My Mom & Dad in Haiti!

I was so excited to have my parents here! I  loved just being able to see them and spend time with them. But I was also happy to finally have the chance to show them all the places and introduce them to all the people that I’ve been talking about these past 9 months or so.  🙂  I was also very excited that my mom and dad brought a team with them from their church…a church that also supports me – Emily Wesleyan Church. This church really impresses me. They are a small church in an area where people don’t always have a lot, and yet they are always so generous. This trip to Haiti was yet another example of the generosity of their community – so many people donated so much to send them down here! It was a treat to get to serve alongside all of them! Here’s a look at who they are and what they did:

The team spent part of every day working at our partner clinic, Haiti Health Ministries. The guys primarily did construction, working on the roof of the new clinic building. Here my dad and Joe are cutting shims for the purlins (I think that is correct).

My Dad 🙂 So many people told us this week how much I look like him. It’s true. 🙂

Ken up on the roof

Dad working alongside one of HHM’s staff.

Steve spent one whole morning praying with folks who were waiting to be seen at the clinic.

The ladies spent their time working in the clinic. Here is my mom consulting with Dr. Clemence.

Terri is taking a patient’s blood pressure here…but she also learned how to do a hematocrit!

Mom getting vital signs

Terri getting to “work” with a little one!

I promise Sue was working in the clinic, too. She was so busy running around that I never got a photo of her there! Here she is though …on a prayer walk handing out one of the wooden crosses the team received from a couple they “happened upon” up in Emily. Cool how God works!

Here is my dad handing out one of the Creole New Testaments the team was able to bring…with our awesome interpreter, Franck.

The team also got to visit the 2 orphanages we partner with. Here’s Mom sharing the story of “Jesus Loves the Little Children”…with another of our great interpreters, Zicot.

Sue and Terri used the awesome flannel graph that was donated to illustrate the story…

…and the kids were captivated!

Terri taught the kids how to make tambourines out of paper plates and beans, and then they sang songs and made their own music.

And Joe even led some on a little parade!

Here’s Dad showing some of the kids at the orphanage some family photos.

Franck taught them some basic Creole.

And then they got to practice speaking English with some kids who are in an English class offered by one of our partners. 🙂

I wish I had a few more photos to show you…like the one of everyone drinking out of fresh coconuts we got out of our own trees…or making s’mores with Saundra’s family and the kids she helps out. I guess I was too busy enjoying the time to take as many photos as I would have liked!

Here’s a little look at part of what the team from Emily Wesleyan accomplished:

The rest of the work they did is a little harder to measure, but maybe this picture gives a little glimpse…  🙂

Consortium

I am beginning to realize that ReachGlobal-Haiti does things a little bit differently…and I think this is a good thing. 🙂  For example, I don’t know of any other missionary team anywhere that consists of folks from the U.S., Colombia, Brazil, soon to be the Congo, and possibly Chile all working together. Not easy, but definitely cool! I also don’t know of any other team that so eagerly seeks out churches and individuals in the States as well as Haitian leaders to participate in the discussion of how to move forward with “our” ministry in Haiti.

That group of people is what we refer to as the Haiti Consortium. We know that we as missionaries can’t do it all. Even if we had the time and manpower, we don’t have all the skills and expertise required. And we certainly don’t know all there is to know about Haiti. We need to actively engage in conversations with Haitian leaders to learn about what Haitians believe about God, how they like to worship, what they think will help their country, etc. And we need to invite into those conversations others who have a heart for seeing gospel transformation take place in Haiti. ReachGlobal aims to develop, empower, and release…and I’m happy to see how we are doing that not only with our own missionaries, but also the short-term teams that come down to serve with us, the U.S. church, and our Haitian partners.

Recently, the Consortium was here in Haiti for a number of meetings and different activities. Here are some of the highlights:

We met with IFOSuD (International Farmers Organization for a Sustainable Development). This is a group of young, Haitian men who desire to help their country by teaching better agricultural practices as well as about Jesus.

We drove to the region of Thiotte, in the SE corner of Haiti. It was a long, rough drive! Part of the road was right in a riverbed. Here a market has sprung up along the road. This is an area where many of the nearby towns were washed away in a storm a few years ago.

The purpose of the trip to Thiotte was to visit an area where a lot of Haiti’s coffee is grown. One of our partners, Vision d’Antioche, sells coffee to raise money for scholarships to STEP seminary (another of our partners) as well as to send out Haitian missionaries to Senegal. (Haitians were once slaves who were brought to the island from western Africa. Many of them were sent out from Senegal.)

Coffee berries

A press to remove the bean

Consortium members learning about the coffee process

Spreading out the beans to let them dry

Looking over the coffee

Picking out the “bad” beans

Ready for roasting

Praying for one of the farmers from whom Vision d’Antioche buys coffee

A coffee plant – I always thought they were small bushes, but these were growing like trees.

Growing coffee berries

Steve in a jungle? Nope – a coffee “plantation”…where there were also grapefruit, plantains, oranges, and pineapples growing!

Just a nice photo of Evaldo surrounded by coffee plants. 🙂

You can see how lush this part of Haiti is. We actually drove through a national forest…of pine trees! (Wish I had a picture of that, too…but I think the fact that about a half dozen guys got out at that point to answer the call of nature may have prevented me.)

After returning from Thiotte and having some more meetings, we spent a day with the kids in our GlobalFingerprints (child sponsorship) program. What a fun time we had telling an “interactive” version of the story of Noah’s Ark! John, one of our Consortium members, got a chance to meet the girl he sponsors!

On Sunday, Steve preached at our partner church, Source de la Grace. The rest of us visited a church plant of Source…that meets on the unfinished top floor of Pastor Moise’s house!

Before all the Consortium folks left, we got a chance to visit one of IFOSuD’s “farm field schools” in a beautiful part of Leogane, not too far from the Haitian Queen.

I love to see so much green!

IFOSuD classrooms are fields…where they bring in new seeds and teach new techniques right alongside traditional Haitian farming practices…and then let the farmers decide. Here they are growing eggplant which is new to this area.

They also work with farmers who have livestock.

IFOSuD currently is in three communities, each with 50 farmers. In this community, the egg production was going so well after IFOSuD helped them build one coop, that the farmers took the initiative to build another in the same fashion.

As we were walking to see another piece of land in this community, Dr. Dorlus (an evangelical Christian leader in Haiti who is part of the Consortium) told us that this tree is considered a “spirit tree” by those who practice voodoo here.

Not far from the spirit tree, we saw this tomb. It is common for Haitians to have a tomb for their loved ones right on their property. It is also common, because of the significance in the Haitian culture of the spirits of the dead, for these tombs to sometimes be nicer than the homes of the living!

Praying that the work may be fruitful…both in the land and in the hearts of those working it!