Back in Haïti

Lex and I arrived back in Grand-Goâve Thursday evening. Alexis and AJay are still in Massachusetts. I guess we are officially empty nesters now. I don’t care for it – at all! But I’m really glad that our kids are doing well in school and really enjoying their weekends together. And I am making the adjustment to being in Haiti without them.  It helps to know that they are both staying with families that love them.

So far I’ve been working on getting ready for the team that came in yesterday. We have some new staff that I’ve been working with at the missionary compound and I’m trying to catch up on emails, go grocery shopping and post in the blog in between.  There is no “quick” trip to the grocery store here.  I left after church this morning at 10:20 and got back at 3pm.

Lex, on the other hand, jumped right in with overseeing the construction, catching up on what’s been happening with the school and mission administrations while we’ve been away. We’re so glad to see that our staff was able to manage so much while we were away. There are very few issues left for Lex to take care of.

Kids Against Hunger Global

I am sooooo excited to have our friends from Kids Against Hunger Global (Tulsa, OK) here with us this week! They arrived yesterday afternoon and immediately began bringing joy to my heart.

I love to laugh and so does this team. Sherry got us going pretty good with her tiny lizard “friend”. I’ve never seen a lizard so attracted to people as this one. Now when I say tiny, I mean TINY…like an inch and a half at the most! It kept trying to climb on her, starting with her feet. When it arrived on her arm she offered it to Dr. Lee in a very animated fashion. It was hilarious.

The team decided to go to bed one minute and the next they were out on the beach looking for green rocks using their phones as flashlights. Poor Melissa – her face dropped when I told her one of her rocks was gray, not green. Just a very welcome, silly evening.

Aside from all this fun, this team is here for a very important reason.  They unloaded the truck today which contains all the furniture for the library!  Brian and Dr. Lee made sure everything was there so they’ll be all set to start setting it all up tomorrow.  Woot!!!  Woot!!!  We are so thankful to the Lee family for donating all the carpeting and furnishing for the library (and some of the computer lab, too).  Marshall and Sherry Horn at Kids Against Hunger Global donated the box truck that was used as a shipping container and will now be used for the ministry here in Haiti.  Thank you Marshall & Sherry!  Our heartfelt gratitude also goes out to our friends at the West Newbury Congregational Church for their incredible generosity.  They donated all the funds necessary to ship the furniture (and some of that awesome Kids Against Hunger food) to us from Tulsa.  And finally, many thanks to Jimmy & Yvonne Jones for driving the truck to the ship in Miami.

Did you notice how many different people the Lord used to get this library built?  How incredible it is to see the body of Christ work together to accomplish the Lord’s plan!!!  Just because you can’t accomplish some major project all on your own doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do your part.  Imagine if the furniture was purchased, but there was never a shipping container or the funds to pay for the shipping.  The Lord is at work at Mission of Hope International and He’s using many individuals to accomplish something that will impact generations to come here in Haiti.