March 22 Saturday

Well, its been a long 2 weeks, we had Dustin's parents bring down a team and we got a lot of work completed. We built trusses for a roof over the two containers that Dustin and I have been preparing, and also a set of stairs to go in the front of the building. Thankfully we went the entire week they were here without an injury or fatality. Although we almost had a few. The first day that we put a truss up was mess. Rob only has one tractor with lifts in the front and because it could not reach over the top of the container we put it in the back of a trailer in order for it to have enough height. But having height was not our only problem, the 60 foot truss was so unstable in the air that a few times it almost fell on people or knocked them off the containers. Thankfully we only had time to put up one that day and then that night one of the men drew up a plan to stabilize the truss. The rest of the truss then went up fairly easily the next day. The team left this past Tuesday and then Dustin left on Thursday.

The past few days of work have been good, productive days but have really taken a toll on me physically. I have been stuck with a cold ever since I came back from Ajenors house and being in the open sun all day has burned me up. Thursday, Rob had to take Dustin into PPX so he left me in charge of the crew, we got a lot done that day without any major screw ups. The guys tend to slack the day off when Rob is not around but I found ways to make sure that they were, for the most part, at their work and working.

Thursday night, I was invited to eat dinner with Bruce and Deb. It turned out to be a really nice meal and time. We had a nice American meal of meatloaf, potato salad, beans, and Italian bread. It was really nice to eat meat, Rob and AM do not eat meat except for some occasional spam, so it was good to switch meals up a bit.

With this week being Good Friday, there has been a little more commotion. Some of the voodoo people get wilded up but we really do not hear much or see anything being so far out in the country.

With my last two weeks here I could use prayer in finishing strong and really going because it can be hard without Dustin being here for support. Also, for AM as she will be having a huge medical team coming in on the 31st and will need an amazing amount of patience and focus for everything to go right.

Tuesday March 11

well, I am back. The trip was great and the walk was long! It turned out to only be almost 3 hours, but after the first trip there and back I was enjoying the walking. Wednesday afternoon was the hardest walk because I did not know where he lived and it gets hard walking forever and not knowing when you are going to get there! The mornings where hard too, mostly because we were up and out the door by 5 each morning and we did not eat breakfast before or during the hike. Sleeping was also only a problem on the first night, I do not know if I even slept I was kind of dreaming/ hallucinating the entire night; but after that night I was fine. they let me sleep on the bed because I was the guest, it might have been more comfortable on the floor. It was just an overall bad bed and the pillow was a block of foam in a cloth case. But I appreciated their sacrifice though a lot!

I did not go with him on Friday or Saturday because Friday at work I think I got a slight concussion of sorts. A metal support fell on my head when I was crawling under a container and I was dizzy during the rest of the day so I thought best not to go. Beside the fact that my head was ringing almost all day Saturday I was physically feeling good. I went up though on Sunday for church. He is a pastor and has his own church so I went to spend the day and night there. Church was nice. There were only about 30 people there and I was not the only white person. There was a lady there that was not Haitian and was not American either. She did not speak English but she was there. The majority of the people spent the service turned around in their benches looking at me but I am used to that now. The afternoon I spent playing with Ajenors 3 kids. That was about it for Sunday.

As for the food, I did not eat much there. The first night we had a stew with carrots, sweet potatoes, bannans, and two pieces of meat. It was cold the entire time too so the hot stew was ideal. We never ate breakfast there except on Sunday we had a glass of hot chocolate and some bread. Thursday was tough! it poured on us about an hour into the trip and we got soaking wet. We stopped in a small school hut with half a roof for shelter during the storm and had to share it with a couple that I found out later lived farther down the road with the witch doctor. Which explained a few things. The rest of the meals were rice and beans with a sauce and some bannans in it too. Overall very good!

I got to see here how a Haitian family really works. Ajenor has 3 kids, two girls and a boy. The boy is 10 and because he is the first son he is therefore entitled to the best things among the kids. The oldest girl was the one who did almost all the cooking and was around 15. The youngest girl was the better treated of the two, it was evident by the way the parents treated her. She was 8.

