reality of life in Haiti- true or not- science or religion- people end up dead- and that's the ultimate reality for them...

When the woman died it was known that JP's step mom had put the curse on her. So she fled to an island off of the coast to get away from the vengeful family of the dead woman. Since the vigilanty mob could not find the murderess, they decided that the husband that provided the powder would be a good scapegoat. So at age 7, JP had his father dragged into the streets, hands tied, a tire placed around his neck, and burned alive.

So now the 7 year old, traumatized orphan was left to basically fend for himself. He found a suitable home in the shelter of a dirt floor hut that was home to his elderly great grandmother. Unable to provide for most basic needs, JP found food and help where ever he could.

One day we received a phone call about a 9 year old boy that needed a home and a family. We were told the story of JP's past and how he did not have family that could take him in. We went to visit little JP and his great grandmother. She just cried as we talked about our mission and how we could provide for him. With nearly blinded eyes and no teeth, she pulled Jean Patrick close to her chest and wept over him. She kept saying how he had no mother or father and she had prayed and prayed for God to somehow deliver him. She kept telling him that he must be a good boy. He must not do anything to lose this opportunity. She told him this was his only chance to make it. It broke our hearts. She was so happy for him but she was putting so much pressure on him at the same time. We were just ready to get JP home and show him the love that Jesus had placed in our hearts for him. We were ready to help him heal from the trauma of a murdered father and the stigma he had received by the local villagers.

Since coming into our home little JP has flourished. He loves our kids and especially Joy. He just sits in her lap and lets her hug him. He is constantly looking for her to grab him and and brag on him with her broken creole. It is amazing how little verbal language is needed to convey love. He still has issues. He is plagued by the fear of the voodoo that took his father's life. I caught an octopus this week to show Sidney Robinson that was visiting. She wanted me to throw it back. Jamoy wanted to eat it. But Jean Patrick wanted me to just kill it so it would not go and bring a "devil" to curse our home. He believed that since we had caught it that it would now go in anger and tell the demons and they would come and curse our home and kill the children. He has been so afraid to sleep near the window. Although it is barred, he believes the witch doctor can turn into a rat or other animal and enter through the window to take him away.

He can't swim but we have gotten him to get into the water. He has never learned to swim due to his fear of what lives in the water. You can see by his gear that he is not taking any chances on sinking!

Keep JP in your prayers. He is a special kid and God has a special plan for his life. Pray God will let us help him over come the fears that plague him. Unchurched and unsaved, we know God wants to take over his life and lead him to a place of peace and victory. We are so thankful we get to be a small part of that process.

General Update

2010-07-21T14:58:00.006-04:00

I just wanted to take a minute to update everyone on how things are going in general. God is really allowing us to see some pretty awesome things happen. By that I do not mean blind people healed or sweeping revival. But we are seeing individual lives changed and a hand full of precious Haitian people really beginning to understand the depth of God's love for them.

Eye Clinics: We have one clinic in a hospital in St. Ard that is going great. We regularly find patients that have glaucoma, cataracts, pterygiums, and inflamatory eye disease that would have other wise gone untreated. Our staff of guys- Wesner, Paul, Robbins, Bazelais, and Dago all received a week of training by Dr. Lori Geddes and her team a few weeks ago and it is really paying off in our clinic. We also have a full office of equipment waiting in the container that is stuck in PAP right now. That office will go in a hospital in Pierre Pyan where we will also see patients each week. We regularly do screenings in churches and schools and that is often our most effective way of finding patients that need care. Peter is a 10 year old boy with just such a need. He was found during a screening in one of our mountain churches. He has an eye tumor and we are currently trying to find the best way to have the intensive surgery he needs and follow up care. Be praying for him.

Schools and Churches: Our schools are out for the summer right now. We are in the process of trying to get food shipments in so we will be able to feed the kids next year. The churches are doing well. All of our pastors are working hard and we will be holding a pastor training seminar again in the fall.

Celebration Children's Home: That is the name of our "crech". A crech in Haiti is a home that aids in the adoption of children. We have recieved 5 children into our crech so far. (Three of which we are adopting...) Wilna is the little 10 year old almost blind girl. She is doing great. Adelson is a 14 year old boy that was living in the streets in Montrouis and he has found a new home at Celebration. Jamoy lives with us. So does 9 year old Jean Patrick. His father was burned in the streets for practicing voodoo. And little 5 month old Justice is the pride of us all. She is doing great as well.

We have a local Haitian artist that is helping us decorate the mission and the children's home. He is a good guy and we are praying for him to realize his need for a real relationship with Jesus. He has an amazing talent and can paint anything. He has one drawback. He likes to surprise us! So he decides what he thinks we would like and does it. Even if we have totally other plans. One day I told him I wanted a logo painted on our wall in front of the mission. Joy mentioned a rainbow and kids playing on it with the name of the home. I had in mind a small logo under our New Vision Ministries logo. This is what we came in to find even before we confirmed the plans. So Celebration Children's Home became Celebration Home Chidren (no 'l').

We also have 3 moms and their babies living at the mission. They are doing well too. We are blessed to be able to invest in lives each and every day.

Fisherman's Ministry: God is really working in the lives of our fisherman. We have had many chances to minister to them lately. A friend from Hickory came to visit and brought me a roll of donated fishing line. We were able to give it to the guys for them to make jugs with. We are in the process of developing a plan where we help the fisherman catch more fish and then we buy them at a good price to give to the local schools to make sauce to feed the children. We are trying to get all of the logistics worked out but we believe it will be a great way to help the fishing community and at the same time feed children a healthy protein food that they love.

Biker Ministry: Many of you know we lost a good friend in a motorcycle accident. He was a driver of a moto -motorcycle taxi- here in Montrouis. As a result of that we are trying to reach out to the moto drivers in our community. We are planning a weekly meeting where we are able to minister to the moto drivers. I want to help them have proper equipment and then pray over them and their motos for safety and protection. Most of these guys are unchurched and now that the road has been built here in Montrouis, they have a very dangerous job. We had our first meeting scheduled Sunday but it go rained out. We will be meeting with them next Sunday.
We are looking for partners to help us know what all we might could do to reach these young guys and make their jobs safer. If you want to be involved, just let us know.

Earthquake Relief: Life is still very difficult for many here since the quake. Things are slowly getting back to normal- except for the fact that there are still lots of white people in PAP. We spend time in some of the tent villages doing distributions and helping with the transition. Tons of broken concrete are trucked to the outskirts of PAP and dumped everyday. Not much permanent rebuilding is taking place yet but many groups are building temporary housing for displaced victims. It will be a long long time before things are back to normal... whatever that is!

School Sponsorships: We are gearing up for our next year of school sponsorships. It costs us about $150 to put a child in school and buy their books and uniforms and everything they need for a year. We sponsored 27 kids last year ourselves but we are looking to open things up to allow others to sponsor kids this year so we are hoping to sponsor about 50 Montrouis kids to go to school. We are going to partner with a local group of young Haitians to help us identify the kids with the most need and let them help us with the logistics of the program. It is one of the ministry programs we enjoy the most. We are impacting children and families and they are so grateful for it.

Celebration Kids Club: Joy's Friday Kids club is doing great. She has about 40 kids that come to our house for a time of fun and Bible study. She always has a fun program lined up and the kids love her. Our only problem is that about half of them come everyday!

Monster Bus Worship: We had our first Monster Bus Worship service last Wednesday night with a team from Hickory. It did not go as well as hoped and the weather was not ideal but it got us started. We have a short school bus that is our main mode of transportation. I up fitted it to be a mobile worship center. We have a sheet of white plywood with hooks that hang it onto the back of the bus. Then we extend a boom with a projector to project worship videos with words back onto the screen. We have videos in English, French, and Creole. We use the laptop inside of the bus and run amplified speakers outside. We have an inverter hooked up to the 2 bus batteries to power everything. Our goal is to develop a service that we can take anywhere and draw people with sound and video. We also have the Jesus video DVD in creole that we plan to start showing in different communities.

Mission Teams: What a huge blessing teams have been in the last few months. It has been a lot of work but so much work has been done by teams from all over the US coming to Montrouis to work. I wish I could give proper credit to all of the ones that have been here. We can't believe so many people are willing to sacrifice to come and help us. We have had crusades, medical clinics, eye clinics, sports outreaches, pastor trainings, construction projects, shoe distributions, food distributions, clothes distributions, baby health programs, staff seminars, and much more through teams that have been here. I can't say how thankful we are!

Family Update: Jacy Klaire is in the states visiting family and friends. Joy is leaving in the next week to go get her. She will be going with Josie and leaving me here with the rest of crew. We are all doing great. God healed me of my ongoing illness and we are all doing well. We miss everyone back home but we are enjoying the life God is affording us here. We have a great place to live by the water and our kids can play and run. There is often a breeze and in the moments when we sit down we get to enjoy it. Thank you for your prayers for us personally!

Current Events: We had a flood in Montrouis 2 days ago. The river could not be contained by its banks and many homes were swept away. It was quite a sight to see the power of the raging river. Many people lost everything. The river came down our road to within a few hundred yards of our house. The deforestation and subsequent silting in of rivers has made flooding a deadly way of life here for many. One of my fisherman's mom lost her house and everything she owned. We moved her into the mission today for a few weeks until we can help them decide what we need to do to help her relocate. We also saw a tornado in the distance last night as it formed and touched down from a storm cloud. It was too far from us to be a hazard for Montrouis but it was a reminder of the fact that flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, and tempests, are part of our new life. But on a good note, the weather has been much cooler lately with all of the storms and rain. Every cloud has a silver lining.

The boys from HOB came over to swim in the ocean today. That was a great surprise for us. We enjoyed the time of playing with them and letting them play here. They asked about many of you that have been here to visit in the past.

So there is an update of how things are going here. We have not seen the sweeping revival and change in the superficial religious culture of our community but we are seeing God work. We stand amazed!

Catch of the Day

2010-07-10T16:01:00.003-04:00

I have been working with a group of fisherman that fish off of the coast here in Montrouis, Haiti where we live. They fish for a living and it is usually pretty tough going. One project I have been working on is trying to develop a light that they can use at night in their wooden canoes for catching bait. Currently they put a fuel burning lamp on a paddle over the water and that draws in the fish for them to catch to use as bait. The lamps are not very effective and the smoke they put off burn the eyes of the fisherman and they must buy oil to use them. Many nights they do not catch any bait. That means they can't go fishing for the big fish the next morning.

I have been meeting with the fisherman every week. I have began to develop some relationships but they have just seen me as just a "blanc" - the term for white people in Haiti- that wants to help but not as a fisherman. This past Monday after our meeting, I started talking about how we fished with jugs and trot lines when I was growing up. They started asking questions and testing me on fishing stuff. By the end of the evening- which invlolved me showing them a shark week episode- they were beginning to talk to me more like a fisherman. Then one of the guys invited me fishing to test out the light I have been working on.

I took a little radio that the US Army was giving out that you can turn a handle to charge it or set it in the sun. I attached a wire that leads to three LCD lights sealed inside a small bottle inside a green bottle- attracts more fish- and then weighted to sink the bottle. I have about 20 more of the radios left that we could use for the lights. And I have given one to all of the fisherman right after the earthquake.

So at 8:00 Thursday night I went out fishing to test the light. Roger showed up in a borrowed aluminum boat. He did not want me to have to go out in his wooden canoe. I think he was scared the blanc would tip him over in the middle of the night!

So me and Jeanmoy went with him and spent from 8:00pm until 1:00 am catching bait fish using a line with about 20 hooks on it and pieces of styrofoam for bait. You just let the line sink under the light and shake it up and down and wait for the bait fish to come. The same way we catch bait fish off the coast in Florida. The difference is the line is rolled around a piece of styrofoam block and each time you pull up the 50 to 60 feet of line with a fish on it- it ends up getting tangled up. We shared stories and some potted meat and caught about 2 dozen bait fish. Most of our time was spent bailing water out of the leaky boat.

The light worked but I have several things that I need to redo to make it better. I was more concerned about making it able to be submersed in the water but we need to just make it brighter and using a rechargable power source.

Yesterday Roger went out with the bait and returned around lunch...with nothing. I told him I wanted to go with him to fish for the big fish...wahoo, sail fish, dauphin, etc. He told me he did not want me to go today because he did not see anyone catch any fish and he did not want me to go and not catch anything. I told him that I would be fine with not catching anything that I wanted to see how he did everything. So he called me later and told me he had arranged to borrow the same rickety boat and even a motor if I could buy some gas. So I did and he told me he would see me at 5 am.

