School Happenings

Lots of painting is still going on in the new school building.  I’m amazed at the amount of time the details are taking.  We’re still hoping to have this first phase of construction completed by the end of May.

We had a good week in school with good attendance in all our classes this week.  Junior and Elisabeth worked with our new computer club students and are beginning to identify leaders among the kids.  This will be critical to ensure that the laptops are well maintained and that others will be motivated to learn, as well.

I love watching the kids enjoy a hot meal at school…

Fun

Did I mention that Spring has sprung in Haiti?

Is it my imagination?  Or was Andrew sitting on his 2 year old daughter, Faith in church this morning?

I so enjoyed watching Jordan trying to get a mango for himself today…

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Special Meanings

Church this morning was pretty cool. The Inter-Youth Choir, from Port-au-Prince was with us again, bringing some heavenly music into the house. Pastor Lex shared an encouraging message with us.  It was a rather “raw” message that touched many hearts.  I have often heard this Haitian proverb quoted,  “Kreyol pale, Kreyol konprann.”  The literal translation is “Creole speaks, Creole understands.”  The actual meaning is closer to “I’m speaking your native language and I KNOW you understand me.”  It was that kind of a message, with the little nuances of culture that the Haitians understand and that most Americans will never quite grasp the significance of.

In the message, Lex started talking about weapons.  (Let me preface this by saying this has NOTHING to do with American politics!  Few weapons in Haiti are legal.  This is a message about what you put your trust in.)  Sometimes people feel like if they carry a gun they are safe.  Some guys give their girlfriends guns, in case they ever have a problem.  Unfortunately, many times those guns end up killing the ones we love.  What if you shared a Bible with your girlfriend, instead of a gun.  That Bible could lead her to eternal life.  The Bible, the truth that we can receive from it, can deliver us from bad circumstances.

There was much more to the message, but that part was significant to what happened at the end of the service.  When he was done preaching, Lex asked if there was anyone that wanted to come forward to pray and ask Jesus to come into their lives.  Two people responded, a young man and a young woman.  After the service was over, the young man came to Lex to tell him what had happened in his life.

This young man had been arrested for possession of an illegal weapon, but didn’t have a gun on him, he had only a bottle of whiskey.  Nevertheless, he spent time in prison for it.  After a year, someone came to the prison for a visit and gave him a Bible.  Three days later they called him to release him from prison.  They began to talk with him about getting a lawyer and how much money he had to pay, court fees and such, in order to leave.  It all added up to an unimaginable sum for him.  Someone else across the room spoke up and said, “No.  He doesn’t need to pay anything.  Let him go.”  And they did.  Today he was asking himself, “What would have happened to me, had I picked up a Bible instead of  a bottle?”  Food for thought.

Friends

Yesterday we said goodbye to Anne, our nurse friend from Germany. What a blessing she has been to this community over the past three weeks!

Kim Conrad was here ever so briefly and has now returned to the life of airplane mechanics. She spent most of her time with “the guys.” She spent three months working on the school construction last year and was really eager to spend some time with “the guys” again.

Rod, Robin and Trinity also left yesterday, after spending a week with us. We are grateful for Rod’s help with some of the maintenance issues we were having.

This week Mission E4 has a team staying at the MOHI missionary compound, while they continue working with their schools and ministering in Leogane and Fauche.

I’m really excited about the team coming in the next week. Will Coley, who survived the earthquake with us here in Haiti, will be returning with a team from Sovereign Grace Community Church (Peabody, MA). Their time here will be focused mainly on the school and building a home for a family in need.

Marie Syliane Baptichon came to our church several years ago, after her husband died. It’s not unusual for someone to come looking for “stuff” and then move onto the next church and the next. She came and she stayed. She has three children, Silène (12), Fedner (10) and Islande (7). They were just little when their father died. We are thrilled to have a part in seeing this family have a home to live in. Thank you to our friends at Sovereign Grace for raising the money to build this house.  As you can see in the picture, the foundation is being prepared now, so they can put the wall up once they are here.  I am so looking forward to watching this team work together with our Haitian masons and laborers and to seeing the joy on the faces of this precious family.

Our Sri Lankan friends headed back home this week, but not without a proper goodbye.  They invited us to their camp to meet the new commanding officer and some of his staff.  The morning they were leaving, they came by to plant a mango tree in our school yard.  What a great way to be reminded of our friends, as we watch this little tree grow and provide fruit.

Clinic

We open our school clinic up to the neighborhood several times a week.  This past week Dr. Srihari (Child in Hand and BelikeBrit) joined us for two days.  We were so thankful, as we had a few difficult and unusual patients this week.

