Meetings and travel

Neighboring mission...orphanage building on left.

Thursday we traveled down to the Ortlip Center for a couple days of meetings with the rest of the Global Partners missionary team.  We headed out 6:50am and arrived arrived about 11:15, just as the boat from LaGonave was unloading the majority of the team.

We enjoyed spending time with the rest of the team, espcially the worship and fellowship time. Anna hung out with the other teens and played with the younger children. This was the second meeting in which she was the oldest 'child' there but it still feels strange to her.

Boy and girl houses

Saturday morning we headed up to visit Délice along with three of our team, 5 visitors, and Brother Clotair, represending the Wesleyan Church of Haiti. He came along to help us see where the property lines were located and brought stakes to mark them.

First a few of us visited the neighbor's building project to see how the work on the orphanage buildings is coming and to gain all the knowledge we could about the process. Looks like we will copy both the dimensions and building process on our house and a guest house. The rest of the visitors took this time to hike up to the fort and see the coffee plantation ruins.

After our visit we spread out on the property until we joind up with Clotair. While the site we saw on our second visit for a house is not owned by the Wesleyans we found a good site with an amazing view, as well as a second site for the guest house.

We walked a bit further West as well to see the local pond. It is currently at its lowest point, seeing how they are at the end of their dry season. We saw many people working up fields with picks in prepareation for planting season.

Saturday night we reviewed our ideas for the inside of the house with a couple of the builders and folks who went with us and listened to some of their ideas. We hope to visit again in May to stake out the locations of the buildings as well as look for a place to build a tool shed that could serve as temporatry houseing for our family during visits before our house is ready.

Sunday morning we headed out after an early breakfast so that we could join the Goniaves church service. Due to a late start and getting a bit lost on where the church was located we arrived after the preaching had started..but still were encoraged with the sermon about obeying the Lord and then sharing communion. Then we continued our journey back home.

Today is a rainy cold day in the north therefore we're working on some house plan ideas, school, and office work. Thank you for the prayers.

Port Margot Church visit

Cooler nights this weekend with over 3 inches of rain on Friday night helped us to sleep better, and the plants and trees are already looking healthier.

The riverbed that dried to nothing in spots this summer again carries water for washing, bathing, and watering animals.

Studies, office work, and house work occupied our time on Saturday.

We had talked about taking our visitors to the beach, but due to the heavy rains decided to postpone.

Sunday we went to church down the road to Port Margot where we enjoyed hearing Pastor Wes preach after he, Susie and Met. Alert [their Creole teacher] sing special music.

Always interesting when you know both languages to hear someone talk using a translator. We heard two different messages on Sunday, that overlapped maybe 60%. Both were good.

We also enjoyed two choirs singing, seeing two babies dedicated, and best of all 21 people who will be baptized next week in the Port Margot church.

I plan to have Cory blog this week about the new garden land purchased in the name of the church this week. This will be a good location for some of Cory's 700 peach palms still waiting for planting.

Anna's schooling is settling down into a routine and this week she will add two hours of French tutoring. We decided that I'm slowing her up so for now I'll focus on Rosetta Stone.

Presidential Elections should occur on Sunday. Elections in Haiti tend to stir up protests and violence so praying for peace.

Retreat update and apology.

Sorry for the silence. I'll try to do better now, but the next three weeks may prove to be as crazy busy as the last three.

May 5 - our referral papers were signed, but we did not know until May 6th.

May 9-18 Our socialization visit and Becca joined us on May 14.

May 18-our second interview with the social worker, returned home.

May 19-20 Adoption paperwork, paperwork for missionary retreat, laundry/packing and school.

May 21-25 Missionary retreat: Morning meetings, afternoons with fellowship, and some meetings.

Exciting to meet the four new families, now in team development and all planing and working to move to Haiti.

Some will be moving this summer or fall.

Days started and ended with team worship!

 I also started to set up some of our needed USA appointments: eye doctor, dentist, oral surgeon...

Lots of good food, fun, but I didn't sleep well at all-fell asleep great but awake at 1:30-3 a.m. and too few naps!

May 26th Embassy visit. We dropped Konsey II books off at a Christian book store, Cory bought some garden tools, and then the five-hour trip back home.

Last night, I slept sound for nine hours! And I am still looking forward to a nap.

Our USA trip countdown now stands at only 15 days!

The to-do list includes major items like:

• finish school year
• a Haitian graduation party for Eli
•  organizing house/staff for us to be gone
•  packing for the USA
•  getting needed appointments/church visits lined up
•  hosting a team for our last four days in Haiti
•  adoption paperwork
•  updates and correspondence
•  good-byes, especially for Eli...

Thank you for your prayers and support.