So that is where the fun began. Right on time at 5:30 Roger showed up to get me. We took the leaky boat with a load of styrofoam blocks and gallon bleach jugs wrapped with line and hooks along with our little bait fish and headed out. It took us about 40 minutes to get to the spot where we were going to put out the jugs. The same place takes 3 hours to paddle.

We spent about 45 minutes baiting and putting out the jugs. The jugs have about 100 feet of 90 pound test line tied to a steel wire leader and hook. After we placed all the jugs we went and sat to watch them. The waves were getting rough so it was hard to see the jugs but we just sat and waited.

We talked about Roger's childhood and his current family. We have helped him with his 5 kids several times when no fish could be found. He does not talk much but we had some good conversation about his religious beliefs and I got to share with him the love Jesus has for him.

He was very careful to not lose any of the bait fish. Even the dead ones. I knew that the big game fish we were after rarely eat dead fish so I figured he used them for cut bait or something. When I asked he gave me the "dumb blanc" look and told me that his family would be eating those bait fish tonight if we did not catch anything. That is definitely motivation for fishing. I also asked how long he waited before he collected the jugs and went home. He said until he caught a fish or the day was over. I forgot he was not there for sport.

About 9:00 - when I had used up all of my creole and sunscreen- Roger calmly said "pwason" - fish. I looked and a six foot sail fish was walking on his tail across the water about 300 yards away. After that another one leaped about 5 feet out of the water. Roger started the motor and I put down my water bailing bucket. When we reached the first line I plucked the styrofoam block out of the water and handed it to Roger as he passed me in the boat heading towards the bow. He stood and began letting the big fish pull the boat around. I looked and saw that in all we had 4 fish on lines at the same time.

Roger starting pulling in the line slowly and I wrapped it around the styrofoam block as he retrieved it. Then the fish would leap out of the water and make a run and pull the line back off of the block once again. Pull, wrap, unwrap, pull, wrap, unwrap...for almost an hour we let the fish pull us around like a tug boat. Finally he fatigued and after a few precarious trips around the boat I handed Roger the 8 foot mango stick with the rusted harpoon nailed to the end. I took the line and Roger plunged the iron hook into the side of the fish just behind the gills. He then grabbed the fish in the gills and heaved it into my lap! Then, without celebration, or photo ops, Roger started the boat again and we went in search of the other fish. By time we got back to where they were one was already off the hook. We tracked down another one and I told Roger that this one was mine.

I had decided that any fish we caught I would buy from Roger at the normal price since if I was not there he would be able to catch them and sell them. So then I was afraid that if I lost the fish I would be losing Roger's money. So I told him before I grabbed the line that I would pay him either way. Even if I lost it. So I stood up in the unstable little boat that was being rocked by the waves. As soon as I grabbed the line I knew it was going to be a fight. The fish took off before I could even start pulling. Dragging our little boat about as easily as he pulled the jug. Slowly I began to retrieve the line in a hand over fist fashion. I knew not to get my hand or fingers tangled in the line or it could be ugly when the fish went for a run. My fish was less fatigued than Roger's. It constantly took all of the line I retrieved. After a powerful leap out of the water followed by a graceful tail dance, the trophy size sail fish dove deep. I tugged, and pulled, and tugged, and pulled. Once I was knocked onto floor and almost out of the boat into the sea. A usually compassionate Roger could not help but laugh. Back onto my feet I braced myself better and continued the epic battle. After just over an hour the fish was visible as it ascended towards the boat. I told Roger to spear it for me and he helped me get dinner into the boat.

By time I finished my fight the other fish was gone. It had been on a smaller of the pieces of styrofoam and it just left with it. So we ended up with two fish. We spent the next hour collecting all of the other jugs. I could not imagine doing that in a wooden canoe. It blows my mind. The fish pulled us so far away from where we had to go to get the jugs. I would die before being able to paddle that much. Then after all that was done you have to paddle back home three hours. I was so happy to be in a boat with a motor!

So at the end of the day Roger cleaned and weighed the fish. He only let me pay for one. I tried to give him one of the chunks of filet but he refused. He said fisherman always have fish...even if they are just bitesized!

Giving Hope

2010-07-03T21:42:00.010-04:00

There are some days when God says "sit back and let me show you how I work". We had one of those days this week.

We have had a team here from NC this week helping us. We were able to do eye clinics and distributions, and lots of painting at The Mission. We painted the two girls rooms pink and purple and the two boys rooms blue and green. We want to thank all of you that had a part in that trip!

Joy and I were sitting on our porch getting ready to leave when a little young women came walking down the path through our yard carrying a baby. You could tell by the mother's body language that she was not doing very well. She came to me and I immediately saw that the little baby she was carrying had a severely scarred cornea in her left eye. They were both in tattered clothes and malnourished. Joy got the mom some food and I took the baby to check her eyes. We found out that the mother was a single mom- as always- and really struggling to care for her baby. We asked her to spend the morning with us and we listened to her story- as much as she was willing to share.

She says she is 20 years old but I am doubtful she is older than 15 or 16. She was living with a man that kicked her out when he found out she was pregnant. The baby was born with normal vision but 3 days after birth the eye became infected and she was unable to pay to take her to the doctor. Now 6 months later the eye is severely scarred. This young lady was one of the most heartbreaking we have encountered. I have never seen someone so beaten down. She would not look at us. She just sat there expressionless. Jaxon kept giving her crackers the entire morning. It was as though he could even tell she was hurting deeply.

I finally sent her to have an HIV and syphilis test for the baby to see if we could determine the cause of the eye disease. Then I was having her meet us at The Mission to check the baby's eyes in the clinic. I then left for a walk to see one of our projects at Dago's business where some steps were being built. On the way I bought 2 dozen freshly roasted conch to give to the workers once I arrived at the work site. After a visit there I began to walk home. I passed Jeanmoy on the street on his way to school...late. Then I had another encounter with a young mother.

This young lady we have helped in the past. We have given her bottles and formula and rice at times before. The last time she came to see Joy she tried to get Joy to take her 8 month old baby. Joy did not feel like that was the best option and felt like we should just continue to help the mother. But when she came to me she was desperate for help and again trying to get me to take the baby. I told her to meet us at the mission and let us sit down and see what we could do.

She showed up about the same time as the mother with the eye problem. Joy and I sat down and talked to her as she told us her story. At 17 she was married with a one month old baby and living in Port Au Prince at the time of the earth quake. Her husband was killed during the quake and they escaped and moved to Montrouis to live with an aunt. The aunt is unable to help with the her needs and the baby and she has no one else. She wanted to keep her baby but the baby is malnourished and she has no way of providing for her.

So there we were. Two teenage moms at their wits end ready to give away their babies out of desperation. So instead of taking the babies and raising them for the mothers to let them go back out and make the same mistakes and end up in the same situation again, we decided to take in the mothers and the babies. For a specified period of time they will live at The Mission and help with the daily tasks there. We will help them with their basic needs and disciple them in being good mothers and how to find God's plan for their lives. So Joy fixed up the purple girl's room with beds and a place for the babies and it was...right...and good. We loaded them in the bus and went to their houses to get their things. One of the mothers was sleeping in a mud hut on the dirt floor with her baby. Just seeing how she was living broke our hearts even more. We are so thankful for the chance to impact these young ladies and their babies. Please keep them in your prayers.

The same day...we had a call about a 14 year old boy that we had met the week before that is an orphan locally. His mother and father both died and he was living with an uncle. The uncle was beating him and now we found out the uncle accused him of stealing some money and kicked him out into the street. So the next day he came over and we let him spend the night. Then yesterday he went to PAP with us and we spent the day talking and sharing. So today we moved him into The Mission and moved one of the guys into a room with him. His nick name was Ti Kabrit which means little goat in kreole. He hates it but that is what everyone calls him. The people he was living with after his uncle kicked him out did not even know his real name. We call him Aldilson...his real name. He is so happy to have a place to live and a bed to call his own. Baz- one of our staff guys- is his room mate and mentor at The Mission. Keep them in your prayers too.

Reflections on One Year in Haiti

2010-06-25T22:34:00.001-04:00

Today marks one year since we arrived full time on the mission field in Haiti. In many ways I can't believe it has already been a year and in other ways I can't believe it has only been ONE year??!!! We have been so blessed in our first year of full time ministry here. We have been able to see so many things happen that are clearly from the hand of God Himself. We have had many surprises.

I never would have thought we would see an earthquake.
I never thought I would see so many dead people.
I never thought we would leave one mission to start a mission of our own.
I never thought we would be opening an orphanage.
I never thought we would be adopting two Haitian kids into our family.
I never would have thought EVERYTHING would be so frustrating to get done.
I never would have thought we would have visitors from NC, GA, FL, KY, IN, MN, ID, CA, WA, IA, TX, and MO all in six months.
I never would have thought I would need to know abbreviations to so many states!
I never would have thought Judah would go this long without being injured in any major way.
I never would have thought a bus would be our only mode of transportation for this long.
I never would have thought I would have so much trouble getting things through customs.
I never would have thought I would eat spaghetti noodles with ketchup and mayonnaise and like it.
I never would have thought I would eat so much goat.
I never would have thought I would spend 6 weeks sick.
I never would have thought I would miss Bojangles Chicken so much.
I never would have thought Jacy would be so fluent in creole already.
I never would have thought I would be emailing people and asking them to bring me toilet paper when they come to visit.
I never would have thought I would love the people here so much.
I never would have thought ice cream would be such a big treat.
I never would have thought having teams come and stay here would be so difficult and rewarding at the same time.
I never would have thought it would be so long since we saw our older kids.
I never would have thought I would know more about soccer scores than who won the Masters or the NBA championship...soccer...
I never would have thought I would learn how to shop for lettuce and good looking potatoes from a women sitting under a mango tree surrounded by baskets and flies.
I never would have thought I would ever have to tell my kids "I promise I will not let the neighbors eat THIS kitten".
I never knew I could learn so much from kids and young people.
I never would have thought I would be so ashamed of how I once lived my life so selfishly and lavishly.
I never would have thought I would still be so ashamed of how selfishly I still live my life.
I never knew I would love fans so much.
I never would have thought I would hide Doritos that someone brought us from my kids so I could eat them later.
I never would have thought Joy could hide chocolate so good that I can NEVER find it!
I never thought we would have so many sick people to deal with everyday.
I never thought I would have to try to convince some of my best friends that the sorcerer is not going to turn into a bat and sneak into my house to cut open Justice's head to steal a part of her brain.
I never would have thought people could be so manipulative and deceitful.
I never knew how many true friends we had back in the U.S.
I never knew that I was neglecting those relationships and friendships.
I never knew that I could cherish them so much.

I could go on forever about the surprises we have seen in this first year. We have learned so much. I actually thought that since I had been here so many times before we moved that I actually knew the culture and what it would be like to live here. I had no idea! It is so much better than I ever would have imagined and so much harder than I ever dreamed. The grace God gives us everyday to handle the things we encounter blows my mind. I had no idea God loved me so much. I had no idea you could sense Him so intimately. I never knew Satan could have such a hold on a people either. God is so good to us. I would not change anything that happened this past year. God has chosen to teach us so much and the biggest thing He has taught us is that we have SO much to learn!

Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for helping us get started. Thank you for being there whenever we need you. A slogan here after the earthquake is "Ansamn nou ap rive' pi lwen". Together we are going farther. That is how I feel about what God is doing in our ministry through all of our partners back home. Tomorrow morning begins year two. I can only imagine what it will hold!

More Than One Way to Skin a Cat...

2010-06-23T22:26:00.003-04:00

Jeanmoi's (Ja' moy) mother and father died and left him to be cared for by a half brother. He had quit going to third grade because he did not have shoes or a backpack or notebooks for class. At 14 failing 3rd grade can be a big deal. We met Jeanmoi through a group of doctors and press personel that were here from Texas. They befriended him and introduced him to us. Joy fell in love with him immediately.

