Kenip seeds

A hot and dry week of weather here at Fauche. 

Please continue to pray for rain. 

 

School, book translation, high school transcript creation and reading fill most of our days. 

 

Anna rejoices with the start of kenip season. 

Due to a suggestion from Cory she embarked on an experiment to cook the kenip seeds into a tasty treat. 

 

Success encouraged Dad to promise to buy larger quantities of these delicious fruits and plant some trees. 

The seed makes up the majority of these small fruits. 

While we'd not heard of folks eating the seeds, Anna reports that some of our neighbors do. 

Her friends tried some of her roasted seeds but were impressed with her efforts. 

We thought the hot roasted and salted seeds tasty. 

 

I'm currently trying out a new online editing program! I want to make sure that Eli's paperwork for college contains no errors. 

 

I'm also rejoicing that Cory recently discovered how to program my phone to turn its self off and on. 

No more forgetting to turn my phone on every morning. 

We bought this phone seven years next month. 

Pastors from the National committee and from around the District arrived yesterday for this year's conference.

 A bucket of bananas went down to the kitchen for their breakfasts as well as jackfruit.   

 

Women's District Church in the New Church.

First we knew we'd be to late for a pew seat so took our own.


The night before we'd gone down to service to find out it was a competition time between the churches so after watching a while we left early but left our plastic chairs for ladies without a place to sit.

Those chairs were already being used in service so we brought down some more.

The ladies wanted so much to all worship together -not some inside and some outside- that they worked very hard pulling weeds, piling rocks, moving pews, decorating and smoothing dirt to make a service possible in the new church.

Some of the children worshiped in the gazebo.

Not sure if it's ever been that crowed!

The music and worship inspired one's heart despite the sun and heat.

After the normal title and offerings for the church the presidents of each church's women's missionary society came dancing and singing in like Daniel with their offerings.

Throughout the service folks needed to move around a bit as the sun continued to move across the blue sky reducing the amount of shade.

The sermon reminded us to follow the Lord and end well.

Many examples from the Bible of men and women who finished well as well as some that did not.

Two young ladies accepted the Lord and the whole group prayed for them.

A new committee was introduced to care and encourage the district pastor's wives in their ministries.

These ladies also received special prayer.

Many thank you's were voiced including our family, especially all the work that Cory did to help and the fruits shared.

In the afternoon a wedding was held in the gazebo and a music concert before the evening service.

Cory drove the six ladies returning to Port-au-Prince to Limbée early this morning to catch their bus.

They headed out with bags of star fruits.

We join the women in prayer that by some miracle the church can have a roof and floor by next year's conference.

End of women's conference.

This week Cory and Anna prepared 3 jackfruit to share with the visiting ladies.

Today I prepared some starfruit seeds and packaged 3-4 seeds in a small bag with one  jackfruit seed.

Before they return home 240 women will be given these seed packets.

As over 350 ladies are attending so we handed over the packets to the leadership so they can make sure that the ladies with goat free land and best chance for the trees to grow will get the available seeds.

In a few years we hope to hear that other locations like the mountain village on LaGonave are enjoying fruit from their star fruit trees and a couple year after that from jackfruit trees.

Hot and humid with daily afternoon thunder in the distance make up our summer days but very little rainfall means the campus continues to be on the dry side.

A nice long soaking rain would be great.

We finished up a good week of school and Eli started on a college entrance essay.


Cory made good progress on the agricultural book translating this week.

The women’s conference will end tomorrow with the ladies leaving for home on Monday.

District conference will start on Tuesday.


New post about Haiti's adoption process here.

Women's Week.

A few hundred women share campus with us this week as they attend the northern women's district conference.

Yesterday we invited the ladies on either the national or district committees over for a time of fellowship. Five ladies joined us for cookies, bananas and passion fruit juice.

Sorry, I forgot to take pictures. One of the ladies we know from our time on LaGonave. Nice to hear her say how she sees the Lord using us in the north after being upset when we left LaGonave.

She also reported that in her village up in the mountains of LaGonave they have a fruiting star fruit tree that Cory had sent up years ago! YES.

With the tree producing fruit the people will have a local source of seeds for additional trees. If they could produce enough fruit they would be able to find a market for the starfruit on LaGonave.

One of their prayer requests is that the Fauche church can be completed so that more ladies can come next year [the current meeting place of the church will be a dorm that can house visitors.]

Yesterday morning for breakfast we shared a couple buckets of bananas and a large bowl of jackfruit. Anna and Cory prepared the jackfruit Tuesday night.

 The ladies shared with us a nice piece of fresh beef at the start of conference.

Before the ladies leave they will be give the chance to take a jackfruit seed if they wish and if they know of a goat free area to plant it.

Tuesday after supper Cory drove to Limbée to pick up the ladies coming from LaGonave and Port-au-Prince.

Surprisingly with a current gasoline shortage we've enjoyed government electricity more than normal this week. With church services continuing late into the night and starting before 5 a.m. the additional power is greatly appreciated.

During conferences Cory helps to keep the guests supplied with water and electricity in addition to sharing fruit.

Eli and Anna are adjusting to our new school subjects. While not much different than last years the start of a year gives them a chance to start new habits and develop new skills.

Garden update

We are enjoying more variety of harvests as new fruits come into production.

Bushels of star fruits are almost ready to share with the summer conferences.

 This Ma'afala breadfruit tree came from the Breadfruit Institute almost 3 years ago, Aug. '11 as a 2 or 3 inch tall plant.

First harvest June '14. A few other people we shared trees with have also reported fruit set.

 Starfruit and a small Ma'afala breadfruit

 Guajilote, year old tree fruiting in a gallon pot. Looking forward to trying this.

 Bamboo sprouts.

Jackfruit. Supposed to be 'Super Thai' but can't tell the difference from our 'Black Gold' so not sure of the variety.

They are productive now for small 5 year old trees. Sweet aromatic fruit.

Looking forward to first pitaya/dragon fruit harvest now that one of the self fertile varieties has a flower bud.

Vanilla pods

The best for last... Due to a drier than usual year we enjoyed a great mango season April through June. Mangos rotted on the ground even along the main road just miles from Cap Haitian and the main road less than a mile from Port Margot. 

Many people nearly live on mangos while they are in season. Cory tried to limit them to about half of daily diet. 

The campus mango production ended abruptly in July, except for a few of the new varieties that are just coming into production.

 The photo is Okrung, Van Dyke, and probably Florigon, photo taken today. We also enjoyed Valencia Pride, Fairchild, and Choc Annon, along with all the Fransic and Fil blank we could eat, from huge campus trees.