4th of July weekend, Youth Conference

The last night of District Youth Conference ended up with lots of noise.

Sunday morning worship was unexpectedly calm as the 150 young people visited another church, but they returned to campus pumped up for meetings, worship, and a late night talent show...in the yard just down from our house.

Things quieted down around 10:30 only to liven again at 12:30 a.m. when we were surprised to awaken to loud praise singing down at the guest house.

Despite their late night vocal exercises the young people rose about 5am to get ready to catch their rides home.

In the next 1-2 days the men will arrive for their district conference. We plan to offer blood pressure checks to those who would like to find out their pressures.

We were able to share three buckets full of ripe star fruit with the youth but recent thieves knocked more than a five-gallon bucket of unripened fruit off two of our five trees while gathering the ripe fruit, as well as damaging some of the trees under them in the nursery.

Thankfully much of the country received some needed rain over the weekend but it skipped over Fauche. We could use some rain.

Unripe starfruit (one ripe for comparison), some were used for juice.

We will quietly celebrate the 4th with some hamburgers and potato salad this afternoon while we think of our families and friends in the USA.

Eli will be traveling back to Michigan on Thursday and Friday, so he can return to Calvin on Sunday to start his summer studies.

Extra prayers this week for our adoption paperwork as our social worker from the USA plans to travel to Haiti early tomorrow morning and 'camp out' at the IBESR [social services office] trying to talk to someone about our case. Praying she can see those she needs to see [can't make appointments] and is able to move the cases forward.

The 'Grafting Treasures' tab at the top of this page will link you to our adoption blog for further details.