Claudel was victim in a motorcycle accident.  He was injured on his knee – a difficult wound to heal without immobilizing the leg – and also had hit his head.  His sister brought him to the clinic and explained the circumstances.  Claudel seems to have lost much of his mental capacity from the accident.  While these injuries are beyond our ability to treat, Dr. Srihari was able to point Claudel and his sister in the right direction and caution them about the real danger of not recovering, if they don’t pursue treatment.

Maestro Odenet has been working for us for about 12 years now in the school and has also been in the music minister for all that time.  He came to me Thursday to tell me about his sister’s 13 year old son, Lucritch.  When my kids were younger, they used to invite Lucritch over to play almost every weekend.  He was a very well behaved and intelligent boy with a clean mouth – which was always very important to me!

Odenet began explaining to me that when Lucritch was born, he didn’t breath on his own and had to be resuscitated.  They never noticed any kind of developmental issues with him, but in January he began having trouble walking.  His mom brought him from doctor to doctor, trying to determine what the cause was.  The last doctor she saw, told Lucritch’s mom that she was supposed to have had tests done for him when he was little, so now he’s having these problems because she didn’t do that.

I thought it sounded odd that he could go thirteen YEARS without any evidence of brain damage to now suddenly be exhibiting it.  I brought Odenet to see Dr. Srihari and explain to him what he’d just told me.  He asked for Lucritch to come see him the next day, so his mother brought him to see Dr. Srihari.  I feel so good knowing that someone who understands how to find a diagnosis and followup with it is now involved.  Lucritch will need to get a CT scan done and Dr. Srihari will be studying previous test results, as well as the CT scan results.    So often in Haiti, doctors tell the patients what they want them to do and the medicines they want them to take, but don’t explain to them what is actually going on in their bodies.  Lucritch’s mom is so happy to have someone explain things to her plainly.

Please join with us in lifting Lucritch up to the throne of grace where we will find help for this time of need in his life.

Sounds…

I had a birthday last week.  I’m 50 years old now.  Perhaps my ears are becoming more sensitive with age.  There were many musical rehearsals yesterday, right next to my office.  The bass guitar seemed to get louder and louder with each rehearsal until I just couldn’t deal with it any longer.  I stormed out of my office and went and hid in the new school, with it’s thick, sound-insulating, concrete walls and enjoyed a little peace for a short moment.  In my teen years, I had discovered Styx sounded better the more volume it had.  Somehow, that just doesn’t translate to Haiti at 50 years of age.  It does cause me to not want to be too harsh with my young friends who are enjoying the volume, though.

During the week, I deal with school sounds.  They can be pretty loud, too, but they are brief and passing.  After a short distraction, I can usually focus on my work again.  Being the weekend still, and having had such a hard time of it yesterday, I decided to take my computer, a wireless internet connection and head to the second level of the missionary compound.

Here I sit, listening to these very chatty songbirds making a racket – and absolutely loving it!  I miss the birds!  There are very few birds in the city and I don’t remember ever seeing birds in the school yard.  (That may have more to do with the abundance of children and noise, rather than a lack of birds?)  I remember living in Willimantic, CT in an old Methodist Campground – cute little cottages, just not quite so well-kept as Martha’s Vineyard.  I set up a little bird sanctuary right outside my dining room window.  I would enjoy the abundance of birds (chickadee, titmouse, snowbird, cardinal, sparrow, wren, finch, woodpecker, blue jay, catbird, mockingbird…) and I’d shout at the squirrels (and the neighbor’s cat) when they made the birds fly away.  I’ve always loved observing nature and today I am able to enjoy that peaceful sense of contentment in the midst of the mangos and coconut palms before me.

In the distance, I can hear the inter-juene choir, who sang at church this morning.  They’re not singing, but they are laughing and splashing in the ocean.  I can hear the kitchen staff, as they prepare a meal for our guests.  The plates are clattering, but mostly I hear them telling stories to each other and laughing.

This place we call “Cayes Mirliton” is full of great memories for me.  At a point in my life when I must have been on the verge of a mental breakdown – NEVER a quiet moment of privacy, being the main culprit – we moved to Cayes Mirliton, leaving the noisy, busy city behind.  I homeschooled my children every morning and went to the “office” (previously my home) every afternoon.  Everything changed once I was able to choose to “go home.”  I suddenly loved being with everyone again and was  playful and perhaps people even liked being around me, too.

That loud music, that irritated me to no end, drove me to Cayes Mirliton today.  Perhaps if I had been listening to the gentle leading of God’s Spirit, I wouldn’t have had to wait for the music to drive me here.  Just maybe, God loves me enough to let me get frustrated to this point to remind me there’s more to life than my own work agenda.  Hmmmm… Maybe.

Cayes Mirliton memories…