More Bus Woes

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.