We had him come over to the mission while the group was working one day and had his older half brother come too. After lunch we told him we would like for Jeanmoi to spend the day with us. His response was one of disappointment. He said he was hoping we would just take him because no one else knew what to do with him. Jeanmoi was standing there listening. I could just imagine in my mind what he must have been thinking. The person that is supposed to be raising him is disappointed that a stranger he met an hour earlier was not going to take him. What a tough place to be for a 14 year old. Not suprisingly, Joy was understanding enough creole to know what was going on and pulled me over to the side to briefly explain in clear English that she did not intend for him to just spend the day with us. She felt certain we were supposed to take him in and give him a family again that could love and care for him. I asked the brother if he would be willing to help us get all of the paperwork necessary to take him. He gladly agreed. He left and there stood Jeanmoi with nothing except the clothes he had on. Not a word of English. And surrounded by crazy white people. The perfect recipe for an adventure for all.

Picture with me a 14 year old boy that has never used an indoor toilet or taken a shower that did not include fetching water in a bucket. We had someone want to take us to dinner at the restaurant at the resort here in town the very first night he was with us. It is a buffet and he followed me through the line. It was the first time I had seen American food in quite awhile so I made sure to load up on mashed potatoes and pork tenderloin. Jeanmoi did the same. We sat down and I began to savor the taste of mashed potatoes with real gravy and did not notice the huge smile that had been on Jeanmoi's face since we walked through the door was now gone. He sat there holding his fork with a confused look on his face. When he saw me looking at him he began to apologize and asked if there was any way he could just go get some rice and beans. He returned with the smile bigger than ever and a heaping plate of rice and beans.

He has been with us for about a month now and things are getting into a routine. Jacy Klaire is his interpreter of everything not just English. He asks her everything. He is back in school and we are trying to get him tutored so he can pass 3rd grade. He is teaching us a lot too. For instance tonight I learned the proper way to kill, boil, skin, roast, and eat a cat. We have a cat that is sitting right here beside me. The whole conversation made her a little nervous. We told Jeanmoi how the cat attacked Joy and bit her one day pretty badly...a whole nother story... and his serious protective response was "I'll eat that cat!" According to Jeanmoi, who was surprised I had never eaten cat, it tastes a whole lot like goat.

Meet Wilna

2010-06-21T22:29:00.005-04:00

We were doing a clinic at one of our schools in a rural province with a medical team that was here from Atlanta. I preached at the church there on Sunday and invited everyone to a clinic on Tuesday. The medical team saw adults with medical problems while our eye team screened all of the school children for eye problems. A lady came up to Dago and asked if we could see a local girl that was not in the school there but had eye problems.

She sat on the front row waiting to be seen. In her torn clothes with matted hair she sat with her head down staring into the floor. I could see the signs of malnutrition and worm infection from where I sat on the platform seeing the other kids. When I called her to come up she looked at me and I could see a severely scarred left eye and could tell her vision in her right eye was not good either. When she sat down I could tell she was blind in her bad eye and had only peripheral vision in her good eye. In a muffled voice without any eye contact, she told me her name was Wilna.

I told Wilna that I needed to talk to her mother because she needed to be seen in our eye clinic so I could do a more thorough examination. She shyly told me her mother and father were both dead. I asked who she lived with and she was unclear of even what to tell me. I talked to the church member that had brought her and told her I needed to talk to her family member that was responsible so we could set up an exam. Wilna just starred at the floor.

Finally an aunt showed up and said that 10 year old Wilna stays with her since she had no one else to care for her. She has never been to a day of school. I told her of the severity of Wilna's vision loss and asked why she had not received care earlier. A lack of concern was evident. I finally asked if she wanted us to take Wilna to our mission so I could care for her. The aunt laughed as if that was a stupid question. She said it would be a great thing for everyone. I asked if she could go retrieve Wilna's things and ride with us once the clinic was over. She hastily left to get her things together.

She returned with pillow case half full of a few clothes. We all went to the mission. The aunt and her sister stayed a little while and ate and then told me they had to leave. They left without telling Wilna goodbye. Wilna spent her first night at our house with us. Then we were able to get her set up at the mission.

I was able to do a full eye examination on Wilna and determined the cause of her vision loss is most likely due to congenital syphilis. We will be able to confirm that when we get her a full physical exam and blood work. The bad part is that many times those children suffer decreased mental ability and nerve deafness. We will be able to make sure she gets the care she needs now.

So that's the sad part...the happy part is that Wilna is now living at our mission and doing great. Allie from Atlanta really formed a bond with Wilna while she was here and helped with the first few days of transition. We moved Colleen, the mother of Christy and Christa, one of the sets of Joy's twins, into the mission to live so we can continue to help with them and she can help with Wilna. It is working out great. You should see little Wilna helping with the babies. She talks and sings and is eager to learn anything someone will teach her. Jacy Klaire is teaching her the ABC's. We are so happy to be able to invest in her life. She is legally blind and could suffer other complications. But we know God has a great plan for her life and we are grateful to be able to be a part of it.

A Little Pot Goes a Long Way!

2010-06-10T20:14:00.003-04:00

Mirlande, so surprised to learn that we had African American- non Haitian- people in America. She was totally flipped out to meet Dr. Jackie when she visited a couple of weeks ago. It took me forever to convince her that Obama is not a Haitian that went to America.

Mirlande is our precious, God sent, young lady that we are putting through school and employing as Joy's helper with the kids after she gets out of school everyday. She lives here in our house with us. She is a mountain girl that God has a special plan for.

Last night we got home late because we had been working at the mission. I was starting to feel sick again and I told Mirlande how thankful I was for her help. She looked at me and said that she owed me everything. Confused I asked her what she meant. She started the story with do you remember the hurricanes last year?

In 2008 Haiti had the worst hurricane season in their history. Extensive flooding killed many and displaced thousands more. Mirlande's family was not spared. A typical Haitian family has a little house but the kitchen is not inside. They cook with charcoal so they have an outside kitchen under a little hut. The flooding washed away thousands of families' kitchens and all of their pots and pans and cooking supplies. So after the flood I came down with Tracy, and Toby, and Bob and we bought 10,000 pounds of food to distribute and brought with us pots that we had the people of Tri- City Baptist in Conover, NC collect for us. We distributed those things to families in need.

Mirlande said that I had not met her yet but her family lost all their pots. They had no way to cook for weeks because their neighbors did not have pots to borrow either. Then she saw us giving out pots here in Montrouis. She said that I came to her and gave her the best pot in the whole bunch. She left immediately to make the hike back up the mountain to take it to her mom. She said that when her mom saw her coming down the road with the pot on her head she began to scream and praise the Lord. She and all her neighbors used that pot that day for the first hot meal in weeks. Mirlande said her family prayed for us and that God would bless us for our life saving gift...of a little pot!

I hate to admit it but I don't remember the pot. I don't remember giving it to Mirlande. I remember thinking how much trouble it was going to be to transport all of those pots and get them through customs. I remember being frustrated as people pushed and shoved and fought to get the pots as I thought "they just want anything free". But for Mirlande it was a gift directly from her Jesus that she loves so much. It was an answer to her families prayers. I praise God that He does not give up on this old selfish, proud, self centered Georgia hick and chooses to use some of His precious children to teach me to be more like Him. Please Lord, don't give up!

Celebration Kids Club

2010-05-31T22:25:00.003-04:00

Sometimes God has to give you a little push! Joy has wanted to start a ministry to our local kids where we meet with them each week and share the love of Jesus with them. She has been wanting me to schedule a time and decide the best way to go about it. I have just been slack in getting it going. So God handled it.

About a month ago a little girl showed up at our yard all dirty with matted hair and dirty clothes. She began to tell us how her parents were killed in the quake and she was living in the refugee camp down the road. Joy took her in and gave her a shower and everything and we fed her and fixed her hair. We had her go home and told her to come back the next day. When she came back some things just did not seem exactly right so we decided to go check things out. It turns out she has a mother and a father doing just fine and an aunt had put her up to the lie to try to see what she could get out of it.

So a month goes by. Then Saturday I am sitting in the yard and about a dozen kids come peeking around the wall. One would come out and then run back and then another and another. Finally I motioned for them to come over and asked them what was going on. They said they had been told we were giving away bicycles and baby dolls to every kid that came to our house that day. So here we had a dozen kids wanting bikes and babies. Guess who told them that...

You guessed it. The little "orphan" from the month before. So I took the opportunity to sit the kids down and find out their names and ages. Then I asked if the little fibber was on the other side of the wall... she was (she is the one on the back left in the picture looking all scared about her punishment for lying!). So she came too and I told the story of the boy that cried wolf and shared with them the importance of honesty.. . and forgiveness. Then since it was the day before Haitian Mother's Day we gave them all a gift bag of hygeine supplies etc. to give to their mothers. We also invited them back on Wednesday after school for the first official meeting of Joy's Celebration Kids club.

Fish Tale

2010-05-27T19:07:00.003-04:00

I have a group of fisherman that I am trying to minister to by helping them be able to catch more fish and sell them to support their families. Another way we help them is by being a good customer. Last week 2 of my guys that fish in a little canot- wooden boat- showed up at the house with the fish you see here. They caught him on a 50 foot line tied to a bleach jug with a small fish on the end. They take their 10-15 jugs out to the deep water around the islands and lets them float. Then they go back about 4 hours later to check them. Today was a lucky day! When they see one of the jugs going across the water they chase it down paddling and begin to pull the fish in by hand. This was a sword fish that we were able to buy over 50 pounds of meat after they cleaned it. They don't like the fact that I will not buy the head to make soup out of but they are happy to sell the rest.

The biggest issues surrounding them are finding bait fish. They go out at night and place an oil lamp on a paddle extended out over the water. That draws in little fish that they can catch to use for bait. If they do not find bait, they can't go out for the fish that they can sell. We are trying to find some lights that are rechargable that we can mount on a board or something over the water to bring in more bait fish. We also are in the process of getting them good hooks and line so that when they do hang one they don't loose it. The guys that brought us the sword fish have not sold tried to sell us anything in weeks. One fish may have to provide the income to feed the family and continue to fishing business for weeks. We are trying to help these guys and share with them the love of Jesus Christ too. And we get to eat good fresh fish everyday. God is good!

Finally Reconnected!

2010-05-27T09:39:00.002-04:00

It has been a full month since our internet went down and we had not been able to get it back up and running until yesterday.

We missed being able to talk to everyone. We are all doing fine. We have all been sick some but I think we are on the mend now. The kids are doing great. Jacy Klaire is doing good in her home schooling and piano lessons. Judah and Jaxon had their birthday party Saturday. Judah is 5 and Jaxon is 2. Josie is as witty as ever. She keeps us all in line. She speaks a little bit of creole but she speaks mostly bad English. She talks to the Haitians the way they speak English to her. So she tells the girls "me need eat" or "me want play out". She says it with a haitian accent though! Jaxon is just learning to talk and he speaks about half and half. He is into everything and constantly injured. He has a second degree burn on his leg right now from a motorcycle muffler.
Justice is growing and smiling. She is healthy and becoming a part of the family. We are frustrated with the process of trying to get anything accomplished with her case but we know the Lord is in charge. We would like to get a passport for her so we could bring her to the states for vaccinations and so we can visit family. We can't locate the mother but the father is anxious to get her legally into our custody so we are working on it.

Both sets of twins are doing good. We were able to buy an exersaucer off the street for one set so they can start developing some muscle tone. They are growing and developing well.

The mission is coming right along. We are ready to paint the kitchen and we finished the Tiki hut dining area. We have the appliances in the kitchen and ready to cook up some rice and beans.

We have our approval for the children's home from UNICEF and Heartland Alliance but we are waiting on licensing from Haitian social services. We have paid all the crazy fees so we think it should not be long before they give us the go ahead to start recieving kids.

We spent a good part of yesterday in a tent village outside PAP. It has become a permanent settlement now and they are errecting tarp schools and churches with the belief they are not going anywhere. The tarps are slowly being replaced by scraps of tin or wood. Thankfully, a group came in and put in latrines and two water bladders for the people to have but I don't know how long they will transport water to fill the bladders daily. We will see. They want our help in getting a school for the kids there. There are hundreds of kids with no access to school at all. We aer praying about how we can help.

Today Joy is gone with a group of doctors from Texas to visit one of the schools and feed them. I am going with an engineer from California this morning to another school to see about developing a feeding program there and building them a building. We are thankful for the chance to work with such fine folks from around the U.S.

I will try to get some pictures posted in the next day or so since we are back in the land of technonlogy. Thank you all for your prayers.

Justice

2010-04-15T11:50:00.004-04:00

I was visiting one set of Joy's twins with a team from Indiana to give the babies some formula and rice for the mom when a friend of Joy's came up and told me she had a baby that I needed to see. I went to her house nearby and found a tiny 5 week old baby. Her mouth full of thrush and her skin covered in a rash. She had the smallest little round face you have ever seen. God immediately touched my heart.

