Thursday, June 4, 2015

Celebrating Eli, Haitian style.

Eli's celebration turned out great!

The ladies and Cory worked hard to get the food ready and then rushed home to change for the service.

Many of our friends made time in their afternoon to come to celebrate.

While we started a bit late, [not by Haitian standards] and the video didn't work to show pictures, the service turned out special.


Many representatives gave short words of encouragement to Eli and let him know they would continue to pray.

He received a pretty plaque with a picture of Haiti's Citadel and a nice wooden bowl.

Many thanked him for his library project and hope it will continue.

Anna will be taking on the library project.

Our French teacher, Alerte shared a short devotional about choosing to follow Jesus; He is all we need.

To finish up our French class, Eli, Anna and I joined our teacher [playing the keyboard] in singing a French hymn!

It surprised many in the group, both that we sang, and that we sang in French.

By Eli's request, Anna on harmonica, joined Alert for a song sung by everyone.

However, with a saxophone also in the group you couldn't really hear her.


Cory and Eli said a few words. The cooks also sang special music for Eli.

Following the celebration everyone invited walked up to the guest house for a meal.

We did show a few pictures of Eli on the computer to those who wanted to see them.

Many people signed Eli's Oh, the Places You'll go!  book as well.


Very grateful for all the prayers.

Thankful the Lord answered the prayers for a full time school teacher for most of the years of Eli's life by letting me teach him.

During the early years I did not realize what a gift it would be to spend those extra hours with Eli and Anna learning along with them.

I calculate that in just the last seven years of schooling we've spent over 7,500 hours together that we would have missed.

That works out to more than 1.5 years [if you take 12 hours a day of being awake] 'extra' time! Thank you Lord!

1 comment:

Chris and Kath Sloan said...

I love this!!! So glad it was special for Eli.