Anyway that was my trip! Dustin's parents brought down a team on Monday and things have been going well. I have kind of been taking over more of the Haitian crew and work while the specialists do their work. We work until 5 now. I spend my day with the Haitians until they leave at 2 then with the rest of the team. We are working on building the roof between the two containers which we have already spent so much time working on.

Prayer requests, with this team here it gets very busy and chaotic so patience for some and clear minds for those who have to do a lot of thinking. Safety as well, we are doing mostly welding and cutting so anything that could go wrong in Haiti may.

March 2

This past week has been a long and productive week. Dustin and I have been working on getting the two containers leveled and the ground in between them packed down and level. I have been using a huge tamper this week at work and we have the entire area almost finished. We also poured the roof for the new guards house and that was exciting! we had 24 guys, some working some not but we used around 40 bags of cement to pour the roof. It took us a whole day to get the whole thing done. We would have about 5 guys mixing the concrete and then 3 or 4 on a ladder passing up the concrete and the rest would be spreading it or getting the materials ready for the next batch. I tried to spread my time out at each position and would have to say that sitting on the ladder passing concrete buckets over my head was the hardest. The workers look for small ways to slow things down and make it harder; so like instead of keeping a steady stream of buckets going up they would wait until all 16 buckets were there and then fill them up and pass them.

This past week Jeb and Gail stopped by. It was really good to see some familiar faces and other Americans to talk to. While Jeb was here we took care of some details regarding my trip and it looks like I will be returning in April. I would like to stay longer but because Dustin is leaving in March and Rob is leaving for 3 months a few days after i leave to receive some medical care in the Netherlands it seems like the right time.

Some other work that Jeb took care of was to set me up with a man from work to go and live with. This Wednesday I will be leaving after work to his house, he lives 3 1/2 hours away walking. I am really looking foward to this opportunity and experience, the plan is for me to go to work with him and then return back to his house after. If all goes well I well stay until Monday.

This is something that I will need a lot of prayer for, I will be walking 7 hours a day and working 6 1/2 so I will need energy and strength to get through the week. It rained here alittle bit the other night but we still need a big storm because crops are not growing. Food prices are high and portions are small, so please, prayer that the Haitians will be able to find food. Finally, prayer for Rob and AM, they have a very difficult job here and there are many things that go wrong, they need continuous strength and patience to get through each day!

Friday Feb 22

I apologize to everyone for not writing as constantly as i had but it has become difficult with 2 more people. The past week has gone very well for the most part. This past Saturday we spent the day at the beach and had an amazing time there snorkeling and swimming! My work with Dustin has been varied this week, we had to draw up some sketches of designs for a roof between the two containers and also for a flight of stairs on the hospital. I feel like I can loosen up more with the workers now that I have Dustin around and things between us all have grown. The workers have also loosened up as well and work goes a lot more smoothly and easily. There are still times where we need to crack the whip on them but it usually is very gentle. For example, when we have to many standing around watching others mix concrete or sitting in the shade we will join them and then say something to get the point across.

I got sick once this week and had to sit a day out but I am feeling better now. Other than that there have not been any real problems or mishaps this week.

Something I have failed to do is tell everyone prayer requests or given areas that we need prayer for down here. The biggest problem right now in Haiti is that there is a shortage of food due to the government blocking ports. People here are suffering greatly as a result; prices have skyrocketed and sometimes its not just the Haitians that have problems with that. RAIN! we have not had rain in almost 4 weeks! Crops are weak and most farmers are losing plants. Finally, everyone working down here, especially myself, needs help to constantly be showing God's love and grace to all the people here.