The next day the lady took the baby to the hospital and called me to tell me she wanted us to take it. She said she could not care for it and did not have anyone in the family that could. I was in Port Au Prince but when I got home I sent Joy to the hospital to see what she needed to do for the little thing.

We discovered that at 2 weeks the baby was abandoned in an old school to die. By the grace of God she was discovered at 1 o'clock in the morning by a lady and brought to the friend that had agreed to keep her until they decided what to do. They knew the baby and Joy's friend was the cousin of the father. He is an older man in the village. Too old to be caring for a baby. We have had trouble finding out much about the mother. Supposedly she was here from the mountains and is a young girl. No one has heard from her since she abandoned the baby.

The father asked if we could take the baby. After a long discussion with him about how irresponsible it was to get a teenage girl pregnant at his age and how disgusted that made me, we agreed that the baby needed a new home. He asked if he could be known as the baby's grandfather and have a role in her life. We agreed.

We get offered babies all the time. We were offfered a six month old set of twins just this week. It is usually either a sick mother or from a family with too many children. But this was different. God had touched our hearts and we felt just like with the other kids we have adopted that she was supposed to be a part of our family. So Joy stayed with her at the hospital that night and then we brought her to our house the next morning. Two days later we met the father at the Justice of the Peace office and allowed him to sign the rights and legal guardianship over to us. Haiti is not allowing any new adoptions to take place right now but we are going to start the process as soon as it is allowable.

She has been with us three weeks now. She was born on Feb. 10. When we got her on March 29th she weighed six pounds. She is now up to over 8 pounds and looks great. We still have to have her AIDS tested and everything before we can start the adoption process but we are so thankful that God did not allow her to die that night in that school. Keep her in your prayers. We named her Justice Kacia. Joy got the name Justice from Isaiah 30:18 as she was reading in the hospital the night she spent there with her. All of the Haitian people know the mother committed a crime but the LORD is a God of Justice. Kacia is short for acacia which is the wood used to make the Ark of the Covenant. We knew this was the perfect name for our newest addition. Pray that all goes through in the arduous process of Haitian adoption.

She has really been an immediate blessing to our entire family. All of the kids as well as the Haitian people we work with are so blessed by her.

At UN Gunpoint

2010-04-13T16:37:00.003-04:00

Each year the week after Easter we have a big convention with all the churches we work with in Bois Nerf, Haiti. We just finished the week of eye clinics, medical clinics, pastor training, youth meetings, children ministry, and women's seminars. We also have crusades every night and this year a group from our home church in Conover, NC put on a performance of a production they do each year at Christmas. The production is called The Promise and it was a huge hit. It was a crazy thing the way God put it all together.

The team that was coming could not find a medical doctor that could make it on the trip. They were having a team meeting just a couple of weeks before the trip and a couple from out of town was at our church for another meeting and "accidentally" walked in on the meeting where the team was praying for a doctor. The couple apologized and the folks from the team told them not to worry about it and if they were a nurse and a doctor to just hang around and go to Haiti with them. The couple excused themselves and headed for their car. But as they got into their car they felt they needed to consider going back to the meeting. The husband is a medical doctor with many medical mission trips under his belt. They returned to the meeting and shared their feelings to a team sitting in utter disbelief at the providence of God. The doctor did make it on the trip and ended up playing several roles in the theatrical production with his wife as well and God used them along with the rest of the team to encourage the Haitian people and touch our family deeply.

We had a great week with some of our best friends in the world. Things really were amazing this week and this morning was the topper of the week. We left Montrouis at 5:30 this morning to head to PAP to the airport. About 45 minutes into the trip we came onto a convoy of trucks with armed UN guards. The trucks were only doing about 20 mph and we were pushed to get the team to the airport. Dago, our driver, decided that although the guards were flagging him down to not pass that due to our circumstances that maybe they would reconsider for us...he was wrong! As we go about ready to go around the guard on the UN truck drew his gun and pointed it directly at Dago...a situation that would cause me to back off and go about my business...but Dago...being concerned about the team not missing their flight...continued to pressure the guards until one of them put down his machine gun and raised and aimed a 12 gauge shotgun at our windshield. Now I am almost sure he would not have shot our vehicle but we were close enough to see the seriousness in his expression and the cursing in his Brazalian Portugese. The danger however did not come from the UN, the danger came from the fact that we were only one vehicle with a Haitian driver that was not very tolerate of the UN's opposition to letting us get to our destination. There were about 20 other vehicles all pressing and bumping and jockeying for position just in case the irritated soldiers decided to let someone through. I think we had a little bit of a taste of being 4 wide at Talladega. I apologize to any non-rednecks that do not pick up on Nascar illustrations.

After the UN turned where we would normally turn we decided to go straight...not the best idea. We ended up in a 'blokis" or traffic jam and had to backtrack back to the same road. The team finally got to the airport but I have not heard from them since we dropped them off. I pray they made their flight and are safely back in Carolina.

Fuel Shortage Again...
We found out today that we are in another fuel shortage. Gasoline is out and diesel is being rationed. The Govenment controls the fuel that enters the country. Obviously they did not account for all the fuel the agencies are using that have come in since the quake. We heard they can't get a tanker in until the 26th so that will put a hault on a lot of the recovery efforts. Thankfully, I have a reservere barrel and a half that should get us through. We will have to see.

Jesus Visits the Fisherman...
Pastor Rick came to our prayer meeting with the fisherman at 5:30 Monday in his Jesus costume from The Promise. It was really a good time of sharing with the guys. Ken Wilson had brought some fishing supplies with him so we were able to give them some things and share the gospel with them as well.

God is so good!

Fishing for Fisherman

2010-03-29T13:28:00.003-04:00

We had back to back groups led by eye doctors the past two weeks. Dr. Lori Geddes and her family and our new friend Darrell came down from Minnesota to spend a week with us. We were able to do some eye care but much more than that we were able to some things done in the schools with Pastor Cesar and began the process of organizing things in the clinics. It was a great week and we look forward to seeing them back in Haiti.

One really cool thing that came out of that trip was a ministry to fisherman. I have been meeting with the fisherman that fish here at our backyard. I meet with them at 5:45 on Monday mornings before they go out for the day of fishing. I pray with them individually for safety and blessing. I am also starting a Bible study with them on how much Jesus loved fisherman. We are going to try to help them with some supplies they need to fish as well. We are going to try to get hooks, line, steel leaders, and other small tackle for them to use in their trade. They do not use fishing poles but instead wrap the line around a coke bottle and then hold the line in their mouths as they paddle. When we asked them to show me their typical setup, the first fisherman held up a line that had an old sparkplug tied to the end as a weight. These guys lead a tough life and have a tough job. The deforestation of Haiti has had its effects on the fishery as well. The silt that flows into the sea has covered and killed much of the reef. That has reduced the amount of sea life and makes fishing a tough venture. They usually end the day with a handful of small fish only a few inches long. They will eat what they need and sell the rest to try to get by. Their boats, which are carved out of mango or bread fruit trees, are called a bwa fouye. They all leak so half of your time is spent bailing water out. Pray that I can get to know them and that they will choose to accept Christ. I have had 3 show up for the meeting at 5:45 each week and about 10 show up at about 7! They all tell me they start fishing at 6 and I see them out there so they wanted to do it early but then they get there the typical Haitian hour late. They are operating on Joy's schedule!

Dr. Dennis' team helped us work on the benches for the church at St. Marc. It was hot, hard work but we got 40 benches built that were used in Church this past Sunday. Everyone was so excited to get the benches into the church. What a great day! They also helped me work at the clinic we are setting up at the orphanage.

(As I type this Josie Kate came up to me carrying a baby chick! She is our fearless animal lover. I bought a couple of Hispanola Parrots the other day on the street in PAP and she just loves them to death...almost literally!)

All of the kids are doing great. We may have an addition to the family but I need to get some things settled before we introduce her officially. Joy brought a little one home after spending the night in the hospital with her last Friday. Joy is at the hospital again today with a little girl who has a hip deformity due to an infection. We are seeing if a visiting orthopedic team can operate on her while they are here. Be praying for little Dianna.

The twins are doing better. Both sets are healthy and growing. We are so thankful for all of your prayers. They still have issues...one has the chickenpox right now... but we know your prayers are keeping them strong.

Our time is consumed now with getting everything ready for our big annual convention with eye care, medical care, pastor training, teacher training, youth sessions, and children's ministry. That all kicks off the week after Easter. Be praying for the team coming from NC to do that work. It is a tough week for them but we always see God do some marvelous things.

We are in the process of getting the orphanage certified with UNICEF and the Haitian Social Services. Once that process is complete, about 2 more weeks we pray, we will be certified to receive kids from UNICEF. I went and visited some of the kids in PAP last week and it broke my heart. Kids that lost parents in the quake and were injured. They have been staying in the hospital for the last 2 months. UNICEF has standards that are keeping them from being placed in an orphanage right now. Pray we can get through the red tape and help these precious children. We are getting closer. We still do not have any furnishings in the orphanage, or even electricity or a kitchen but things are coming together. The Lord is in Charge. And for that we are grateful!

What do Starfish Eat?

2010-03-10T19:24:00.006-05:00

It was a good day. I spent the day in Port Au Prince getting supplies for some friends that will be coming to stay with us next week and help us. I also met with Dr. Price from Christianville and picked up the equipment for the lab where we will be making glasses. He also showed me some of the pharmacies where he buys medications.

There are more military personel in PAP than I ever would have imagined. I definitely feel safer than I ever have in the city. Some removal of debris from destroyed buildings and homes is occuring. The food distributions and things are starting to decrease so things are getting back to semi-normal. The biggest thing you see is that the tents that the people were sleeping in were made out of sheets right after the quake. Now groups have came in and given better tents. So now many of the tent villages all have matching tents. The problem is that I do not hear much organized talk of actually doing anything with all the people living there. Right outside of the city in the last 2 weeks hundreds of people have migrated to this one area to claim a piece of land to put their house. Right now they are tents but soon they will be wood and tin and later blocks. But there are hundreds already with one right on top of the other. No organization. No water. No sanitation. No plan. If it continues as it is going it will become another PAP slum that is ran by the gangs and the women and children are the victims. The lack of sanitation leads to diseases and nothing is any better than before. I pray the NGO community will organize and not allow that to happen. We will have to see. But any day that I get to PAP and get back home safely without an incident is a good day.

Josie and a gecko she found in her bed.

Joy and the kids were here all day today. I had our team here today painting and doing repairs on the room where our visitors will be next week. I got home and Jacy, Judah, and Josie were all holding starfish. A son of one of the guys that works here found them for them today. They were so excited. They wanted to keep them as pets and asked what they needed to feed them. It turned out to be a pretty good question...What do starfish eat? Then of course it led to the fact they could not find a mouth, or eyes, or ears, or a tail. But they all agreed they were really cool and we should let them go so that we could find them again some other day.

Tomorrow we go to the Artibonite Valley to do an eye clinic screening of some of the people from the mountains with another missionary friend of ours. The whole family is going which is always a big deal. We strap Jaxon in the stroller and then strap it down to the bus where they used to strap in the wheel chairs for handicapped kids. It works out pretty good. We will see hundreds of patients and give them glasses and screen them for eye diseases such as glaucoma and cataracts. Any one that needs further care will be scheduled to come down and see me in our clinic. I received a donation of these really funky glasses that you inject serum into the space in hollow lenses and you can control the power. It is cool technology but we will have to see how well received they will be by the people. I will be trying them out tomorrow. I will take some pictures of the process and share how it goes. I am a little skeptical but I have read about them being well accepted in other places.

The cat in the stroller is our anti-rodent pest control agent. We had a huge rat in our house one night and Joy woke up the household standing on the toilet screaming. The rest of the night was spent in "prayer"! The next morning we mentioned that we had a rat and needed a cat. In a couple of hours a guy showed up to sell us a "cat". This little thing is smaller than the rat! A couple of nights later I trapped the rat behind a piece of furniture and me and our nightwatchman Charles chased him around the house for a while until Charles took care of him with his machete. Joy has slept a little better since. The cat was no help though. The rat walked right behind him to enter the house! He is still in training! But the kids LOVE the little kitten. If it survives Josie Kate's headlocks I think it will make a good rat deterent in the future. (Judah and an eel he caught while we were fishing.)

