Well it’s time for another update from Grand Goave, Haiti. We’ve been working the past two weeks at the construction site trying to get everything ready for the kids to move in as soon as possible. Which means we’ve been working lots of hours Monday through Saturday. Each day we have an average of about 10 Haitian workers working on concrete and other random projects. Our Creole construction vocab has grown tremendously over the past few weeks :-).
We’ve had a little frustration with some of the workers, mostly because of our inability to speak their language in detail. We can tell them what we want done (for the most part), but we don’t know a lot of “detail-type” words, which I think would help clear up some of the miscommunication. But we’re getting better at listening to, and more importantly, understanding what most of them are saying in response to our questions.
As some of you know, Andrew, Faith and I have moved into our new house at the Hands and Feet Village. The first night was quite adventurous :-). It was a little like camping in our house. So we have this big 12x12 screen room/tent thing set up in our room to keep the bugs out. After we turn off our flashlights, we hear this rustling near our screen. I got a little nervous thinking it was a rat or something. Andrew got the flashlight out and it was a huge 4 inch bug inside our screen! I still don’t know what that thing was, but it was the biggest flying bug I’ve ever seen. The day before we had just bought a bug zapper tennis racket thing. So we thought it would be great to use that on him. We zapped him 4 times and he was still flying around :-). So then I thought I’d help out a little. So I got my flashlight out and tried to help- but the bug was attracted to my brown shirt for some reason. We finally got him with our shoe after 10 minutes of battling with this thing. It was really funny and we had a hard time falling sleep afterwards because we were laughing so hard. I was extremely thankful that it was not a rat and just a huge bug!!! Anyways, that first night, we didn’t have screens up on our windows, no front door, no electricity, no running water- but we did have a toilet! It really wasn’t too hot and was bearable even without a fan. Now we’ve got electricity (with our 8 batteries/inverter & our big generator) a fridge, stove, fans, screens up, and a front door. Still no running water because they’re working on building a water tower for us- so that’ll be a while. They almost have all of the plywood up on the boys house and the bath house. The masons are working on the showers for the kids today and tomorrow. Anyways- lots going on! And we love being able to have our own place – where we can finally get Faith to sleep through the night. (We haven’t been able to really just let her cry herself back to sleep since we’ve been in Haiti- so it’s been great to get her on a little better schedule!)
Each day a few of the kids will walk down to the Hands and Feet site. It’s been really fun to have them here. They are so excited about moving in and they keep asking me when they will live here! A few of the older kids were helping me put in some studs to nail some plywood into- they did a great job! This morning we went to the school/church where they all live to meet with Pastor Lex and the head nanny about some details of moving over to the new site. Afterwards, all 31 kids wanted to go in the truck down to the site- it was chaotic to say the least! So we took 11 kids in the back of the pickup and when we got to our place, we counted 20! A few of them ran down the road (a few minutes before), but I think some jumped in at the last minute before we pulled out. Needless to say, it’s crazy chaos when we try to take just a few kids to their new home to hang out. I’m really excited that they are all so anxious to move over to their new home, I’m hoping that will help make the transition a little easier.
I apologize for not sending a picture after the last update. Our internet here is extremely slow and won’t let me even send a small picture. So I have a few that I will send next week when we are back in the states.
We are heading back to the states this coming Monday for two weeks. We will be in SC for a week visiting friends and family and then we’ll drive up to NY to see my brother, Rick, get married to his amazing fiancé, Nicole! We are planning on being at Northside (SC) on July 17th and Northside (NY) on July 24th and would love to catch up with everyone (if you’re in town).
Praises:
- Praise the Lord that we moved into our new house and Faith is now sleeping through the night!
- Praise the Lord that we’ve had no injuries at the jobsite so far!!
- We are so thankful to have Pastor Lex during this time of setting up the Children's Village. Not only has he been an amazing resource but such a great friend!!
Prayer:
- Please pray for our trip back to the States that it would be a time of encouragement and refreshment for us. Pray that we would have a sweet time of fellowship with family and friends.
- Pray that we would be able to adjust to life back in the states for these next two weeks. We’ve read that “re-entering” can sometimes be a challenge for missionaries- pray for a smooth transition (as well as coming back home to Haiti).
- Pray that God would continue to lay it on people’s hearts to support us as we serve here in Haiti. Pray that we would have divine appointments as we meet with various people over these next two weeks.
- You can also be praying for the rest of the construction process. We’ve still got a lot to do before the kids can move in. Please pray that parts and supplies would be readily available and that things would go smoothly while we’re gone.
Thank you guys so much for praying!! We’ll see a lot of you over these next two weeks!
