God delivered!

Yes, we got the bus!!! Thank you all so much for your faithful prayers for the bus. God delivered it last Wednesday. We know this is a true testimony of God's people praying! We are amazed once again at how our Savior worked it all out, in his time. Our theme song for these last few weeks has been Chris Tomlin's "Everlasting God." The chorus is 'Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord, we will wait upon the Lord!' ( Thanks Stephanie for sending us the words.) I (Joy) went to Port last Wednesday to be trained on how to purchase supplies, etc. for the orphanage. It was a very interesting, productive day. While we were gone we talked/prayed about the bus...little did we know that when we pulled down the drive to House of Bread...THE BUS!!!!! Kerry was soaked with sweat already and half of the bus was already empty. Pastor Cesar with a couple of other men from the church were working as hard as they could. How exciting! The boys were helping and also felt in the excitement. Not a thing missing from the bus! All was there in great shape...truly amazing. How great is our GOD! We only had one busted window. That was it. God protected the bus. Delivered it in his perfect time. He showed us favor and gave us a reminder that He is with us! We are so thankful.

Now that we have our "stuff." The work has begun on our apartment. Kerry has been busy working on installing our bathroom cabinet with sinks. By the way, it's awesome! Thank you so much Dale and Alice Abernathy! It really is so perfect. It sure beats brushing your teeth out of a cup-haha. Today we will be busy painting in between being trained for our job duties here at House of Bread. As we opened the crate of electrical supplies, we noticed that it did not contain any battery cables or breaker boxes and hardware that we thought it contained. So we can't install the solar panels and batteries as of yet. Our power supply will continue to be a drop cord ran through the window to run the fan at night. A very common saying in Haiti is "pa pwoblem"- "no problem." It is much easier to do without when you are surrounded by people who have no indoor plumbing, fresh water, or electricity of any kind.

I praise the Lord that Kerry and the kids are well! He was very sick. Then each child did struggle with fever and respiratory infection as they were adjusting to the heat and dust. The Lord gave me the strength to care for them and I've not been sick yet. We did use up all of the Tylenol, meds I brought in our luggage. Tylenol here is about $16.00US and you can only get it in Port-au-Prince, if they have it in stock. Those first few weeks were hard with the sickness, heat, and lack of communication with friends and family due to very little internet access. God is enough! He got us through that time and for a purpose. A huge THANKS to all who sent meds, snacks, goodies, cards and encouraging notes through Shelly Benfield this week (you can see Jacy Klaire is excited about the cupcake mix and sprinkles- Thanks Liz and Kristen)! Once again, God supplied that need. What a great blessing to have her here. She has helped with the kids while we have worked and also has had other ministry opportunities. She has been a breath of fresh American air!

Pastor Cesar had 40 days of consecutive prayer meetings at the church in St. Marc. Last night was #40 so we couldn't miss it. We ALL got ready, packed up and attended. The kids did great! We were able to worship with our Haitian brothers and sisters. It was a great time with the Lord. Pastor Cesar introduced us as full-time missionaries and everyone was able to meet the children and Shelly. It was very exciting as we worshipped in the new second level sanctuary with a completed roof...thank you Tri-City family! The sanctuary now has the largest seating capacity of any facility in that part of Haiti. God is at work here...we all have the opportunity to be a part of it! As we left the service, Pastor Cesar had scriptures in a basket for everyone to chose. My scripture was Deut.28:7, "The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven." Kerry's scripture was Psalm 20:8, "Your hand will lay hold on all your enemies; your right hand will seize your foes." We couldn't help but wonder why both the scriptures we chose out of the basket of probably 500+ were on our enemies? It is true, we are here in Haiti to share God's light, to serve the Haitian people, to share the Good news! Therefore, we have an enemy. Thank you Lord that you will defeat the enemy on our behalf. Thank you that your right hand oh Lord will seize our foes. Thanks to the Lord for his reminder to us that He will fight our battles! It was an honor to be in His house. He alone is worthy of our praise!


We are adjusting here in Haiti. We are allowing the Lord to have his way and show us his plan one day at a time. We send our love and prayers to all of you there in the good 'ole USA! If you see Logan, Luke or Megan give them a BIG HUG for me! I wish I could talk to them more. You all mean the world to us, thank you for helping us get here! Please continue to keep us in your prayers. We love you all so much!

Home alone with the Kids

Josie and Jaxon in Jaxon's play pen/bed/jail. Jaxon is the toughest one to cope with in our new environment. The others can sit down and eat and we can entertain them in the heat of the day with a story or even a DVD on the computer. But wild man Jaxon Kooper is another story. Like all kids his age he tries to eat everything. The problem is we don't want anything from the ground here going into his mouth. He also just gets so hot from going so hard all of the time. You can hardly ever get him to just hang out and be cool. He has a heat rash all over his body. He usually just wears his diaper and several times per day we dunk him in a big wash tub we bought. He is also teething right now so he has had a few days where his gums were really hurting him and of course the heat makes that worse too. Overall though I think he is adjusting great. He is eating the food well and sleeps several hours each night. He is usually up by 4:30 or 5:00 due to the heat and the fact that it is already light by then. So of course since we are all sleeping in the same room he has all the other kids awake pretty quickly as well. We are leaning to run on a different schedule.

Joy was supposed to be picked up by 5:30 this morning to head into Port Au Prince for a wedding. The pastor picking her up arrived at 7:45- in a hurry! So goes it in Haiti!

We are doing really well. I am still working on getting our internet full time so we are still limited on our communication ability. Other than that we are rocking right along. We still need our bus out of customs. We have been told that the longer it sits on the lot the more stuff we will be missing. The Lord is in charge.

I have the kids all to myself today as Joy and Julie are at the wedding. It is also a little cooler due to a good storm last night. We still struggle with the older kids not being here. Today is Megan's birthday and I will not get to see her. But we know that God's plan is perfect and we trust Him. If you talk to Megan today, wish her happy birthday. We called her this morning and Jacy just cried as she tried to talk to her.

We will be posting more updates soon. We look forward to seeing you soon.