The mission is coming along well. Next week we will begin setting up the lab and the clinic. We will also start building the room for the generator and the covered area to eat. We have a lot of work to do to get an area usable for a detached kitchen. So we will get that going as well.

Our friends in NC are putting together a container to send over to get the orphanage and the rest of the mission furnished and equipped to begin operation. We are praying that can happen quickly so we can get the things out of customs before it gets too much back to normal. I have a doctor in Pennsylvania that has donated the equipment I need for our other eye clinic I just need to get it shipped directly to here or get it to NC and put on the container. If anyone has any ideas about that let me know.

We have a meeting tomorrow afternoon with the aunt of a little girl who lost her parents in the quake. I don't have any details yet but we are still waiting on God to begin to send us kids. His timing is always right.

Both sets of the twins Joy has been caring for are doing good. The mothers are healthy and the kids are growing. Thank you to everyone that sent formula. It is much needed.

We had another one of the people that we have been working with accept Jesus as his personal Savior this past week. I am meeting with two of the new converts every morning at 6:30. The newest convert, Charles, is my age and can't read at all. We are listening to the creole Bible on CD and he loves it. I am so grateful God is giving me the opportunity to disciple them and invest in them. It is awesome being a part of God's plan to save the world!

Which is Better One or Two?

2010-03-01T16:15:00.002-05:00

It was a good day. I started our regular scheduled clinic days at our clinic in St. Ard today. The clinic is based in a mission hospital about 25 minutes from where we live. We have seen patients there before but not on a regular scheduled basis. It felt great to get into that today. I have seen thousands of patients since we got to Haiti but it has been as screenings and with rudimentary equipment. Today I got to do eye exams very similar to the ones I performed on patients back in the U.S. before we moved here. We have a great clinic set up and we are in the process of getting a lab set up to make glasses here as well. I should have had that already done. Because of my procrastination and being so consumed by other ministry that I did not go to retrieve our equipment for the lab when it arrived in country at another clinic near PAP. Now much of the equipment is covered with rubble from the quake and we do not know how much will be usable. Lesson number 638 learned in Haiti: Never let valuable equipment sit in someone else's warehouse an earthquake could destroy it. Ok...lesson learned!

I would appreciate your prayers too because the other hospital where we are going to have a clinic has began work on finishing the rooms where our clinic will be. It will only be a couple of weeks and they will be ready. I do not have the equipment to put in the clinic yet. I need to find the equipment and get it shipped as quick as possible. Right now I can get medical equipment shipped in without having to pay customs for it. It would be great to get that done in the next couple of weeks and get in before that ends at the end of March.

The "mission" is coming along. That is what we are calling the location we have secured for the orphans, and the team rooms, our ministry office, and a place to see patients on an emergency basis. We have some people in the states working on shipping a container to upfit the entire place. I will be letting people know the details of that as they develop. We have had the opportunity to accept a few kids but not what we feel God has in store for us. We are still waiting for Him to send us the kids He wants us to have. Keep that in prayer.

The refugee camps are getting complicated. The people are tired of staying there and now school is getting ready to start back and they do not know what to do with the refugees. The group of young people that started the camp want to build build 60 wooden and tin houses on about 2 acres for the people to live in for two years. I have talked to them about it and just see many problems with the plan...sanitation, water, diseases, long term planning, dependency...and the list goes on. I want to help the people find a long term plan for each family and not be dependant on someone else for 2 years in slum conditions.

We are excited to see God moving in the lives of people. The man that is in charge of the property where we live and the girl that has been helping Joy some with the kids and everything have both made professions of faith in Jesus Christ in the last two weeks. Pray for Nabal and Meray as they begin their new walks of faith.

From the Mountains to the Valley

2010-02-22T20:17:00.003-05:00

I spent the morning in the mountains praying this morning. It has been so tough lately with all of the decisions about the ministry and moving our family and the aftermath of the quake. I took a moto- local taxi motorcycle- and had the guy take me up to a local spot where people gather to pray. I went with a guy we met years ago when we first started coming to Haiti that has now become a Christian and has been asking me to go for months. With all we have going on, I really needed to go today.

I arrived at the summit of this mountain range and you can see the ocean on three sides. It is so beautiful. I spent the morning crying out to God to help us understand what all we are supposed to be doing and the best way to do it. Basically just asking God to not let me foul up the work He is doing here among the people.

I was given the chance to preach Saturday night in a street revival but it was tough going. My interpreter called about 30 minutes before the service and said he was stuck in PAP and could not get a tap tap to Montrouis. So I started looking for someone to interpret. I have preached a couple of times in Creole but I am still not fluent enough to really make illustrations and stuff so I still like using an interpreter. But that is not always good either. I preached two weeks ago and the sermon topic was on being desperate for God. After the service the interpreter asked me what desperate meant... I knew the people probably missed a thing or two. So Saturday I called all my normal interpreters and no luck. I finally called this young man that we have recently met that we have been pretty impressed by. He did not understand what I was trying to ask him but he finally agreed to come. I knew things were going to be tough when my interpreter could not understand that I was asking him to interpret for me. After much struggling we made it through the service. I could feel a terrible oppression but thought it was just all the stress or something. Then as we were leaving the service to walk home just a block away they were having a big voodoo service as well. People everywhere dancing in the streets and everything. Such a spiritual battle in this place.

Then Sunday I preached in St. Marc at Pastor Lucien's church. It was a great service and I got to see so many friends. They gave me 2 bunches of bananas, a watermellon, and some ground coffee. It was a good time.

So after those two opportunities I really wanted to pray that God would continue to allow me to share the truth of Jesus and the freedom He offers to the captives of fear and lies that the people here believe. I had a good time of prayer for a couple of hours then decided to make the 3 mile walk down on foot and got sunburned.

When I got home though Joy was totally heart broken. A young lady named Jordan that we know and another young lady that is an albino haitian came by because they needed to talk to Joy. Joy had taken Jennifer, a nurse, to remove a skin tag from Jordan's little boy's finger a couple of weeks ago and check on them. They were doing fine. But Jordan came today to tell Joy her baby boy had died. She woke up in the morning with his head split open in the back. They all claim it is the work of a local sorceror that killed him in the night. They told us why they do it but it is too morbid to talk about here. Joy can't figure out if she is more angry or sad. What do you say to a mother struggling with that? We just say God is good all the time. We encourage them to seek refuge and peace in the Lord and help them any way we can. The other girl today came too to tell Joy the father of her baby had taken the baby. This girl was the mistress in an affair- more the norm than the exception here- and the father of the baby took the baby and gave it to his wife because she could not have children. The mother has no real recourse. We are trying to see what we can do to help her. I know the father and so pray I can know what to do in the situation. All of this helped to solidify in Joy that she needs to start the women's Bible study she has been planning. Now that we have a mission location, she is planning to begin that with the young women and mother's that live such a tough life here.

And all of that is on top of the earthquake survivors living down the road and the mother and two twin babies we still have sleeping here with us. God is so good. He never leaves us wondering what we could do today to advance His Kingdom. He always gives us plenty of opportunity. We acknowledge that it is tough at times, but we love it. We would not want it any other way. God is blessing and we are getting to be a part of it. God is ministering to people here and we get to see it first hand. What more could we ask for in life.

Thank you all for your prayers. We are so blessed to have so many people back home that love us and pray for us. All of your encouraging emails keep us going on those tough days... like today.

Go Army!

2010-02-18T20:50:00.004-05:00

The U.S. Army has been a huge help to us in the last 2 weeks. We are so behind on updating everyone but God has really been at work here! We wanted to send a quick update to tell everyone that thanks to Captain Perry of the U.S. Army and the prayers of everyone back home, we got the food off of the bus in customs yesterday! It was a long ordeal but tomorrow we will start distributing the 500 boxes of food to the children in the 8 areas where we work.

We will be going to one of the churches in the distant provinces tomorrow to drop off some food. While we are there we will also be taking formula and food to the set of Joy's twins that we relocated. They are doing fine and it will be good to check on them. We will also be stopping by the hospital to pick up the other set of twins. They have been there all week receiving IV fluids after a downturn fighting diarrhea. They are probably going to have to come and stay with us for a while to help the mother care for them during this critical time. We appreciate everyone's prayers for them. We will keep you updated on their progress.

We just want everyone to know that God has opened so many doors since the quake. Everything is different now. We are no longer living at House of Bread. God put in our hearts to take in some children that were orphaned by the quake. In order to do that, we had to look for a new place to live and a place for the ministry. God moved so amazingly! He opened a door for us to be able to find a small rental property that is perfect for our family. It is open and the kids have plenty of room to roam. It is right by the water so it is such a retreat from the stress of our normal day. Our God is so GOOD! We are still in contact with everyone at House of Bread and they are doing good too. We will miss seeing the boys everyday but we are just around the corner and they are doing great too.

We also were able to secure a perfect place for the ministry. It will serve as the headquarters for everything that we do. We will temporarily house some displaced families from PAP during their transition time. We will have a place for the kids we take in as well as rooms for teams to come down to work. It is right here in Montrouis and we are already beginning the process of getting it ready. I can't wait for you all to get to come down and stay with us and help us get it ready to care for the children and babies. We have no furniture, appliances, or even an eating area or kitchen but we know God has a great plan for it and we are so excited. Pray for the families that we will minister too and the children that will come to live there. We are not going to go out looking for them we are praying for God to send the right ones to us. We can't do this on our own. We need your prayers more than ever. An orphanage in Haiti is a huge undertaking but we are proceeding with much prayer and advice from others involved in the ministry here.

We still have to post pictures and updates about the teams that have been here since the quake. Some of our family members have even been able to visit and be a part of the work. Philip has returned to the states to prepare for full time ministry with YWAM in California. He is praying for the transition and needs your prayers and support. We are so excited and proud of him. He helped us so much here and everyone here misses him so much. I have Haitians ask me everyday where Philip is! You can click on his facebook link on the right of this page to find out how to support him. We LOVE you Philip.

Thank you all for your support, prayers, and encouragement. It is exciting for all of us to be a part of God doing a fresh work in the wake of such a tragedy. Keep the people of Haiti in your prayers. Thousands are sleeping in tent villages and the rainy season is quickly approaching. We have several hundred refugees right here in Montrouis and it is not going to be easy for them for a long time to come. Pray we know how to reach out to them and help them start over with their lives. The supplies you sent with Tracy, Toby, Mike, Jennifer, and Dad. They were so much needed. Our kids are still enjoying their gummie bears!

More Bus Woes

2010-02-10T21:43:00.003-05:00

God is so Good to us. We are seeing doors opened that are just amazing. But there are always obstacles. We had a group of U.S. soldiers that are responsible for civilian affairs issues come by and want to help us. So we went to the customs office to try to get out our bus with 500 boxes of food. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Then the customs officials starting telling us that they wanted to be in charge of distributing OUR food that a group back in the states sent here months before the quake as it sat in customs waiting to be cleared. Now they wanted to decide who gets it.

So I spent the afternoon today in the mayor's office in St. Marc discussing how we feel that "might" not be conducive with our plans. After much debate... stiff arming from armed soldiers.... it looks like we might actually get the food at some point but maybe not the bus...at least not without paying a bunch of customs fees. But all is good. The family is good. The guys in the ministry are good. The team that was here got back to the states and are already hard at work securing supplies for us to continue the work here.

God has redefined the scope of our ministry here with the quake. We will continue to provide eye care. I saw many patients today and will continue to do so through our 2 eye clinics and remote screenings. We also have all of the work with Pastor Cesar and the 1500 children in his schools. We are still working on getting a feeding program going to feed them everyday. We also have the school sponsorship program and community health. But since the quake we have so many babies and children that have been orphaned and living in the refugee camps that we feel God would have us start a small orphanage and take some of them in. We will also take in some of the people that were displaced by the quake and give them a place to live and work to help us with the kids. We have secured a beautiful location for the orphanage and are excited about this expansion of our ministry here. God has given us a tremendous support staff here and with the help of pastor Cesar and his family we are looking forward to receiving babies and giving them a place to grow up in the love of Christ. We will give you more updates on that in the days to come as things unfold. Pray God sends us the babies we are supposed to have.

Philip may be leaving on Friday on a military transport plane. We will miss him tremendously but we know God has huge plans for him and he will continue to seek God's perfect plan.

We will post some photos soon.

Child Trafficking, Dying Babies, and Gifts that Make Me Cry

2010-02-02T20:24:00.009-05:00

We have been so busy lately that I have not had a chance to blog. I wish I could write more about each of the opportunities God has brought our way lately. We have an awesome team here right now and had a great team leave recently. We will post updates from those trips in the next few days...Lord willing!

