Eventful day.

School on campus remains closed due to Carnival week but at our house we continue to learn.

Started to watch a history channel movie on the Inquisition.

Sad what men do to other men.

Worked on a letter of referral for a hopeful medical student from the USA. As overwhelming as it may feel to review a vast amount of medical knowledge I'm very grateful to be on this end and not just starting.

Praying for IBESR as next week will make 2 months waiting for a referral.

Hear that they will call a big 3 day meeting this month with the crèche directors and then start parent interviews.

Remember to check our second blog for updates, at the top of this page just click on Grafting Treasures.

Cory's new, enlarged, improved rooting shed continues to take shape in it's new location.

The folks who bent the guardrails near Limbèe and welded them together to block the road and protest the lack of electricity and the road conditions could not keep the road shut today.

The new improved Creole health books made it to campus! Thank you to everyone who helped and supported this project. Now need to try to get some of the boxes of 7,500 books down to Port-au-Prince, LaGonave and to National conference the end of this month in Bainet.

My dear husband also did office work this week including the bookkeeping and found time today to put varnish on the kitchen counter. Thank you.

Yesterday he blessed me with 'S' hooks so I can now swing gently in my hammock in our bedroom while studying in front of the fan.

The downer and stressful parts of the day started this morning with Gener letting us know that the brother to Anna's dog Hershey returned to campus with a serious injury to his spine.

We discussed the situation and decided that as he settled in a remote, secluded part of the yard to let him be as he did not take kindly to anyone coming near.

This afternoon, after Red passed away, we told the kids. Hershey, who often takes several-day trips, remains away since Tuesday.

New spine color, art and some new content.

Post team Monday.

Enjoyed a nice 3.5 inches of on/off rain from Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning and a half inch last night.

Since the rain softened the ground, after finishing up his office work today, Cory worked on smoothing out a new location for his rooting house as the old one is under a tall 'Fransis' mango tree whose crop now threatens the cuttings. The tree hasn't had more than a few fruits per year until now. The drought did help the mangos set a heavy crop.

Thank you notes printed and ready to be put in the mail on Wednesday as the plane comes in a day late this week so folks can avoid carnival activities by staying at home.

Learned today that the new Creole health books should be ready to pick up in Cap Haitian later in the week.

Then Cory will need to try to get some of the 7,500 books to the National Conference later this month.

Eli, Anna and I continue to spend hours in our studies. I will need to grade a report on how a diamond anvil cell works and a compare/contrast paper horses vs. oxen.

Cory helped today and tomorrow make sure that the Compassion children's activities on campus had water, electric and video equipment.

Team clothing donations boxed up and ready to pass along to the pastors. These are clothes that they wore, not ones brought down to Haiti to give away.

As one can buy clothes here we try to encourage local businesses as much as we can.  However even painting clothes and old clothes can be used as rags.

The picture is the view from my study spot in the plant nursery. Countdown to recertification exam stands at 1 month, 2 weeks and 5 days.

Hard to know what to study with any age patient, any organ area, and any disease being possible on the test.  Not to mention all the medications and testing that I've never used or seen for over 15 years or never!

Most of my medical 'practice' at this point is e-mail or phone consults and I think that is ONE area that will not be on the test-at least not tropical/developing world international consults.

My 'wrong' answers often reflect how my technique has modified after 15 years of very limited resources and testing.

Know it will be the Lord who will allow me to pass this test and my great prayer team. Some days I feel like I'm making progress with my review but then I hit a bunch of new information and feel that it would take another residency to prepare me.

Either way I will praise Him. He's in control.

Winter 

2014

THEDE Newsletter

In October and December we joined teams in Cap Haitian and on LaGonave to help with agricultural education and medical exams. Eli and Anna helped with translation as well as pitching in where ever they could help. 

The Cap Haitian visit focused on school physicals while the LaGonave team traveled to the mountains for home visits to people in Nan Mango.

Both locations will continue to benefit from the information in the Creole health books and plants that were shared. The new improved, expanded edition of the health book [7,500 copies] shipped from the publisher the first week of February, heading to Haiti. 

Right before the LaGonave team we participated in the third annual LaGonave Development Forum which seeks to help organizations work together to improve the lives of those living on LaGonave through medicine, education, agriculture and spiritual heath. 

In November we hosted a team from Friendship Wesleyan who worked with the children as well as painting the school’s dinning hall. Currently a 5 person, His Hands team is working hard to complete tables and benches for the dinning hall as well as other projects. 

Thank you for Partnering with us! Cory, Kris, Eli and Anna

Prayer & Praise

• Haiti’s Adoption Process
• Matching with our children
• Missionary support
• Church ministries and projects
• Kris’ Medical Boards April 23
• Eli’s SAT testing May 3
• Rain for gardens
• Faithful Support Team
• His Hands team February
• Warsaw Team March 18-27
• Haiti’s Youth Ministries
• Nursing School LaGonave
• Medical Ministry
• Creole Health and Plant books
• Anna’s 13th Birthday.

