Update and Planting Cacao

"springs" of water in the school yard

More rain over the weekend. Parts of lower campus actually had water bubbling up from the ground around the school and the school's dinning hall foundation.

We enjoyed a visit from Dieucel. We heard how his family evacuated their house, one by one, piggy-backed on the back of a tall man.

 How the water came up almost to his wife's neck as they moved to higher ground.

They returned to their home after a the flood waters receded only to have to evacuate a second time.

We listened with praise in our hearts as he shared with us how a pastor in a very hard church got excited about the Konsey books and purchased a box for his church.

 The Lord blessed the church with an increase of offerings after the people started to read the book.

He told us also of a place in the Dominican where many Haitians live that received 2 or 3 boxes of Konsey.

 So very glad to hear how the Lord continues to spread the books to Haitians.

flood washed peanut fields

Last week we brought 97 cacao trees to the new gardens and kept 3 to plant on campus to compare the USDA selected "super trees" with the other cacao on campus and see how well they grow under peach palms.

We have had over 60 inches of rain the past 5 weeks so the paths around here are very muddy.

We also had to delay planting until the river was low enough to cross with wheelbarrows of trees.

It was a long, hard 45 minutes or so to get to the gardens, dodging or hitting stones placed on the trails in some areas to help with walking over the water and mud but hard on the wheelbarrows.

The weather has been so cloudy that for now the pigeon pea crop in the area is mostly lost.

There just isn't enough sun so the plants that didn't die from flooding have dropped most of the pea pods.

 They might still produce a later crop.

The peanuts that didn't wash out look ok so far, might be OK if we get sunny weather now.

Our young fruit trees and peach palms are doing well. The rice looks thin in most of the garden, probably not planted close enough or just lacking enough sunshine.

Mud running with the wheelbarrows. Cassava/yucca from our garden

Planting cacao

Peach palm and rice in best part of garden

Local pigeon pea garden

Visit to flooded Blue Hills/Cap. Haitian

Wednesday Cory and I attempted a trip to the Cap Haitian area to see the flooding damage but only 15 minutes or so down the road folks flagged us down to let us know that there was a truck stuck on a hill ahead blocking the road, so we returned home.

Thursday morning we tried again. The trip took twice as long as normal pre-flooding travel. We drove to the Blue Hill's Wesleyan church.

Pastor Alfonse arranged for a couple of the men of the church to show us around the area and visit some of the homes of church members.

He also shared about what a great evangelistic opportunity the flood turned out to be, with the school's second floor being packed with neighborhood people, both church attenders and others.


He also explained that with so many folks loosing their household goods, including clothes, he was able to be an example and wear 'water-shoes' instead of dress shoes.

Many of the poor in Haiti feel that one needs to be dressed up to go to church and now is a good time for the church folks to be examples and accept people with any level of dress into church and share God's unprejudiced, unconditional love.

Over 100 of the people ministered to by the church during the flooding are now attending the church on Sundays and calling it 'my church'.

Lots of standing water and mud everywhere with some people still unable to return to their homes, but thankfully no church members lost their lives.


A river runs through the area and the owners of the small boats saved many lives.

One interesting thing we saw was small clusters of pink eggs that the guys with us didn't know about...after a bit of research we think maybe they are apple snail eggs.




Thankful to see that most of the main roads in Cap Haitian are cleaned up and functioning 'normally' but hear that many side streets remain clogged and because the work is done during the day when people are trying to move about the clean up is slow and frustrating, causing even more than the normal traffic jams.

Mud and trash from the streets put by the sea.

 After a long day we did not want to see the line of bigger trucks parked by a crowd of people waking down the road. Thankfully our smaller truck could just squeeze by on the left of the stuck trucks so we could get home just before dark.