Things are different here after the quake as you can imagine. The focus of everything is different and everything is harder. In some ways things are better but mostly everything is a worse right now.

Child Trafficking- a Rude Awakening
Joy cried herself to sleep more than once this week. Many of you have asked about her little twins that she rescued and has been feeding and everything. We know many of you have been praying for them. It turned out that we have not been able to update everyone but there are actually two sets of twins. The second set that she discovered the very next day were actually smaller than the first set because the mom also could not breast feed and was trying to feed her one month old twins spaghetti noodles because that was all she had. As Joy taught both sets of mothers to use the formula and feed them regularly all of them have begun to gain weight. But then we were introduced to the dark side of Haiti...another dark side I guess I should say.

Earlier this week we were going for our routine visit to check on them and two white men and two armed Canandian police officers came out of the house where the mother and the babies had moved to. As we approached the man, whom we had never met, the first thing he asked us was "do you want to adopt some babies". Of course Joy immediately felt uncomfortable and the man began telling us all the great things he had been doing in Haiti. He left and we went to see the babies.

The mother told us the man had moved her from where she was to this new one room house and told her she could live there. As Joy worked with the babies the man came back carrying a bag of rice. He gave it to the mother and told Joy that one of the babies was sick and that he had a couple in Pennsylvania that wanted twin babies. He had plans to take the babies to have them adopted by the family in the U.S. Joy asked what about the mother. He said he had talked to her and it was fine. After he left we asked the mom and she said through terrified eyes that he had never said he wanted to take the babies. He only told her that he was going to help her. The man owns an orphanage here that has always been suspicious but we had no idea. After the encounter we talked to some other local people that said he had been doing that here for a long time. It broke Joy's heart. She loves those little babies. That little mother loves her babies too.

We had a long talk with the mom and she has family in another area of the country near where we have a church. Tomorrow morning we are relocating the family. We have enough formula to last her several weeks and we will be making trips to check on them regularly. Please keep the little family in your prayers. We knew those evil things happened where babies are bought for a bag of rice but we did not think it would happen to kids we love. Praise God we were there at the exact time we were and that we found out what was happening. We know God has a plan these babies so keep them in your prayers.

Dying Babies
I told you about the little girl that we saw the day after the quake that was dying with a head injury and I had to tell the family that they just needed to keep her comfortable. This week I received a call that there was a little girl at the clinic in St. Ard where we have one of our eye clinics. They were told the little girl had been hit in the eye during the quake and wanted me to take a look.

I did not even get out of the bus when we arrived before I knew the little girl had not been hit in the eye. She had a horrible malignant tumor where her eye once was and the cancer had gone into her brain. She was barely responsive and dying quickly. Once again I was faced with the reality that another baby was going to die and that the family had to be told there was nothing I could do.

Why does God keep breaking our hearts?

An Uplifting Orphanage Visit
We visited an orphanage that was full of kids that were rescued after the hurricanes of 2008. It was a blessing to give some much needed food and treats to the kids.

Refugees:
We are working now with over 200 refugees here in Montrouis. They are located at two schools. The people come with absolutely nothing. I was there yesterday and as I sat talking to some of the families I heard one lady tell another that I was the husband of that white woman that took the clothes off of her babies and gave them to her baby the last time she came. The little kids were naked so Joy took off Jaxon and Judah's clothes and gave them to the babies. We are planning to go tomorrow to buy used clothes here in the market and give them to the families.

Jacy Klaire went straight home and came out of her room with an arm load of clothes that she felt she needed to give to the little girls at the camp.

A Humbling Gift
Many of you that have been to Haiti have met Pastor Remy. He lives in the distant mountains and pastors a small church there. He is the father of 7 children and lives in the two room house that I stayed in with Tracy Robinson, Tracy White, and Mark Ikerd the one trip we managed to make that far into the mountains. He fell and broke his shoulder recently and at about the same time their donkey died. They have a 3 hour trip to get water and without the donkey it was very tough for them. So we were able to buy them a new horse to replace the donkey. He wanted to come down and thank us and bring us a gift.

When they arrived they very formally told us they had a gift to give Joy and I as a thank you from their family. They first took out of their bag a large papaya. Next she pulled out a beat up cannister with ground coffee in it. Finally she opened a container that she had carried the four hours to meet us and began to pull out eggs that her chickens had laid. She gave us 10 eggs. I came up with the excuse that I would go and get a box. I actually had to go because I could not help but cry. To think that these humble people would bring us their best. They wanted to bless us so badly. I immediately was reminded how selfish and proud I am. God used this encounter to remind me what true love and humility looks like. Thank you pastor Remy. I know you will never read this because you lives miles from electricity and have never used a computer. But Thank you for being used to humble me and remind me why we left all the entanglements of the life of prosperity to come here to be loved by people that give us eggs.

Helping Refugees

2010-01-26T14:54:00.017-05:00

A sign where we distributed the food and water to a refugee camp in PAP.

This past Sunday we spent in Port Au Prince giving out water, food, clothes, and other supplies as well as sharing the love of Jesus with those living in the tent villages that have popped up all over the city. Thousands who have lost their homes now live in make shift tents made of sheets and tarps. We went with a group of young Haitians from Montrouis and gave out over 200 gallon jugs of clean water and 100 pounds of food. It was not always organized or safe but we were able to help many.

Sleeping under the tarps and sheet tents in the streets. A common sight right now in the city.

One of the thousands of houses that collapsed in the quake.

Cooking the food over charcoal the night before we went.

UN peace keepers on patrol to help keep order.

The boxes of rice and beans with chicken we gave to the hungry waiting in the refugee camp.

200 gallons of water we were able to give the thirsty people in the city.

People lined up to get the aid we were distributing. Thank you to everyone that has donated and given so we can continue to help with the needs of the people. We have 2 refugee camps we are setting up here in Montrouis to care for about 200 refugees that have left the city. We will be helping to feed them everyday as well as meet their physical and medical needs. Thank you so much for your prayers for these precious people that have lost everything and need to see the love of Jesus.

Life amidst Death

2010-01-21T11:38:00.005-05:00

Joy and I were walking through the village yesterday with our kids and ended up in an abandoned house where we found a mother with twin babies that we thought were newborns. They turned out to be two months old. It turns out the mother could not breast feed and they were trying to feed the babies crumbled up cookies with water. We knew we had to do something or they were not going to make it.

We found some formula in St. Marc and Joy was able to go back and begin to teach the mother how to feed with a bottle. (We just had a pretty good aftershock as I am typing this)

Joy took baseline weights and little girl Yeitram weighed in at 6.0 pounds and her little brother Widgy weighs just 5.5 pounds. They were born on November 11, 2009.

Jacy Klaire declares that "God rescued them because He has a plan for their lives. Who knows, this little boy could be Haiti's first Godly president."

Keep them in your prayers. Joy will be helping the mom everyday for a while to make sure they are accepting the formula and that the mom is sterilizing everything good.

We have been so consumed by the misery around us that this has been a breath of fresh air as we remember that God is in control. I am so glad He helped us discover these little ones before they died. They are not out of the woods yet but today they ate their first real meal.

We are sending a load of food and provisions to PAP today through a friend that lives there and lost his house. They are living in their yard with their extended family. We are sending enough food for them to sustain many in his neighborhood until the food from the aid teams is being distributed effectively.

We are working on establishing a refugee camp at a school along with another ministry and are starting the process of assessing how many refugees we have in our area and what needs they have.

Thank you for your prayers. God is good and we are grateful to be His servants.

Our website has a couple of pictures too of our trip to the city after the quake. We will be posting more when we get the chance. www.reeveshaiti.org.

Emotional Times

2010-01-18T18:19:00.004-05:00

Hendricks Motorsports took my mother-in-law and step-son away yesterday. We found out Missionary Flights International was flying out missionaries to Florida so we made the trip to PAP to put 4 of the members of the team that had been visiting on the plane. It was an emotional time to see friends and especially family leave but we knew it was best. The Benfields stayed behind to work in the hospital and help but the others had to leave.

We also met up with Julie Wirries at the airport. What a blessing it was to see her and talk to her. She was on her way out on the same flight. She was so torn because she did not want to leave but the mission where she was working was destroyed and they had spent five nights sleeping outside with no bathrooms and no where to go. She barely escaped the collapse of the building. It collapsed all around her but God protected her miraculously and she was unharmed. She is headed back to Florida to be with family. Keep her in your prayers and try to email her (Juliewirries@yahoo.com) and let know you are proud of her and will continue to pray for her.

As we watched the plane taxi to the runway it quickly flashed through my mind..."why are you not on that plane with your family"... after all many people had told us I needed to get them out before it got any worse. I could see us sitting in my mom's living room in the NC mountains with no one crying over dead bodies, open wounds, over crowded streets, lines of people waiting for food, no horrible smells or fear of airborne diseases. But the thought was only fleeting as I stood by my best Hatian friend and thought of the 4 families he now had living in his little house with little or no food and water. The the other families that we have bought supplies for to go and help deal with now having to feed their entire extended families as well as deal with the fact that they themselves had lost someone in the quake. Almost everyone here lost a friend, or coworker, or family member.

The trip to PAP was uneventful. We did see where they had dumped a couple of bodies on the side of the road and the smell of the area where they had started a mass grave was unbearable. But no violence. We were able to buy 11 gallons of diesel that had been salvaged from a ruptured fuel line at the warf. We paid $45 haitian per gallon which is about $5.65 USD. That was the only fuel we could find. That is going to be our biggest challenge. We are stuck without fuel.

This morning we dropped Shelly and Bob off at the hospital where we are in the process of opening one of our eye clinics. It worked out great. Shelly was able to deliver a baby and Bob worked on several injured quake victims. They will do the same tomorrow with another nurse that is arriving tonight from Hickory.

We went on to St. Marc to try to find diesel and other supplies. We were able to find all of the food and supplies we need without a problem but no diesel. We found a place you could buy only one gallon for $70 Haitian or $8.75 USD per gallon. We were looking for 50 gallons and the line to get one gallon was 2-3 hours long.

Philip is meeting up with 3 people from YWAM in California where he and Logan served last year. They are coming to meet him and they will work together with the YWAM team in St. Marc this week. Philip will be spending the next few days there.

Our other issue is finding somewhere to get money. The normal places we could cash American Checks were in PAP and are now rubble. Western Union is functioning to some extent but it is days to get through the line and not very reliable at the moment. We talked to a missionary group today that was leaving because they could not get money and had no more diesel fuel.

As we drove down the road today I could not help but see the despair on everyone's face. The shock has worn off and the reality of the loss of their old life is starting to set in. What a momumental task we face as we try to help them assimilate into their new souroundings and deal with the trauma. Only God can do it. Keep the Haitian people in your prayers.

Update

2010-01-14T17:28:00.002-05:00

We want to thank everyone for the encouragement. I wanted to let everyone know that Julie Wirries sent word to her son that she is safe. We do not have more details than that but we praise the Lord for her safety.

We are trying to get things arranged to get back down into Port Au Prince proper but it is less secure than it was when we went the first time yesterday. The military teams begin arriving tomorrow and them more humanitarian aid teams will be able to mobilize. We will continue to try to partner with a couple of different groups to provide man power and supplies along with any other transportation etc. that we have at our disposal. Diesel fuel is a real issue. All the pumps are out and the supply has ended for the moment in most places. We use it not only for the vehicles but also for the generators to keep electricity for the compound. We have heard of more violent episodes than we care to admit so it keeps us cautious and prayerful as we move forward with our aid. We will be working with the refugees that have fled the city and have little or no food and clothing right now until we are able to get back into the heart of the city in the next few days. We will keep everyone posted on how things are going as we see God work to restore order and exhibit mercy and grace in a time of unimaginable devastation. Thank you for your prayers for the Haitian people. To sit today and see my best Haitian friend describe to me how hard it is that he has not heard from his brother yet. We did not find him when we went in yesterday. This afternoon they took the truck but also three motorcycles on back so they could get into areas where the truck will not go. Pray they find him and discover he is okay. Almost everyone we know has taken in loved ones that have fled the city in fear that more buildings will collapse. Pray for us to know how to minister to them and help them as they cope with these difficulties.