Now four levels of adult literacy, 63 dedicated students meet weekly on the Fauche Campus to work on reading, writing and math skills. One lady shared how she can now lead singing in her church because she can read the song book. Recently three people reluctantly were turned away because the starting class is full and making progress so they will need to wait for the start of the next beginner class. One student travels 1.5 hours to come to class three times a week. They regularly visit any sick local people as a class and pray with them.

Bananas

The photo above is from a neighbor’s yard and is a‘Mysore’ or ‘Raspberry’ banana, the best variety we are distributing. It is very sweet and fruity flavored, multiplies quickly and produces well even where local varieties barely survive. It has good resistance to disease, poor soil and drought. 

  We share most of the campus banana fruits at volleyball practice and Kids Club meetings.

    There are local varieties called “little Samuel” and “little Filo” so some people are calling this banana “little Cory”

Peach Palms

The Peach Palm trees on campus continue to grow very fast and could be an important crop here since it yields more food than corn on low fertility soil. Cory is considering a trip to Costa Rica this spring to get a good supply of seeds of the best varieties. A research center there has a large variety collection and sells the seeds. A trip in April for Kris to take medical boards exams in Santo Domingo will allow for exploring the Dominican Republic and any peach palm plantings that can be found during our travels. Dominican internet news articles have titles like "The massive planting of peach palm is urgent". They go on to say they "shouldn't be importing peach palm when we have the right environment to grow it here".

Cory recently met with the local Department of Agriculture official. They look forward to working together getting the promising new crops that are growing on the mission campus to gardens and farms in North Haiti. 

Agriculture Update

1. Fauche’s first egg fruit harvest 

A small 5 year old tree produced about 45 fruits. Cory’s gardeners were impressed. They are sweet, starchy and good fresh, cooked, or can be frozen for creamy, orange, nutritious shakes.

2. Breadfruit

Exciting news from one of the churches near Cap Haitian. One of the small breadfruit trees we brought in a carry-on in 2011 produced its first fruit!

3. Nut: Sacha Inchi

In less than nine months the planted seeds produced vines with mature nuts. High in protein, oil and omega 3. Plain roasted they don’t taste as good as peanuts but provide a similar nutritional value and are easy to grow. We plan to try them in some new recipes.

4. Chocolate Pudding Fruit.

This green skin, black fruit is related to, and tastes like the big orange Japanese persimmons. Some people are afraid to try this good sweet fruit.

Kid’s Club

Last week the children enjoyed activities based on the Eternity Express train book that we translated into Creole. The author, Carol Clark, visited in November with the Friendship team. Not only does the book share the plan of salvation but crafts to make “tickets” help to enforce the message and help the children to share with their friends and family.  With the positive influence of Kid’s Club the church youth group has expanded as children age out but continue to attend church. 

Prayers.

Cory's tree doing well.

Team made it to the USA yesterday after a 2 hour delay in Cap Haitian. I hear they ate all the lunch I forced them to take 'just in case'.

After going to bed early and sleeping more than 10 hours the kids and I woke up this morning ready to study.

Two big prayer requests:

RAIN: Just behind our house you can find a small spring that no one ever remembers going dry….until now. While our area sometimes goes a couple months without rain in the summer months, no one remembers going with so little rain for so many months, especially at this time of year.

Few, if any, have running water in their homes in our area [off campus] and with the river dried up, lines at the pumps continue to lengthen as others dig down in the river bed to reach the underground water sources.

A few locations in Haiti report rain but these remain isolated areas.

Many crops already lost and without rain no gardens can be safely planted.

CARNIVAL: For the next week Carnival will be celebrated throughout Haiti. Here this means roudy parties with drinking and violence. We will remain at home and not travel. Many churches will hold youth conferences to provide the young people a weekend of encouragement and spiritual training. Please pray for this to be a time of spiritual growth and blessing.

Last Day

Some school, some woodwork, some wash, some dishes, some cooking, some packing and some bumps.

The team spent the day packing and saying lots of good-byes, and doing some last minute visits on campus while wrapping up their stay.

Larry and Angie visited the school and visited the school cooks.

The tool shed was organized. Rested.

John Pierre noticed a small snake in our front door today. Waiting for him to leave now that night has fallen.

The adult literacy class made a point after their class to come up and sing and pray for the team.

One last bump, I felt the need to have one last IV secondary to GI problems and not wanting to dehydrate any more than I already am.

As they did for Gerda during her short illness the cooks came in to sing and pray and say good-bye.

I wonder how willing we would be to do the same if roles were reversed.

We appreciate your prayers as we leave tomorrow. For good travel and flights and as we say the final good-byes.

Some will likely never pass this way again.  Carol

Tomorrow the team will be on the road to the airport by 10 o'clock. Their flight to Fr. Lauderdale should leave Cap Haitian around 1:40 p.m.