Day 37 Thursday Feb 14

It has been a long and tiring week so far but i have been reading Lamentations 3: 21-32 and its been helping me a lot during these times. its also been really encouraging to have Dustin around as well, he always seems to have a good perspective on things. This morning was just like any other, i got out of bed at 6:10, boiled some water for oatmeal and then went to breakfast at 6:30 with Dustin. After breakfast i entertained the small girls and then went back with Dustin to get our things for work. Going to work was a lot easier this morning than the past 2 excruciating long days because we knew there were no wheelbarrows, cliffs, or buckets of concrete involved. this mornings devotions we read Luke 22: 14- 23 but after getting lost in the discussion, i started memorizing Lamentations 3:21- 32. The big job for Dustin and I today was to level and straighten the containers. We had Venes help us out today because he was the one Haitian who knew the most about moving the containers. The day went smoothly with the exception of us measuring the wrong height on the containers. Dustin left us at around 11:30 to take Annalise to lunch but Venes and I were able to remove the pipes easily without Dustin being there. I spent the rest of the afternoon played with the kids around the house and then went to dinner. After dinner i went back and sat and talked with Jacques and Isabel while they ate. I really enjoy being with them, we have a lot to talk about because they both love going on hikes and they love taking time to learn about the Haitian ecosystem. After dinner we looked at some pictures of where they live.

Day 33 Sunday Feb 10

This morning was nice to lay in bed and not have to get up right away, we did not have to be at breakfast until 8 but I still grabbed a bowl oatmeal. sometimes i feel like I eat a lot of bread at breakfast so it is good to eat something different beforehand. After breakfast I laid on the floor with sick Lisa for half an hour until I went to get dressed for church, we have a good connection so i think that it helped her.
Michelda and a friend were at the house getting water with Isabel, so I did my thing with the kids and then gave them some candy. Dustin joined us today at sunday school and it helped a lot to have another person that speaks creole. I learned this morning that it is not only the older kids but all the kids that can read read and write. Sunday school only goes as long as the main service does but the pastor went about half an hour longer than normal so we went to the hospital to sing.
A pastor friend of Dustin's invited us to his house by the bay and we left at 1, after lunch. the trip out there was rough, the vehicle we were in was bad and the driver was pretty bad too. After Dustin fixed a sound problem with the pastors computer we went to the bay. It took about 10 mins to walk there and then we waded out into the water. This place was a pretty populated place because it had 2 nightclubs and one was on the beach. we stayed where we were for as long as we could but we wanted to go to the mouth of the bay. we got about half way there and we ran into a huge lagoon that we had to walk around. we got some of the mud on our shoes and it stuck like glue, it was even difficult to wash off in the ocean. When we got around it we found a dock that Bruce is working on, he is making it so boats and ships can come in and refill on water without going somewhere else and paying. After Dustin went for a short swim in the ocean we kept going and along the way we found a lot of sand dollars and other great shells. At the mouth of the bay we found a great spot with lots of tide pools full of fish and other animals. There was a really tall cliff that I climbed to get some pictures and they turned out really nice, I hope to get some on here but it will be long and hard to get them on. We sat around and talked for a while about different things and as we were sitting there I looked down and saw a shark tooth. Before it got to dark we headed back to the pastors house; thankfully the ride back was better and more comfortable than the ride there. We got back to Rob and AM at around 7:30 and had leftover pancakes for dinner. we stayed out then and watched the stars for a while, I saw a comet tonight and it was amazing covering almost half the sky.

Day 25 Saturday

my alarm unexpectedly went off this morning at 6, which did not matter much because i cant sleep past 6:30 here anyway. breakfast was not until 8 so i cracked open a sudoku book and solved a few puzzles and read some of my book. on my way to breakfast i met a friend of mine, petar, he is the son of the guard at the hospital. he is a funny guy and i see him around quite often. we talked for a bit and then he explained to me that he was going to mass today, so i let him go. when i got to rob and AM's i found no one home, so i played with the puppies until guerland and annalise came. we set breakfast and then waited for AM and the girls to come back. AM had Bible study this morning with deb from 9-12 so guerland, annalise and i took the girls back ot our house. annalise had some cleaning to do so i took on the girls first. playing with the girls usually involves hiding in a room and when they come to the window calling my name i pop out and yell. the girls always love when i chase them around the building but i can only run for so long. later they came in with some coloring books so we drew for as long as they could sit. they soon got bored of me and went looking for annalise. we did not know when to take the girls back for lunch but i feel asleep at 1 until 2. when i woke up the storm had passed and they had gone home, i went over to rob and AM. i stayed long enough to enjoy a mango and read part of a kiddy book then came home and took a shower.