It is truly hard but Haitians are amazingly able to deal with hard times. Everyday is hard here. Insecurity, lack of daily needs of food and proper shelter, bad government, and manipulation by many of the outsiders that come are everyday challenges to our Haitian friends. 2008 saw 4 storms that devastated much of the country. Repeated violent overthrows of the government in the past have left their scars. But this is different. The amount of loss of life has affected everyone. The fact that the financial, business, educational, and social hub of the country has been pretty much leveled is a tough blow. Had the quake hit anywhere else in the country it would be simply a few months until things were back to status quo. Not this time. Most of us in the US can't understand the dynamics of how Haiti works and how it all revolves around a functioning Port Au Prince. Pray God restores functionality to the system quickly for the sake of the average Haitian that depends on imported rice and beans, cooking oil, diesel fuel, and many other daily needs that have to flow through PAP before reaching their charcoal stoves and tap tap taxis.

We know you are there for us. You have encouraged us so much in the last few days. But don't spend all your time praying for us. We are safe. Our families are safe. We want you joining with us to pray prayers that make a difference for a nation. For a whole generation. THEN we will feel like the struggle and hardship has been worth it all.

Prayer Request

2010-01-14T13:37:00.002-05:00

I wanted to ask for prayer for Julie Wirries. Many of you know Julie- or Titant (little aunt)- moved back to Haiti when we did to serve once again on the mission field in Haiti. She moved from Montrouis to Port Au Prince several months ago to work with another missionary in an orphanage. I have not been able to contact either one of them and we were not able to get all the way to their area yesterday due to downed power lines. I have never been to the orphanage and I am not exactly sure where it is but I know the area. If we do not hear anything we are going to try to make another trip to that area tomorrow to check on her. If anyone hears from her please let us know.

The team we have here is stranded for an extra week due to airline cancellations. They will be able to make such a difference in this "bonus" week of service! We are hoping to meet with Samaritan Purse personel this afternoon to coordinate more efforts in the heart of the city tomorrow. Thanks for your prayers and support. We will be taking in clean water and supplies as well as doing medical treatment again. We will update again soon.

Shaken in More Ways Than One

2010-01-13T19:47:00.002-05:00

When we came to Haiti to do eye care and minister to the kids and everything I did not have visions of rows of dead bodies and mortally wounded kids in mind. But today God chose to allow us to be in places I never dreamed I would have to go. So many people in shock and dying still in the streets. We went to the areas of Port Au Prince that were hardest hit today to find the family members of some friends. By God's grace only one family member had been lost but she is the mother of seven children. One of the thousands of stories we heard today of families that lost someone in a collapsed building. Some areas the homes were all crushed as far as you could see. As soon as we have better internet we will upload some photos from our make shift clinics we set up and of the devastation.

For now we just want everyone to know that we are okay and that we will be doing all we can to reach out to the perishing in love and compassion. Keep us in your prayers and we will do our best to keep everyone updated. Thank you to everyone that has partnered with us to make it possible for us to be here to help during this time.

Merry Christmas...a little late!

2010-01-06T08:01:00.006-05:00

Merry Christmas from Haiti. It has been a while since we updated the blog because of internet problems and other issues. We wanted to tell everyone hello. We had a team from another ministry take us to the beach for Christmas and the we had a great time. Things have been unbelievably busy to end the year and beginning of 2010. Joy helping to prepare food for a feeding we did at a local area near the bakery where we live. We have been ministering to the young people that live there and felt led to have a Christmas party with them and share the gospel. It was a good time. The folks we fed are not the most upstanding citizens in the community and many of the people from the churches do not try to reach them. They are the ones that we believe Jesus would try to reach if he were here.

Philip has been a HUGE help to us here. He has made so many friends and has had the opportunity to share his faith with many young people one on one. We are trusting God to use him to really impact the youth of our area. The Wednesday night worship service that we are doing outside in the yard here has become one of his main ministries and we are really excited about how God is using it.

I have had several opportunities to preach lately with Pastor Cesar. I am not quite ready to preach without a translator but I think after a couple of more months I will be comfortable doing so.

We have several teams headed our way and we can't wait. We will keep you updated on how things are going. We should be opening two eye clinics this month and the lab to make the glasses.

Headed Home

2009-11-18T17:11:00.014-05:00

We have had a great trip to the U.S. for our first return trip as full time missionaries. We are ready to get back and resume the things we had to put a hold on over a month ago.

We learned so much and made some great new friends on this trip. We also took a bus full of food and dropped it off at the port in West Palm Beach, Florida. Now we are preparing to leave tomorrow morning and head back on Missionary Flights International.

As an update, Jaxon Kooper who severely burned his hands on a gas log fireplace is doing much better. After several weeks of working on it we were able to leave it unbandaged for several hours today. We just have to keep praying it does not get infected once we return to Haiti.

Here are a couple of pictures from our trip.

Hard to Leave

2009-10-23T14:11:00.009-04:00

We left Haiti a couple of weeks ago with mixed emotions. We wanted to get to the states to visit our older kids and family as well as the churches and friends that make our ministry possible, but we that meant we had to leave the boys and the people we minister to every day. The boys just cried as we left and several of the kids in our sponsorship program were out by our gate to say goodbye as we left at 5:30 am.

Getting ready to board the plane at the Port Au Prince Airport. Shelley Benfield and Missy Morgan were with us and that made it much easier! What a blessing to have committed friends!

Here is a picture from our outdoor worship service where we project onto the side of our well house and meet with youth to do worship in Creole, French, and English. We will miss that while we are gone.

I spent a week in classes in Florida learning about community health and how to battle malnutrition and other diseases of poverty. It really helped me to spend the week with other medical missionaries as well getting their perspectives and plans.

Mary Rose that works at House of Bread holding a Bible and song book we bought for 10 youth that were saved at a crusade and started going to her church. We bought them a Bible and song book and look forward to meeting each one and encouraging them to be involved in our youth worship and prayer times on Wednesday evenings.

Joy giving a bracelet to our little blind friend John Luk at the orphanage next door.

Sickening

2009-09-30T13:17:00.014-04:00

One thing that has surprised since we arrived in Haiti full time is how often people are sick. Pretty much everyone we know here has been sick at least once since we arrived. We have people come constantly asking for medication for fever. Colds and flu-like illnesses are constant for many people.

The poor nutrition of most people along with the dust and smoke everywhere are enough to get many people sick. Then when you add in dirty water and poor sanitation you have a great recipe for constant sickness.

In some areas where typhoid is rampant, people can be sick with a fever for months at a time. One young lady that we have grown to love, Mirlande, lives in such an area. She was very sick and we had a chance to travel to her home to visit. She is recovering from typhoid and malaria. At just 17 years old she stays sick very often because her family's source of drinking water and cooking water is a nearby river with very unclean water. She has become like one of our family. She calls Joy her Montrouis Mother. Pray for her as we have helped her get back into school but we also want to help her family be able to have access to better water. Below is a photo of our visit to her little house.

Bus Update:

We finally got our bus out of customs. It took almost 2 months but we got it. The only had a broken mirror- which resulted in an accident on the way home- but everything else was intact. We we so grateful to get into the packages of food stuff and school supplies our church in NC had packed for us before we left. We have also been able to really bless a lot of people by giving things away.

We now have all of the clinic equipment and are preparing the clinic. We should be able to start seeing patients soon after we return from the U.S. in November.

Joy cut Josie's hair for the first time the other day too.

It was heart wrenching in a way that a dad can not understand I guess.
Joy tormented herself over whether to do it or not and then whether she did it right or not and then whether she should have done it or not and then whether she will ever do it again. But all in all it was a sweet time.

We will be back in the U.S. in two weeks for some mission conferences and visits. We look forward to seeing everyone.

Sea Shells for School

2009-09-15T15:21:00.004-04:00

I met him doing our water distribution. He came up to me with some other little boys I have been trying to get to know. I asked his name and he told me that he had just told me the day before. I asked him to give me one more chance at remembering it. He told me it was Gregory.

The next day Gregory showed up at our fence with a handful of seashells. He said he wanted to give them to my wife. I thanked him and accepted them. I gave him a few gourdes (Haitian money) for them and before he got out of the alley his mother came along and took the money. The next day Gregory showed up again with more seashells. I told him that he did not have to keep looking for seashells. He asked if I had any left over food he could have. How do you say no. He is by far one of the thinnest kids in our area. So I gave him an apple.

Gregory, Gaele, Lormite, and Daphne with their school supplies

When school started Gregory was still coming to our fence to hang out every morning. I asked him why he was not in school. He gave the answer I already knew. Cob- money. He has older brothers and sisters so his family can not pay for him to go to school. God broke my heart for him and we felt we should help him with going to school. I told him to have his mother come when I turned on the water that afternoon so I could talk to her.

Prayer time with the kids for their school year

The next morning I walked with Gregory and his mom to his little school. A series of concrete block buildings with tin roofs and make shift benches. I sat in the hot office of the director as we got Gregory registered. He is 12 years old and entering the second grade. He has not been able to go to school most of the past years due to money. We paid for the school. Then we bought the books. Then we bought the material and hired someone to make the uniform. Then we bought him some shoes. Then we bought a backpack. All these things are NON optional for you to be able to go to school. All in all it was about $100 USD for the year. We are just waiting now for his uniform to be made and he should start next Monday.

Everyday Gregory shows up at our house with seashells. Most days he does not ask for anything or want anything. He just smiles a huge smile as I take them and tell him I will give them to Joy.

Gaele and Lormite (2 of Joy's girls) in their new school uniforms and shoes and backpacks- They showed up at our house the first day for Joy to dress them and get them ready

Gregory is just one of the 13 kids that we have sponsored in the past 2 weeks for school. It started with Joy's little band of 3 girls from church that live with a little widow behind the bakery in one hot little room with a dirt floor. They are 11-13 years old and have absolutely nothing and were not going to be able to go to school so Joy felt we should help them.

Then there is the son and daughter of Pastor Andre's yard man. They also were not going to be able to go because of how hard things are right now since the hurricane.

Joy and Jacy spoiling the girls by doing their nails in preparation for school

Today Joy is in the market as I write this buying uniform material and shoes for Mirlande. She is an 18 year old sweetie that works part time here at House of Bread. She comes from a very poor family and thought one more year was going to pass that she would have to sit out and not get the education she longs for.

This morning Mirlande showed up early to help Joy with some house work. As she worked I asked her about her schooling. She told me that if God wanted her to go to school, He would make it happen. I told her that Joy had been wanting to see if we could help her. She began to cry. She said for the last 2 weeks she has cried often as she knew her parents could not help her go back to school. She hugged Joy and would not let go as she cried and thanked her for being an answer to her prayers. So Joy took her to the school and registered her and now she is helping her get what she needs. She is going to be 18 next month and entering the 8th grade. She is very smart but just comes from a very rural area and has had to spend more time collecting water and working in the fields than in school.

Kisnel (aka Paul)- our creole tutor- is going to Port Au Prince to a technical school to learn computer repair. We are sponsoring him as well as his wife to go to cosmotology school. Mr. and Mrs. Exam both work here at House of Bread and we are also helping them with 3 of their children to go to school because Madam Exam's mother is very sick and they are responsible for buying the medications and helping with Dr. bills.

Just today I have been asked by 4 others if I could possibly help them be able to go to school too. It is so hard to tell them no but we are drained of school money at the moment. Please pray God gives us wisdom on how to help and when to help. Education is so important and we had no idea how hard it is for the average Haitian to educate their children. We are grateful we are able to help the ones God opened the door, for but we have more that we have had to turn away than we have been able to help.

On top of that type of ministry I had a little mother show up this morning with a 18 month old baby covered in sores from head to toe. She had been to the free clinic but did not have the money for the medicine. She also said that she thinks one of the reasons he won't quit crying is that she has not been able to feed him. We got the little guy some mayi farine- corn flour- that the ladies had prepared for breakfast and then helped her get the medicine. Joy and I had a prayer time with mom and the little guy and she was grateful but still very concerned about her baby's health. She is supposed to bring him back Thursday for me to see him again.

We are looking forward to being back in the states in October but we are also hating having to leave for awhile right when we are starting to get settled in.

Doing make shift eye exams on the director and 3 teachers from a local school

What a Blessed Week!

2009-08-31T16:58:00.022-04:00

Mark and Jackie Ikerd arrived last Tuesday with bags full of goodies from our friends and family back home. It was everything from Cheeze-Its to Diet Sundrop! God is so good! Thank you everyone for spoiling us so much! The kids thought it was Christmas.

