Alexis, A. Jay and I are back in Haiti.  On our way from the airport to Grand-Goâve, we took a little detour to see the progress at the St. Etienne campus.  What a joy to see that the team here from Akron, OH had been painting the inside of the building to match the outside.  Other workers had also painted the roof green.  Looking good!

After unloading everything at the office, Lex took me up to the Thozin campus, where we are in the midst of school construction.  We are also building a small two room office.  The larger, front office will be for Pastor Edon (our administrator) and the school director.  The back office will be for Lex and I, although we call it “Renée’s office.”  I was thrilled to see the progress on it and the special note painted on the inside wall, “Welcome to your New Office Madame Lex! <3 the Akron kids.”  It was so nice to see that the visiting team was thinking of me.  I got my first look at the mat we poured before we left Haiti 2 weeks ago without any wood forms on it.  I was amazed at the height of this massive concrete pad.  It is 2 feet deep!  I also got to see the steel workers putting up cages for the walls that we will be pouring soon.  This project is just amazing!

Next, Lex took me up to the Be Like Brit site, where they are constructing an orphanage for Haitian children, in memory of Britney Gengel.  Britney came to Haiti to share her compassion with the children here and I love the slogan BLB uses:  “Continue the Compassion!”  Len Gengel arrived a few days before us and was up on the site with two American plumbers, Alan and Justin, who were volunteering their time to get the rough plumbing done.  I was very excited to see the work that they were doing, as well as the progress on the stone retaining wall they are building near their mountain road.  This place is going to be so beautiful when the construction is complete.

This trip back to Haiti was physically demanding on me, as we carried back two hundred pounds of foundation form ties and plates and were rather short-changed on sleep.  They make for very concentrated weight.  So, among several other incidences, when I dumped 6 suitcases off a cart in the middle of the street in Miami, and then “threw” them back on the cart and ran to the side walk with them, it was a little more than I’d bargained for.  When I got back home, I laid down on the bed for a “few minutes” with the cat next to me.  I quickly fell fast asleep.  I was awakened about 20 minutes later by a furocious “ROAR!!!”  I looked down at the cat, who was staring at me, wondering why she was roaring at me when she did it again.  This time, with my eyes on her, was just too much and I went running.  We quickly discovered our sweet little Saphira was in labor.  Long story short, she gave birth to four beautiful little kittens.

Now, fully awake, I was able to enjoy seeing more of our staff and sharing some of the items we’d brought back with us.  And, of course, my favorite part of the entire day was being reunited with my amazing husband.  Every day in Haïti is full of activities – things to get done, people to see, places to go.  I am grateful that every night I can lay my head down on my pillow right next to my best friend.  We sometimes even share a couple of the day’s experiences with each other before the snoring starts…sometimes.  But then there’s always the morning to catch up on what we didn’t get to the night before.  God has been so good to me.  He has blessed me with the greatest family and friends.  Do I deserve them? Nope.  But God…  I may not actually count my blessings, but I do think about them and thank God for them.  I hope that you do, too.

One more thing.  Our friend Amy dug out some of our old pictures from when we first started the mission.  I wanted to share this one – mostly because I love the look on A. Jay’s face.  He used to make it a lot, but doesn’t anymore.  Now he’s taller than both Alexis and I, but back then he was the smallest.  In this picture, Lex, Alexis, A. Jay, Rev. Engman and Rev. Hamlin were making “boy” (dumplings) to feed the school kids.  Feeding 365 kids – now that was a lot of “boys!”