Sight seeing, shopping, and stuff..

Young African Oil Palm fruiting near ground level.

The week continues to wind down along with our guest's time at Fauche. Their Creole studies will continue as they adjust to life on LaGonave and discover how best to help the medical work. 

Tuesday they visited Haiti's famous fort, the citadel and the palace while Cory picked up cargo and shopped in Cap Haitian. 

Fruits our guests got to try boiled in salted water. 

In preparation for the renewal of our Haitian residential visas in October, Cory needed to return to a bank in Limbe on Wenseday to pick up the cashiers check and finish up some shopping. 

Dr. Bob and Marcia used the opportunity to visit the mission hospital and museum both started by Dr. Hodges years ago. 

School continues in our house with Anna working on her standardized testing for this year even as I write this blog.

All Eli's application paperwork should be at Calvin by this point. 

The work on the agricultural book continues. New update about praying for our adoption: here

Three Haitian missionaries traveled to Africa this week to spend three months working in a French-speaking area doing evangelical training in a Muslim area. 

LaGonave staff continue to prepare for the start of the latest nursing program, the New LaGonave Wesleyan University of Haiti, School of Nursing Sciences set to start in October.  

 The move to the new hospital building on LaGonave will hopefully occur in October as well. Please pray for these busy people. 

Monday's delayed post.

Palm Oil from our tree

Yesterday we enjoyed a service here on campus.  As we listened the the congregation sing and the message on the importance of having the Bible daily in our lives, I was struck again with the thought of the unity that the family of God has in this life.

  There were times in the service that we didn’t understand, but the knowledge that we were worshipping the same Lord was still felt.

Over 200 children came to enjoy Kid's club on Sunday afternoon including over 50 from Port Margot who visited. Lots of fun, singing and fellowship.
 Sunday was a good day.


Today is a day of Larry and Steve finishing up some of their work.  Cory will take Steve to Cape Haitian tomorrow around 10am and he will fly to Fort Lauderdale later in the afternoon.  The fellows worked on replacement screens today and also visited another garden with Cory.

Eyvon who processed the oil.

Later in the day John Pierre gave out some of the toothbrushes and small toothpastes that Steve brought in for the children. Nice to have pictures to bring back and share with the folks back home.

 I worked with Anna, especially reviewing for a coming science test.  Learning about applied science, science & technology, simple machines and how to determine their mechanical advantage were all apart of the assignment.  I think Grandma learned as much as Anna.

This afternoon while I was sitting outside enjoying the weather, the wife and children of Jean Pierre came up to visit.

 I thought about how that is common here...people chatting, taking the time for others and how often at home we just don’t consider that a priority in our lives.

 It seems like I can always learn from the Haitian people.

Kris-note I did not forget to blog but could not get it to work yesterday. Sorry.

Dreaming of land and oil palms.

In two weeks we will celebrate 5 years of living here in Fauche. Cory started planting trees and plants as soon as he considered our moving here, months before we actually moved North.

Now in almost every available spot with soil and good light a tree is growing. All except some locations too close to the school or church where group activities need open space.

So now where to plant. My very generous husband continues to give away trees throughout Haiti.

The bare hillside to the North of our house looks like an ideal place for him to plant. He would like to get permission from an owner to plant a demonstration garden and trees up on this hillside currently used for pasture.

It would be high enough for folks to notice from the road and see what a difference planting trees can make rather than root crops that lead to soil erosion or overgrazed pasture, both of which lead to severe soil erosion with our 100+ inches of rain each year.

He would be able to keep an eye on the field from our house. And it would not be a far hike to visit and work in the field.

To start would probably be high quality cut-and-carry pasture plants like elephant grass, mulberry and tree marigold.

Fruit, bamboo and lumber trees can also be planted for longer term production. It seems like sugar cane would produce in sunny locations and would hold the soil.


 Oil palm would be a great crop to conserve hillsides if the local people can be convinced of the health benefits of red palm oil (very high levels of carotene and vitamin E).

 The palms are very well adapted to the local climate and yield comparable to plantation trees but many of the palms are being cut down because people think it will cause "cholesterol".

In the past all the local people knew how to process palm oil but harvesting old tall trees is dangerous since they climb the tree to harvest.

 So the practice is dying out in our area and the red palm oil sells cheaper than imported cooking oil, including imported palm oil that has been industrially clarified by destroying most of the vitamins.

Part of encouraging oil palm gardening would be getting proper harvest saws attached to poles to allow harvest from the ground.

Please join us in praying for this potential project.