After such a good start we thought there was no way the week could get any better but it did. We have a well that has not worked since it was installed months before we ever got here. For over a year it has sat unused. The plan is for it to be used as a backup for our current well at the compound but also provide water for Pastor Andre's school once it is complete and the thing we were the most excited about is being able to provide water in the alley to the people of the community. Right now people pass our house everyday to go down to another hand pumped well to pay money to get water. Some have to travel over a mile and carry the water back in buckets. This new fountain in the side street will help many families and give us the chance to get to know them personally and share our faith with them.

God saw fit to help us get the pump working and get the fountain built. I plan to test it this evening and begin giving water tomorrow morning if everything works. God is SO good.

Here are some photos of that project we worked on this week. Mark turned out to be a master shovel pusher. I make a better observer!

We also were contacted on Tuesday and told of a baby in St. Ard which is where our other clinic is going to be located. The Haitian pediatrician there wanted us to come and look at a baby that showed up at the clinic and could not open his eyes. When we arrived we found out the baby was not at the clinic but at a house near by. After offroading for a while in the minibus we found the house where the baby was. He was lying on an old lounge chair under a bush. It turns out the baby was brought to the clinic and just dropped off. No one knows anything about him or his family. A girl from the clinic agreed to take him home and care for him.

When we arrived the baby had been on antibiotics for several days but still could not really even move. His eyes were horribly infected along with the surrounding tissues, he has a respiratory, GI, and genital infection as well. He is probably about a year old but can't sit up or anything because he is so sick. We got him started on other meds and will continue to monitor him over the next few days. He is being called Krislove so you can be praying for him.

Caring for the Widows and Orphans

We also had a chance to visit the orphanage next door this week. They have about 40 kids from 6 months to 16 years old. Jacy Klaire has fallen in love with the little 6 month old baby. She is a little doll named Molly and she loves for Jacy Klaire to hold her. We also have a little friend named Jonluke that is totally blind. He stayed right with Mark during the entire visit except when they pulled him away to go and change his clothes because they were embarrassed at his appearance when we took a picture of him with Mark. They were mad that he had on old clothes and did not change them before the "visitors" came.

Josie Kate loves the kids there too and tries to be mommy to all of the little ones.

I have been wanting to get to know some of the elderly and widows in the church across the street where we attend so I talked to Pastor Andre and one of the elders and lined up for me and Mark to be able to go and give them a care package of rice, beans, bouillon, and cooking oil. It was great. We got to visit 8 different widows and spend some time talking to them and hearing their stories. These were great women of faith that were living with absolutely nothing yet full of joy and fervor for the Lord. I was grateful to get to minister to them in a tangible way. Without a husband to provide they have to depend on others to help them have food. They were truly thankful and praised God for our visit and the food we brought them.

Jackie also spent one morning teaching the boys an art lesson. They loved it. They are still drawing butterflies. Our kids loved the time too. Mark and Jackie really ministered to our family this week as much as they ministered to the Haitian people. I am so grateful!

"I've never seen a racoon eat a hotdog"

2009-08-16T13:50:00.019-04:00

I was bringing Josie Kate upstairs last night to get her ready for bed and we walked past the dog's bowl with a few onions in it. Josie pointed out the onions and I said I had never seen a dog eat onions. Her response was, "well...I've never seen a racoon eat a hotdog". It turns out, I haven't either. If any of you have let me know so I can tell Josie!

We have had a great weekend. I was up at 5:30 this morning getting pancakes and bacon going for everyone on the compound. The staff does not cook on Sunday so me and Joy will be doing that. We ate breakfast and then went to church. We used to be late for church because we had to get our four little ones ready. Today we had to get our four, and the ten boys, and walk to church by 8:30 and we made it on time. Church was good. The little bit we could understand.

When we got home I grilled hamburgers for everyone- it's American Day at the compound on Sunday- and Joy cooked some corn and we had a good time. Now we are trying to get everyone down for a rest time- especially us!

I went to PAP yesterday to work at AGAPE- our mail service. It is a ministry that delivers mail to missionaries. Each missionary has to work in their office every quarter to help out. Yesterday I went to fill in for Jim and Gayle since they were gone. I left home early so we could get some things done before I had to get to the office but everything was closed. It was a day of Fet for the Catholic church so many of the big businesses were closed. I needed to look for a little refrigerator for our apartment so we can keep snacks for the kids and cold water.We spent about 45 minutes at the beach late one afternoon this week. It was after we visited the family we want to build the house for. Robens, a young man who has been a friend of ours since our first trip here, and his mother take in children that need help or need a home long term or short term. They want to build a small house so they can move out of the grandmothers little house and have a bed for the boys to sleep in every night. We will be giving more details about that opportunity as it unfolds in the next few days. Many of you that have been here before know Robens and know how good a young man he is. We took the family some rice, beans, melons, zaboka and cooking oil...it's a huge blessing to know that family will eat this week and they will feed children around them.

At the beach you could easily pick out our kids. They were the ones with clothes on. Robens was surprised when we told him we were ready to leave because we had not bathed the kids yet. They could not understand why we would go down to the beach and not bathe while we were there.

It was a good outing. The kids got to drink their first coconut and I drove for the first time here. We made it back home without hitting anyone or anyone's pig so I was happy!

Last week was very busy with 2 trips to PAP and a trip to Desarmes along with our normal ministry duties but it was great. We all really had a chance to work on developing some relationships that will allow us to minister and be a part of the community here. God is really opening doors and giving us favor. We are so grateful and full of anticipation as we continue to seek the opportunities He has in store for us.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support. We feel safe and secure in the presence of your prayers and we know God has great things in store for our family.

You can call us on our cell phones anytime if you need to reach us. You can get a calling card or if you have an international plan you can just call us directly. Joy had a chance to talk to Shelly Benfield for a while the other night and it was a huge blessing.

My cell number is 011-509-3-638-7138
Joys cell number is 011-509-3-687-9458
We are still trying to sell our house and close out a few more things on that front. We look forward to seeing everyone in October. Thanks again for all your prayers!

How to Build a Church

2009-08-13T16:36:00.013-04:00

For all of you who are considering a building program for your church, I thought I would give you some insight into what it will take so you can plan likewise.

First you need a big pile of dirt and rocks.

Then you have to sift the sand out to use with the concrete and pile up the rocks.

Then you have to sit and break the rocks with a hammer until they are small enough to be used in the concrete.

After you have a truck load of hand broken rocks and a truck load of hand sifted gravel you can start the foundation.

Here is a picture of what you can expect after many hours of labor in the 110 degree heat. As a note, the guy without a shirt on in the picture is the pastor...

If you are the pastor and a missionary shows up, put your shirt on and hurry over to get him a fresh green coconut. Cut it open with your machete you have been cutting the hedge with and then hand it to him to drink the coconut water.

Hand mix almost 400 bags of concrete and shovel it into buckets to and carry it to the masons.

Then you can start the foundation and blocks. After the walls are up you add the tin roof. Finally when you get more money, usually years later, you can pour a concrete floor and add iron windows. But until then, have church! 3-4 hour services praising God and seeking His provision.

So there you have. Pretty simple.

I had a chance to go to a church we are in the process of building today. The pictures show the work they are doing. The crew started just one week ago and they are sleeping on site to get the project completed. We were able to give enough money to buy food for the workers while they are there working so they can eat well so they can work hard. Getting food on the job is such a huge blessing here and it makes the moral all the better around the construction site. And many other people on the fringes of the site are fed as well so it is a service project for the community in the name of Jesus.
(The building we are replacing)

We have had enough money donated to buy all of the supplies to get the walls up and ready for the roof. The roof will be around $4500 so we will do that as God provides. I also found out today that we could buy the lot behind the church to build the out houses on and keep someone from building within just a few feet of the church. The pastor there told me we could buy the piece of land for $1500 USD. We are praying about that possibility as well.

(The current out house. It is not as nice as it looks once you get inside. Not much privacy either!)

Here are some pictures of the project. I felt so blessed today to be a part of something that will impact a rural community the way this church will. We can also use this facility for more than a school and church. We will also be having annual medical and optometry clinics there. The pastor there also wants to have retreats for people from St. Marc to come out into the valley for a weekend of spiritual renewal. Thank you to everyone that has been a part of the building in Desarmes.

(Some kids playing a game in the street where you toss rubber bands. Some of you may recognize Hayden, the pastors grandson, in the orange shirt.)

Joy and the kids stayed at House of Bread today while I made the 2.5 hour drive to Desarmes. Today was our first full day here running the place and it went well. We are excited about the opportunity and we sense the presence of God on the ministry and what we are doing. We are so thankful for everyone's prayers.

In a Place where NOTHING is simple

2009-08-10T16:31:00.008-04:00

Life in general can be frustrating no matter where you live. The apostle Paul tells us to expect every kind of trial in life. But we are adjusting to living in a place where absolutely everything we are used to having is very difficult.

To get electricity you have to have solar panels, generators, batteries, or some other source and it must me monitored continually. We run our generator from 5:30 to 6:30 most mornings and then again from 6-9 pm if we can make it that long on the batteries. That depends on whether we had a sunny or cloudy day and whether or not we did anything to use extra electricity like use power tools or wash clothes or iron. If so we have to run the generator early in the afternoon for a while and then again at night. More than once I have not checked the meters regularly and the whole compound loses power and everything has to be re-set when I get the generator going.

While the generator is going we have to pump water everyday into our tanks on the roof. So we have to hook up the pump and run it for awhile to fill the tanks which means a trip onto the roof to see how much we have and then monitoring to know when the tanks are full. That is all just for the orphanage itself.

(Josie and Judah enjoying an apple after church)

Our electrical system is totally seperate. I have been able to get it up and running with the solar panels and batteries (thanks Toby for the batteries! Everyone says they are awesome.) I never knew there was such a thing as battery envy! We do not have our generator yet. We have one on the 2nd bus but it has not arrived. It is not the one I will use long term for our home system because it is portable and is not designed to be a primary source of electricity. It will work though until we get something more long term...if I can get that bus here and out of customs. We definitely need it. We lost power at about 3 am this morning and I woke up shortly after the fans went off. It is amazing how hot and muggy it can be at 3 am.

(3 of the boys celebrating birthdays this week)

Then there is the internet that I just got back up and running this afternoon and decided I had better do a blog entry before we lost it again. I believe we will have better luck once I can get things running right but right now it is very hit and miss. Thanks to everyone for their patience.
We are learning all the responsibilities to run the orphanage here. Jim and Gayle leave Wednesday so we have to take over. It is much more involved than I would have imagined. Our days are very full and with the heat you are ready for the hot bed at night.

The kids are doing good. We are getting settled into the apartment. As soon as the bus comes we will be setting up the clinic here. Pastor Jim, the missionary here that leaves Wednesday, took me aside one day last week and told me that I needed to slow down and spend more time with the kids and everything so I have been trying to heed his advice the last couple of days and take some time out to be with them. It is hard when there is so much to do and it is all right here inside the compound. I was used to leaving work and going home to the family.

(Dieudonne (aka Jackson) holding Jaxon
Here there is always so much to do and I am having to learn to

leave it undone and do the things that are the most important. I assume that once they leave on Wednesday that things will only get busier.

It is hard learning to deal with being surrounded by poverty and desperation as well. Joy and the kids have not been off of the grounds here very often but I have to go out into town for things regularly. As we go up our steps to get to our apartment we can see over onto the road that leads to many homes behind us. There are always people there and often asking for food. Yesterday there were three little girls that Joy has been talking to some and they were standing beyond our fence in the rain saying the only english they know, "I am hungry". Joy sent me out to give them each a little pack of cookies as the rain came down harder. She was pleased to have been able to "minister" to them a little bit. This morning by 7 am there were over a dozen kids...including our three little friends...lined up on the fence telling us how hungry they were. All expecting the little cookies I am sure. We are learning how to help in a systematic, God directed way of helping and not just giving hand outs. We already 'know' that from all of the previous time here, but it is different when you see them everyday and want to help them all. Pray God will continue to make us wise and give us wisdom as He uses us to meet their needs.

One of the boys came and got us at 7 this morning and said someone was here to pray for us. We went downstairs and there was an elderly, nearly blind from cataracts, pastor that said the that God told him to come and pray over our kids. So he was so sweet as he lifted his hands to the Lord in praise and then laid them on each of our kids to pray. I could not help but think of the life this faithful servant had lived in this tough place.

Well I have to go check the batteries and get the water going. I will never take that shower or electrical outlet for granted again.